checkeredpear
11-12-2015, 11:37 PM
The Tea Shop
He would get stupid drunk, and she would leave in the morning.
They would go to a party together that night.
He would be in Delanco the next day, hungover and poised over a toilet for the better part of the day.
She would be in Korea the next day, her tan legs bare in white shorts and sticking to the cheap seat material, gazing out the window at the air traffic control men, directing commercial airplanes away into the infinite skyline.
“How do you want to spend your last day?” he asked her.
“With you.”
Her newly leased Hyundai Elantra was parked outside his neighbor’s house. She called him to tell him she had arrived, and he came outside in his Dickies shorts and classic Adidas sneakers.
A week before they had spent the sickly sweet summer night walking around his town. They had sat by the Delaware River and looked out as he had regaled her with nostalgic stories from his childhood.
He didn’t smoke cigarettes and she hadn’t started yet, so his words had hung heavily and singularly in the air. He explained about the eclectic neighbors on the street row and how he had spent endless days skateboarding under the yellow sun. They hadn’t kissed at all, just sat and talked.
“I don’t mind driving,” she said.
“You look great,” he complimented her.
She smiled and started her car.
The drive wasn’t supposed to be that long but due to poor timing they managed to hit rush hour traffic, making the forty minute ride more like an hour and change. The end destination had been a small collegiate tea shop in Princeton that was accentuated with comfortable couches, board games, and loose tea leaf canisters.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
Infini-T. Typically a fan of puns, even she had to admit the shop could have chosen a better one for a name. But it was fair trade, continuously recommended to her, and she had wanted to spend a day exploring with him.
“It’s okay, I guess. It’s your last day.”
She felt uncomfortable so she suggested they play chess.
“Alright, but I don’t know the rules and I’m not real good.”
They set up the board anyway. As they sipped their teas, she conquered his pieces one-by-one. The knight. The rook. Countless pawns.
He jerked his knee, turning the board and upsetting all the pieces onto the ground.
She laughed and the sound was melodic to him like hearing a long forgotten song from his youth on the radio.
“It’s alright. When you get back in a year, I’ll be real good at chess,” he said with a smirk.
She felt uncomfortable again. She was leaving, it was a fact but one they hadn’t really discussed much. She hadn’t even told him she had gotten into the program to teach abroad until a week ago. She had known for the last two months. It wasn’t until he had messaged her asking if she would be game for attending a wedding with him in September that she had been forced to tell him that she would be approximately seven thousand miles away from him by then so she was going to have to sit this one out. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to tell him, it was just she hadn’t wanted things to feel confined to a timeline: straight forward, rigid, sequential. She hadn’t wanted to admit that she would leave and he would stay and they would forget each other eventually.
“Do you want to walk around campus?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m ready to get out of here.”
She knew he thought the shop was pretentious and a little too hipster for his tastes.
They collected the pieces together, searching for the last black knight which had ventured underneath a neighboring patron’s chair.
The campus was beautiful with tall ivy delicately blanketing each building and cloaking them in an abyss of deep, lush green. It was summer so students were sparse. They pretended they attended the prestigious school and were enrolled in summer classes. They walked passed the literature department. They found a dead cicada the size of a golfball on some steps and they stopped so he could take a picture of it. They held hands. They walked over a bridge and looked down at the cars that passed under them. They lost themselves in the dark, cool spaces where the arched walkways provided short relief from the high summer sun that radiated down on them. They joked about stealing two Princeton bicycles. They found themselves at a part of campus that looked like Hogwarts. They found themselves at a part of campus that looked like Jurassic Park. Neither of them cared that they had gone to public state schools. She felt her eyes close lightly as he kissed her by a tall tower clock.
They left campus and walked into town to visit the Princeton bookstore.
“Look how great this shirt is,” he said, holding up a black T-shirt with a tiger, the Princeton mascot, on the front.
She laughed at how much he loved t-shirts.
“You should get it,” she told him.
“I think I might. It’s on sale anyways so it’d be worth it.”
He bought the shirt and they walked to the car.
“You know, Princeton is real close to this restaurant I ate at once for my uncle’s birthday party. It had the best Italian food I’ve ever had.”
“You wanna go?” she asked, cocking her head and looking over at him.
He looked it up on his phone and asked if she minded. Of course she didn’t.
Leonardo’s II. They ordered food and ate slowly, talking about the newest book he was writing. He had sent her a novel from his past and she had diligently printed it out and read through it with a pen, annotating as though she were a student in college again and this were a text on her syllabus.
At his core was someone who wanted to be listened to, someone who had something to say, a writer. She knew this and loved him for it because of how different it was from her. She loved him for the way he could toss out anecdotes like they were pennies being flung into a wishing well, carefree and endearing.
“You don’t like tomatoes?”
“Nah,” he said, picking them out of the salad that came with his dinner. “But I get down with some onions. Sorry bout it.”
She smiled and admired him momentarily while he wasn’t looking at her.
The bill came and they split it.
At his house, he decided to take a shower to wash away the day’s sweat that had formed and evaporated on his forehead like raindrops on hot summer asphalt. She nodded, silent.
He took off his shirt and stopped. “You okay?”
She nodded again.
He walked over to her and pulled her to him. They didn’t say anything.
“Alright, I’ll be back. I take quick showers anyways.”
She sat down on his big queen-sized bed and admired his room. There were books stuffed into every possible crevice, tumbling out, unable to be contained by plastic shelving. He had generically boyish posters of on-point model girls, Bruce Lee, and the famous Japanese tsunami wave. He had an egg shaped lamp that he would turn on at night, when they would come back to his place after a night of drinking at Ott’s. The egg lamp was a sheer white and a small black hair clip was latched onto the bottom, the teeth of it like five digits on a hand. She wondered who it belonged to. She waited for the acerbic taste of jealousy to wash up from her stomach into her throat like a wave breaking on a beach and was surprised when it didn’t come. Instead the tide conjured up feelings of sadness and early onset nostalgia. She knew that this would be the last night she would be in this bed, it was the last night they would spend together and that soon he would be bringing other girls back and laying them down on his deep purple sheets. It would be some other girl that came back, buzzed from the bar, late in the night and left early in the morning.
He came back, shirtless but with the same Dickies on. He didn’t say anything, just saw her small figure engulfed by his comforter, sitting and waiting diligently for him to come back. He felt his heart ache at the thought that soon this girl would be gone and some other one would be taking her place. He went over to the bed and kissed her, slowly and compassionately, communicating to her that he would try to not forget her, that she meant something special to him and that all the things he had said the other night had been true.
“Sorry, my parents are downstairs, we can’t really.”
“Of course not,” she answered as she stood and smoothed her skirt. “We have to go anyway. We’re going to be late.”
“You sure this is okay?” he asked as he pulled on the shirt he had purchased hours earlier. It made her swell with a bittersweet happiness, a souvenir from their Princeton Day.
She nodded, silent but content.
They stopped at a liquor store on the way. Neither of them cared much so it was just ****ty lite beer that would get the job done. They went to the party at the mutual friend’s place who had introduced them. He circulated the room, talking to everyone there. She hung out in the kitchen talking to his one friend about cigars and the girlfriends of his other friends.
She got drunk.
He got stupid drunk.
They went back to his house, and the translucent egg lamp illuminated the room, casting subtle shadows over the last twenty-five years of his life.
He kissed her and licked her folds.
She started to cry.
He apologized for getting so drunk.
She didn’t care.
She couldn’t stop crying so he passed out holding her.
When she woke up, she had a stale taste in her mouth. She shook him lightly and he arose, still drunk.
He pulled on a t-shirt and they walked outside.
They shared one last kiss.
She got into her car, inserted the key into the ignition, and looked back just once to see before pulling away.
He went back inside to wait for the pounding in his head to fade.
He would get stupid drunk, and she would leave in the morning.
They would go to a party together that night.
He would be in Delanco the next day, hungover and poised over a toilet for the better part of the day.
She would be in Korea the next day, her tan legs bare in white shorts and sticking to the cheap seat material, gazing out the window at the air traffic control men, directing commercial airplanes away into the infinite skyline.
“How do you want to spend your last day?” he asked her.
“With you.”
Her newly leased Hyundai Elantra was parked outside his neighbor’s house. She called him to tell him she had arrived, and he came outside in his Dickies shorts and classic Adidas sneakers.
A week before they had spent the sickly sweet summer night walking around his town. They had sat by the Delaware River and looked out as he had regaled her with nostalgic stories from his childhood.
He didn’t smoke cigarettes and she hadn’t started yet, so his words had hung heavily and singularly in the air. He explained about the eclectic neighbors on the street row and how he had spent endless days skateboarding under the yellow sun. They hadn’t kissed at all, just sat and talked.
“I don’t mind driving,” she said.
“You look great,” he complimented her.
She smiled and started her car.
The drive wasn’t supposed to be that long but due to poor timing they managed to hit rush hour traffic, making the forty minute ride more like an hour and change. The end destination had been a small collegiate tea shop in Princeton that was accentuated with comfortable couches, board games, and loose tea leaf canisters.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
Infini-T. Typically a fan of puns, even she had to admit the shop could have chosen a better one for a name. But it was fair trade, continuously recommended to her, and she had wanted to spend a day exploring with him.
“It’s okay, I guess. It’s your last day.”
She felt uncomfortable so she suggested they play chess.
“Alright, but I don’t know the rules and I’m not real good.”
They set up the board anyway. As they sipped their teas, she conquered his pieces one-by-one. The knight. The rook. Countless pawns.
He jerked his knee, turning the board and upsetting all the pieces onto the ground.
She laughed and the sound was melodic to him like hearing a long forgotten song from his youth on the radio.
“It’s alright. When you get back in a year, I’ll be real good at chess,” he said with a smirk.
She felt uncomfortable again. She was leaving, it was a fact but one they hadn’t really discussed much. She hadn’t even told him she had gotten into the program to teach abroad until a week ago. She had known for the last two months. It wasn’t until he had messaged her asking if she would be game for attending a wedding with him in September that she had been forced to tell him that she would be approximately seven thousand miles away from him by then so she was going to have to sit this one out. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to tell him, it was just she hadn’t wanted things to feel confined to a timeline: straight forward, rigid, sequential. She hadn’t wanted to admit that she would leave and he would stay and they would forget each other eventually.
“Do you want to walk around campus?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m ready to get out of here.”
She knew he thought the shop was pretentious and a little too hipster for his tastes.
They collected the pieces together, searching for the last black knight which had ventured underneath a neighboring patron’s chair.
The campus was beautiful with tall ivy delicately blanketing each building and cloaking them in an abyss of deep, lush green. It was summer so students were sparse. They pretended they attended the prestigious school and were enrolled in summer classes. They walked passed the literature department. They found a dead cicada the size of a golfball on some steps and they stopped so he could take a picture of it. They held hands. They walked over a bridge and looked down at the cars that passed under them. They lost themselves in the dark, cool spaces where the arched walkways provided short relief from the high summer sun that radiated down on them. They joked about stealing two Princeton bicycles. They found themselves at a part of campus that looked like Hogwarts. They found themselves at a part of campus that looked like Jurassic Park. Neither of them cared that they had gone to public state schools. She felt her eyes close lightly as he kissed her by a tall tower clock.
They left campus and walked into town to visit the Princeton bookstore.
“Look how great this shirt is,” he said, holding up a black T-shirt with a tiger, the Princeton mascot, on the front.
She laughed at how much he loved t-shirts.
“You should get it,” she told him.
“I think I might. It’s on sale anyways so it’d be worth it.”
He bought the shirt and they walked to the car.
“You know, Princeton is real close to this restaurant I ate at once for my uncle’s birthday party. It had the best Italian food I’ve ever had.”
“You wanna go?” she asked, cocking her head and looking over at him.
He looked it up on his phone and asked if she minded. Of course she didn’t.
Leonardo’s II. They ordered food and ate slowly, talking about the newest book he was writing. He had sent her a novel from his past and she had diligently printed it out and read through it with a pen, annotating as though she were a student in college again and this were a text on her syllabus.
At his core was someone who wanted to be listened to, someone who had something to say, a writer. She knew this and loved him for it because of how different it was from her. She loved him for the way he could toss out anecdotes like they were pennies being flung into a wishing well, carefree and endearing.
“You don’t like tomatoes?”
“Nah,” he said, picking them out of the salad that came with his dinner. “But I get down with some onions. Sorry bout it.”
She smiled and admired him momentarily while he wasn’t looking at her.
The bill came and they split it.
At his house, he decided to take a shower to wash away the day’s sweat that had formed and evaporated on his forehead like raindrops on hot summer asphalt. She nodded, silent.
He took off his shirt and stopped. “You okay?”
She nodded again.
He walked over to her and pulled her to him. They didn’t say anything.
“Alright, I’ll be back. I take quick showers anyways.”
She sat down on his big queen-sized bed and admired his room. There were books stuffed into every possible crevice, tumbling out, unable to be contained by plastic shelving. He had generically boyish posters of on-point model girls, Bruce Lee, and the famous Japanese tsunami wave. He had an egg shaped lamp that he would turn on at night, when they would come back to his place after a night of drinking at Ott’s. The egg lamp was a sheer white and a small black hair clip was latched onto the bottom, the teeth of it like five digits on a hand. She wondered who it belonged to. She waited for the acerbic taste of jealousy to wash up from her stomach into her throat like a wave breaking on a beach and was surprised when it didn’t come. Instead the tide conjured up feelings of sadness and early onset nostalgia. She knew that this would be the last night she would be in this bed, it was the last night they would spend together and that soon he would be bringing other girls back and laying them down on his deep purple sheets. It would be some other girl that came back, buzzed from the bar, late in the night and left early in the morning.
He came back, shirtless but with the same Dickies on. He didn’t say anything, just saw her small figure engulfed by his comforter, sitting and waiting diligently for him to come back. He felt his heart ache at the thought that soon this girl would be gone and some other one would be taking her place. He went over to the bed and kissed her, slowly and compassionately, communicating to her that he would try to not forget her, that she meant something special to him and that all the things he had said the other night had been true.
“Sorry, my parents are downstairs, we can’t really.”
“Of course not,” she answered as she stood and smoothed her skirt. “We have to go anyway. We’re going to be late.”
“You sure this is okay?” he asked as he pulled on the shirt he had purchased hours earlier. It made her swell with a bittersweet happiness, a souvenir from their Princeton Day.
She nodded, silent but content.
They stopped at a liquor store on the way. Neither of them cared much so it was just ****ty lite beer that would get the job done. They went to the party at the mutual friend’s place who had introduced them. He circulated the room, talking to everyone there. She hung out in the kitchen talking to his one friend about cigars and the girlfriends of his other friends.
She got drunk.
He got stupid drunk.
They went back to his house, and the translucent egg lamp illuminated the room, casting subtle shadows over the last twenty-five years of his life.
He kissed her and licked her folds.
She started to cry.
He apologized for getting so drunk.
She didn’t care.
She couldn’t stop crying so he passed out holding her.
When she woke up, she had a stale taste in her mouth. She shook him lightly and he arose, still drunk.
He pulled on a t-shirt and they walked outside.
They shared one last kiss.
She got into her car, inserted the key into the ignition, and looked back just once to see before pulling away.
He went back inside to wait for the pounding in his head to fade.