One Cappuccino Please

5.

I open my mouth and shut it, not knowing what to say. I want to tell her. I want to open my heart and release all the bottled up feelings inside of me. I want to share my thoughts with someone else, after keeping them locked up inside my mind for so long.

Or do I?

She raises her eyebrow.

"I..." I let my sentence trail off, my strategy of ignoring people not useful for the first time.

"Yes?"

"I don't know."

She takes a step towards me and touches my arm. I pull it away from her and walk backwards, dragging my broom with me, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor. She continues coming towards me.

"You have to let it out," she says.

"No, I don't."

"You'll burst."

"No, I won't."

"You're gonna tell me, right now."

"No, I'm not going to."

She sighs.

"At least tell me what you meant when you said that I do something to you and you don't like it."

I look up from my sweeping and frown. I may not be a good person, but I do know what's right and what's wrong. She's been kind to me, all though I don't deserve her kindness, and even though I hate her with all my heart, I know I should tell her. After all, she needs to know.

And so I begin speaking.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but ever since you've stepped through that door, I haven't been able to look at anything else. Even if I'm working, or I'm doing something that requires a lot of concentration, my eyes and my mind find their way back to you. I can't stop myself from watching you, and I don't know why. Ever since you've come here, I've started feeling things, things I haven't felt for ages, things I've prevented myself from feeling. But you force me to feel them. You've changed me from an emotionless zombie into a normal human being. You've interrupted my sense of normalcy by coming into my life."

She gapes at me and I pick up my broom again.

"I hate staying alive," I say. "But there's nothing I can do about it. Because killing myself would make me an even worse person, and I hate how horrible I am, anyway. I don't like working. I don't like doing anything that doesn't include lying in my bed and thinking of how much better this world would be if I wasn't there. Yet, I come here every single day, because it calms me. Because it brings some peace into my life."

Now she's the one who doesn't respond. She simply stands there, book and bag in her hand, shocked expression on her face.

Sliding my broom across the floor, I continue speaking. "But you've disrupted that peace."

"Me?" she whispers, allowing her soft voice to float around the room for the first time in the last five minutes.

"Yes, you."

I keep the broom in its place against the wall and sit down at her usual table, facing her, my eyes piercing hers, as she stares back at me, with shock.

"Yes, you," I repeat. "You, with all your cheerfulness and kindness and genuine goodness. It's killing me, seeing someone as...as..."

I struggle for the right words.

"As real," I finally say. "As real and un-fake as you. It makes me feel even worse than I already feel and does nothing to help with my self-loathing."

She sits down, one hand over her mouth, the other still holding her bag. I stand up.

"So, that's why you can't come here any longer. Please leave."

And as I walk to the door and hold it open for her, watching as she slowly composes herself, I feel empty. Not relieved or happy or anything like what I expected to feel.

Simply,

Empty.