A Coffee Shop Confession
It Started With A Simple Question.
It was a mild Sunday afternoon, and the tiny café on the corner was buzzing with murmurs of conversation.
Two friends sat by the window, and the sunlight poured in, brightening their creased faces.
The younger person, who was in his thirties, swirled his coffee while leaning in with an impish smile.
“You know,” he said, turning his head, “I’ve always been interested in you.
In his late fifties, the older man, nonplussed and composed, raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”
“Why didn’t you ever marry? I mean, come on! A great man like you, all charm and grace? I bet women were lining up to meet you back in your prime!”
The older man smiled a feeble, meditative smile. His eyes, glazed with memories, seemed to drift far away. “Oh,” he said after a pause. “That’s a question I’ve asked myself so often.”
“I was waiting for the perfect Girl. “
The younger man jumped closer there and waited for no response. “So, what is it? Have you never met the right one? Or were you just too picky?”
“Oh, come now,” the older man chuckled as if the sound of it were some foliage rustling. “I suppose I was always waiting for the right girl,” he said gently, his voice thick with something unsayable.
The younger man was rolling his eyes, laughing.
“The right Girl! That’s such a classic excuse. Don’t tell me there wasn’t a woman, not even one, whose heart you were trying to skip a beat, whose heart you’ve been trying to do ‘That is my woman!'”
The older man’s smile widened, and a glint of joy tinged with sadness flickered in his eyes. “Yes, there was,” he said, as if he had just unlocked the door on a thousand other stories too painful to tell.
The Perfect Memory
“She was everything,” he said, as if to himself. “She had a gentleness that gave you the sense that nothing in the world would ever be wrong. She was intelligent, sharp as a tack, and beautiful — well, she could walk into a room and fill it with light. Not only was she alive — she was life itself.”
“His face just lit up,” said the younger man. “Ah, so there was someone!” he exclaimed, grinning. “Finally, we’re making progress. So what happened? Why didn’t you marry her?”
The older man’s smile wavered but the slightest bit, as if the question had brushed an old, delicate sore. He stared down at his coffee and absent-mindedly poked at his drink.
The Unanswered Question
“Well,” he said slowly, “she was also waiting for something.”
The younger man frowned, unsure. “Waiting? For what?”
The Truth Revealed
The older man raised his gaze, eyes meeting his friend’s.
They were fixed, but there was a sadness in them, remote and as though it had set. “She was waiting for the perfect man,” he said.
A moment of silence followed.
The younger man stared, mouth agape. “Wait… what? So you’re telling me she didn’t choose you because she wanted … perfection?”
The older man nodded, a smile returning to his face, but a smaller smile this time, one coloured with resignation.
“Yes. All I wanted was her, but she didn’t want me back. And so we walked away, both waiting for something that didn’t exist.”
The Realization
The younger man reclined, the burden of the story weighing on him.
“That’s … heartbreaking,” he said softly. “A couple who could have been happy together separated by an idea of perfection.”
The older man inhaled sharply and turned back toward the window.
“It is,” he said. “But it’s also life. We get so caught up in pursuing what we think we want that we forget to appreciate what we already have.
I was her right man, and she was my right Girl. We didn’t know at the time.”
That’s exactly what the younger man said, stumbling over his words.
He looked at his friend, at the quiet strength of his face, at the love and the loss that had made his home in his eyes.
What else would I give you? They said and smiled. The older man smiled again, a smile stained with both peace and regret.
“Unless I have learned anything, my friend,” he said gently, “it is that perfection is a myth.
The essence of love is not that you get with someone who never makes mistakes; rather, you get with someone whose mistakes matter in your life.
Someone to laugh with, cry with, grow with. Not that… I couldn’t figure it out until too fucking late.”
The sun started to set and the café quieted down. Outside, the world continued, bustling, bright, unaware of the bittersweet memories being shared inside.
As he settled there, the younger man thought of how many love stories had been buried in the tyranny of perfection.
And suddenly, he was thankful for all the messy, not perfectly six-o’clock moments that had made love real to him, all the times that he hadn’t recognized love, that he hadn’t noticed it in his life.
