by Megan Nicholson
I asked for this reality of living on my own, alone. Being alone means you are solely responsible for your quality of life, with no one else to rely on. And goddamn, I really need to clean these dishes. They’ve been sitting there for a week, and god knows there’s plenty more around this damn apartment that needs to be washed. I did the first half of the dishes yesterday; now I need this second half done so I can clean out Pepper’s litter tray. The poor thing’s open bathroom is filled with interwoven fur and hay and pellets. There’s so much to get done, and there’s still four hours before I need to get to bed and wake up for work tomorrow.
Shards of wet glass, lost and forgotten, lay at the bottom of the sink. I looked at my drying rack, then in my cupboards. No, no, nothing broken. I don’t remember washing any glasses. Did it fall from my ceiling? Stranger things and rubble have found their way to the grounds here in the basement.
Grounds.
I eyed the one glass object that could have birthed the strange glass pieces. No, French presses don’t easily break, and this is one that should have stayed frozen to time. I mean, it’s IKEA-grade. That’s supposed to be of decent quality for the rest of my life, and I would’ve been fine with heating my coffee grounds in a press with your smudged fingerprint still pressed into the side, like the permanent water stains that etched themselves into each new pot brewed.
It’s not like I haven’t marred your memory before. One time, I was boiling water for another pot, this time for a dinner date. Or I guess it was more of a lunch date? It could’ve been somewhere in between. I wasn’t thinking in between texting back and forth with her, making sure she had the right address, that I did actually have five minutes until she arrived, that the pasta had been properly heated up, that everything was perfect, that my brick walls and barely-played record player catered to the aesthetic of a cozy city apartment. I wasn’t paying attention to the way the plastic top rolled just close enough to the burner, not until there was a smooth indent into the black cover. I deemed this did not make the French press unusable but just a little less efficient. It still made coffee, and that’s all I needed it to do.
I remember the discourse around the two of us even being in an IKEA, shopping around for house supplies together. My friends were confused – who were you, and why were we moving in together so fast? Didn’t I want to stop and take a minute to think through this? And then I eased their worries, that no, we were not moving in together, that we were just shopping for your new apartment that I had already planned to help move you into. You didn’t have much to bring over from your long-term Airbnb, and I was just eager for more time with you. So, of course, I was there, fantasizing our alternate reality lives through the room setups while you suggested this golden plant rack, this metal-bar bed frame, these wooden cutting boards would hang up so nicely near a sink like this, right? They would, in our black-paneled cupboard kitchen, darkened by our emerald walls in this high-rise in New York City, even though you hate New York. They would, against the stark white television stand, in between decorative books about your music and my lawyerly materials while we lounge in the pale daylight streaming through the window. They would, in the warmly lit bedroom, the translucent canopy above our maroon-and-gold bed gently drawn open.
I didn’t need anything from the IKEA store, and I certainly didn’t have room for anything in that studio apartment; I was just there to be with you. But you insisted. I had to get something while we were here. I had a shitty red Keurig to make some crappy coffee before I left each morning, which was enough to hold me off before the monotony of writing and typing and clacking up a storm of a case brief on a keyboard until lunch, for second coffee. But I always, always preferred the way you made coffee for us each morning.
It was always the morning after I spent the night, far enough from you where we weren’t touching, as you preferred, but close enough where I could see the crinkles in your smile for a silent “good morning.” Sometimes it was snowing, and the beige walls seemed paler. But you would make sure we both had coffee before you had to teach and I would be sent home, as I could not listen to you coach someone through your flute lessons, even though I loved to hear you play, even the silly made-up song you’d play to warm your throat up. You’d step outside of your room while I listened to your footsteps pad down to the mini-kitchen on the porch until I couldn’t hear you. I would watch the snowfall and think of you. You’d shuffle back with two cups of coffee, with steamed milk and cinnamon dusted on top. You didn’t have to make me fancy coffee, I would protest lightly; you didn’t even have to make me anything at all. But you did, and you wanted me to try this pumpkin oat milk you’d just gotten, and you steamed it because you said you wanted to show me that I deserved nice things. You would tell me how you made it, even though it was the same process every time. And I loved you all the more for showing me how you loved me without ever saying it.
You had picked up the French press and pressed it into me, along with a flimsy milk frother. Now, you said, you can make your fancy coffee at your house, too. I took it to the self-checkout while you went to the regular checkout. I’d learn how to make your frothed milk for the day you woke up next to me, and I could make you something fancy and frothed because I wanted to show you that you deserve nice things, too.
Now, I don’t even live in that studio anymore. Now, I’ve spent thousands of dollars at the one coffee place a few blocks from me, where the baristas have taught me how to craft everything from a cortado to a swan-shaped foam picture on the tops of my lattes, since once I learned how to make your coffee, you decided I was better off on my own, and you’d teach someone else. Now, I don’t know where or how or who you spend your time with, and you made sure of that.
I remember ghosts of a warmer you fluttering through the same months that we used to share, haunting my happiness. April now sparks dread each year, for fear that, once again, you’ll leave me in the park, shuddering in the grass, thinking that someone who wanted to show me I deserve nice things just showed me that I wasn’t alone in her world of worlds. Suddenly, those two other men deserve nice things, too, and a ritual that was individually sacred to me turned out to be part of a cult following. Nice things like the touch of your hand on my face as I teetered towards the dirt were countless slaps across my soul.
For the past few years, I have tried to both erase and memorialize you in places I didn’t see all the time. I hid the Polaroid photo of the day I told you how I felt because in that, I see your black felt sneakers. I kept the yellow gag socks you gave me as a last-minute Christmas present even as the miles of walking, running, sprinting from you have worn the soles thin and threadbare. I kept a coffee press that wasn’t the best, but was enough for me and whoever I brought home next because at least I could still have you in my life. Maybe some mug could bring you back to life, drink your essence, and make a faceless body you again.
Now, the French press, which I was supposed to carry with me throughout the rest of my life, to my new apartment, to my next relationship, to my next life that was supposed to be without you, is broken. Now, it can’t hold anything. Its only purpose is to fill my trash bag, maybe maliciously cut open the side, and make the moldy fruit spill onto the hardwood.
I feel strange. I always imagined I’d be devastated when I lost some further connection to you. Something to remind me that while you fragmented me in ways irreparable, that if I just held onto this little speck of your soul here, crushed the fragments back into something, then I’d win the battle against time, and someday I would have you whole again. Yet, it feels like a breath I have been holding in, exhaled.
I gently plucked the shards out from the sink’s metal bottom, pressed my foot to the trash can opening, and dropped empty glass. I finished my dishes, stacking cups into cupboards that aren’t black but preferably cream. It is mundane, but at least I don’t have to put away that French press anymore. That’s one less thing for me to have to move and find space for. I empty Pepper’s litter tray, empty my vacuum into the trash bag.
I saved the actual press for last. I don’t know why, when I was going to throw it out anyway. There’s no use for it. I can’t hold on to something broken anymore. I viewed it. Well, the handle’s still good? No. No. I deserve nice things. I carried it separately to the trash bin outside, in the alleyway of the apartment buildings. I don’t need this anymore. I don’t want to hold onto it anymore. I can get a new coffee press. New, shining, the same kind of model, but not this one. I tossed in the press first, hearing the crash of broken glass against the bottom of the bin. Well, my landlord probably won’t be thrilled with that. I tossed the bag over my shoulder, covering the scene of a tenant’s petty crime. Another task done.
There are now three hours left before I sleep and wake up without a mug of fancy coffee brewed. But there is one invisible red string left coiled outside, and while I may have lost yet another chain to you, I am not sure being tethered to a false reality is worth a rather crappy French press.
© Megan Nicholson
Megan Nicholson (she/her) is a writer trained in legalese, academia and plain creative fun. You can find her settled in at the library, running to a smoothie shop or painting up a storm in Boston, MA. If she’s not studying for her J.D., she’s on Twitter or Instagram (@nicholson_26), or making a “silly, but in a sad clown way” TikTok (@amiright_ladies).
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