Coffees with Luke & Audrey

XXII

“All the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as water. And that’s the tragedy of living.”

— Iain Thomas

Audrey sat at the table they had first met. She had her coffee the way he always did.

Black.

No milk.

No sugar.

Without cream.

When someone asked if they could use the empty chair across from her, she said no, sorry, someone else was already sitting there. But Luke had not left his house in over a month and she knew today would not be any different.

It had somehow become her job to check on him, whether or not she wanted it to be. She would drop by his home at the end of the day and make him meals that she would leave in the fridge to find them gone the next night. She made him drink down glasses of water, ensured that he was warm enough, told him to get up and help her do the washing if it needed to be done. He obliged and helped during these simple tasks, but he did them in a way that suggested he was not really there at all. Like a robot, she thought. His movements stiff and clumsy with a distant look in his eyes.

The first few times she’d tried cracking a few jokes. Terrible, terrible jokes she’d thought he would at least call her out on. But he didn’t. Didn’t even look at her. And soon enough she stopped trying and fell into the unspoken agreement that words were not necessary.

That was until Audrey entered his house one day and found it smelling of liquor.

She came across him in the kitchen, hands clenched around the basin of the sink, his shoulders hunched and his breathing coming out in quick bursts. 

“Luke,” she said, her voice higher from the concern building in her stomach. He had been given strong painkillers for the injury to his head and when she saw the bottle of pills spilled in the sink, alarm bells went off. The next time she said his name it was louder, and when he still did not react, she practically screeched his name before grabbing his shoulder and jerking him around to face her. 

“What are you doing?” she demanded shrilly.

He continued to stare, as though she were not there at all, as though he hadn’t been the one all those weeks ago telling her she was too serious, that she needed to smile more. As though he were someone else.

She didn’t know exactly the moment it happened. Maybe it was when he did not answer. Maybe when he tried stumbling past her to his room. Or maybe when she saw the number of bottles he’d consumed. But suddenly something swelled in her chest, like she’d swallowed too much food all at once, and instead of fading like the sensation always did, it intensified, and without warning she had picked up one of the glass liquor bottles and smashed it in the sink.

“Stop walking away from me!” she shouted. 

He stopped. Turned. Did not show any response to her outburst.

“I know it’s hard,” she told him, her words thick and throat sore with tears impending to overflow. “I know he was your brother, but dammit all, it’s hard for me too! You think it’s easy coming here everyday just to make sure you’ve eaten or gotten dressed or even gotten out of bed? Do you think it’s easy seeing someone who I thought was invincible crumble like this?”

He held her gaze for a long time, and she wanted to hit him until he came back to her. 

“No one is invincible,” he said finally, so quiet she had to strain her ears to hear. “Everybody crumbles at some point, Audrey. I never asked for you to take care of me. So if it’s so hard, why don’t you just leave?” 

“Because I’m your friend, and friends don’t leave,” she said sharply. But then his gaze dropped, a look in his eyes she did not like, and hesitancy tinged her next words. “Unless you want me to leave.”

He didn’t answer. Tears spiked her eyes and fell freely down her cheeks. She bit her lip so as to stop it from trembling, tried breathing deeply to hold back the sobs growing inside her.

At some point she had stopped looking at him to stare at the floor instead, and so she did not realise he’d moved and was right in front of her until she felt his hand touch her shoulder.

“You deserve someone who’s stable,” he said, voice slurred from alcohol but still clear, “and I can’t be that for you.”