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He’s loved her for a year, liked her for two. He knows her coffee orders by hard, knows what she likes when she’s in “boss” mode, knows what she likes on her days off. He knows that if he puts extra cinnamon in her drink that she’ll smile harder walking out of the door. He knows exactly what it means when she wears red lipstick, when she wears clear lip gloss.
He knows her and he likes her, and he loves her.
And that fact makes it all the harder to not take her words to heart when her voice, the one he thinks about when he goes to sleep at night, tells him that he should go. That he should unwrap his arms around her, that he should forget the fact that they’ve just slept together, forget the way he knows what it feels like to kiss her.
And it hurts. It hurts more than he can describe, but it’s nothing compared to the agony that flows through him when she’s on the phone with her friend.
And normally he would’ve felt bad about eavesdropping, no matter how accidental it was, but hearing her talk about his past, about his jail time like that, like that defines him, like everything he’s done to pick himself back up means nothing-
Well, it's a lightbulb moment.
It’s the first inkling that maybe this is wrong. That maybe she’s not the one for him, not if she can take his heart in her hands and stomp on it, like his heart isn’t even worth the dirt on her heels.
He talks to Tanya, and he continues his AA meetings, and he keeps going to the Jazz Club.
It doesn’t completely fix the slowly healing wound in his heart, but the sound of Tanya’s laughter, the looks of hope on prisoners' faces, the slow and hypnotizing beat with a velvety voice, they all make the load on his shoulders lighter.
And it’s because of that lightened load that he tries again.
She’s in front of him, a cup of coffee in her hands, and she wants to try.
She says she’s been confused and is in a hard situation, that she’s struggling, and she wants to try.
When he agrees, she smiles at him and it’s like the sun’s come out of the sky, bright and brilliant.
He’s in love with her.
(He’s a fool.)
He takes her to the Jazz Club and watching her bop her head to the music is mesmerizing. So mesmerizing he forgets to take it slow.
They sleep together and then they sleep together, limbs tangled together and morning breath and sleepy grins in the morning. He loves her so much and every day he sees her, hair sticking up everywhere and eyes half-lidded from sleep, he falls just a little bit deeper.
(“You will live to love another day.”)
He knows this and he accepts this, but he controls it.
Control is how he lives his life because without control everything falls apart.
He reminds himself that she doesn’t love him, that she’s still hurting in some capacity from being catfished, that she’s been violated in ways he couldn’t imagine.
He reminds himself and reminds himself and laughs when she says she wouldn’t hurt him, like she hasn’t already.
He reminds himself, reminds, reminds, reminds, he forgets.
(He can’t control love, can’t control the way his entire being aches to be with her, and somehow, along with everything else about Danica, he forgot that.)
He gets caught up in the dates and the smiles and the way she throws her head back when she laughs. He gets caught up in the way she snores, light and airy and, sometimes, when she’s deep in sleep, snorty.
He gets caught up in all of that and in the end-
“Frank. Yeah, he’s just some guy I know.”
Agony is an understatement.
He feels shattered.
He drops his flowers, the ones he got for her, on the ground and leaves Danica and her soulmate alone.
He’s in love with her.
He’s a fool.
He’s done.
(“You will get past this. You will get over it.”
His own words and yet.
And yet.)
~~
(In the end, it was the love of his life walking down the street with another man, too close and too personal, saying he meant nothing to her. Like the past few months didn’t matter. In the end, it was her silence during their confrontation. In the end, it’s a dropped bouquet of flowers on the concrete ground, mirroring the way she dropped his heart.
Carelessly.
Ruthlessly.)
~~
He’s still in love with her, but the feeling isn’t so pure anymore. It’s messy: chaotic and filled with reds and blacks and faded bruises instead of the bright yellow it used to be. He still loves her, but he doesn’t want her.
Not anymore.
He startles when Danica snarls out what she says, like it’s even possible that he slept with her sister when he was - is in love with her.
And he says that, says it straight to Tanya too.
(“Why don’t you wanna sleep with me, Frank?”
“What - Tanya! Because I’m in love with your sister!”)
But that doesn’t really mean anything.
Because sometimes love isn’t enough.
He figured that out in Prison.
(“If you really want to be happy, then just change it.”
He learned, early on, watching his mom and his dad, that love doesn’t equal happiness.
Sucks, though, that this was the one time he wanted that lesson to be false.)
~~
He talks to Tanya more and eventually their friendship blossoms. Before, when he was still pining after Danica and they weren’t dating, he and Tanya didn’t really talk much. Tanya would make sexual jokes and he would laugh, and they would have ridiculous coffee contests, but they didn’t really talk.
No, the only thing they really talked about was Danica and how he could go out with her.
But when he and Danica finally get together, the conversations change. Tanya’s always been...handsy but it’s different now. It feels less like a joke, like a way to get him to squirm so that she can get what she wants, and more like-
Well, like she actually cares about him. She makes less sexual jokes about him now, though he is aware that she finds him attractive. But it’s like she sees him as a person now, like a friend, rather than a sexual object. They talk more after AA meetings and during her shifts. They even hang out after work and talk about things like music and television shows. Things like the future and their struggles with addiction. Things like love.
Tanya amuses him. She’s hilarious. But she can be deep. She can be serious.
“You know something, Frank? Danica is really lucky to have you, you know?” Tanya’s staring him straight in the eyes and it feels like a complete 180 from when she was pinching his nipples to turn off his “bitch switch”, something that she does every few days now.
He smiles.
“I’m really lucky to have her.”
Tanya smiles back, but there’s something dark, something familiar, lingering in her eyes.
“Great! Glad that’s covered up! But, just so you know, I’ll mess your life up if you fuck with her.”
She says it with a smile and a pat on the shoulder before she moves to the counter to ring up another customer. Frank stares at her before shaking his head.
He already knows how crazy Tanya is. He’s seen it first-hand and just the thought of a mocha latte makes him shiver. He still doesn’t know how she would’ve killed Danica’s ex with a cup of coffee, but he doesn’t doubt that the guy would have been dead.
That dark look in her eyes, the one he had just seen, was the same one in her eyes when Danica’s ex, the one who broke up with her, came in for coffee and almost ended up murdered in a black man’s coffee shop.
The day passes by quickly, with orders of coffee and, after that, another AA meeting.
Tanya stays behind to clean up the coffee shop with him, like she’s always done since he hired her, and they’re joking around like always. She’s telling him about something she did in prison and about infections from tattoos and love (??), but then she stops talking and walks over to him to pat him on the chest.
“I meant what I said about Danica, Frank.”
He stares at her, wonders what he said or did to make Tanya threaten him twice.
“I know, trust me. I know I’m lucky to have-”
Tanya snorts, her nose wrinkling.
“No, nigga! I’m talking about Danica being lucky to have you! I’ll fuck her shit up, too, if she messes with you!”
Frank stares at her.
“Tanya...”
She smiles and pats his cheek. She starts walking towards the front door before she stops, turns her head..
“You’re a good man, Frank.”
Then she leaves.
When he gets to Danica’s that night, he’s still smiling.
~~
When Danica breaks his heart, when she practically falls over to chance being with Charlie, Tanya hugs him. Like, really hugs him. And it’s only then that he cries, that he lets the tears that's been building up in his eyes, in his chest, in his heart, in his soul, go. And, because Tanya is Tanya, sensitive and hard and loving, she cries with him.
He knows that the only reason she doesn’t threaten her sister while he can hear is because she knows it wouldn’t make him feel better.
No, thinking about Danica being hurt makes him feel worse.
Because he still loves her.
(Because he’s a fool.)
(And love, whether it’s his or hers, isn’t enough.)