I sniffle, looking and feeling pathetic. "Will you go get me some chicken from Sal's?"
"Damn, that sounds good right now. The usual?" he asks.
"Yes, please."
"I'll be back in thirty. Come lock up behind me."
He opens the door and looks down. He steps over it, turns, and meets my gaze.
"He left your coffee."
I bend down and pick it up.
"May as well drink it before it gets cold," Linc tells me as he heads down the stairs. I close the door and relock the deadbolts and chain. I sit down in the rocking chair and stare at the coffee in my hands like it's going to hold the answers to all the secrets of the universe.
I take a sip, and it's still hot. I taste the sweetness of caramel and vanilla and begin to cry in earnest.
Coffee as a peace offering? It's just not enough.
The coffee ends, and instead, he brings me bouquets of flowers—each day a different one. I don't take them from him. I do the same as I did with the coffee. I close the door.
I don't want "gifts." I don't know what it is that Idowant, but it's not this.
