Winners Don't Have Bad Days (Watty 2020 Winner, Romance)

27. #TornPages, February 2018

The servers by Tim Horton's counter, those captains of the coffee ocean and the stewards of the fried dough castles, did not bat an eyelash at a lonely guy ordering a dozen donuts. 

Mike chose them with care: Boston cream, the cruller, double chocolate, maple glaze, walnut-caramel, all his old friends. The box was the last bastion at rock bottom.

He took his time rearranging his bounty, debating if two chocolate glazed pastries could stay side by side, or if they should be separated by a sugar-powder dusted one. The result looked so pretty, he loathed to eat it.

Daya sat alone in his apartment, upset, and he lamented the fate of donuts... He picked the one from the middle, got a bite in. The glaze tasted less of chocolate than it did of sugar. The dough was a touch stale. The cream must be at the other side and would drip if he was not careful.

He turned the donut and closed his eyes, anticipating the sinful mouthful. The creamy core pulled all the flavors together, soaked into the dough surrounding it, brightened up the chocolate notes. It made up for the shortcomings magically, with every swallow. He licked the last smudge coating his finger and opened his eyes in search of his next saccharine victim.

Daya walked through the doors of the coffee shop, her eyes locked on him.

There is a limited vocabulary for this kind of train wreck in slow motion moments. It could be a boulder landing on your toe or a lover catching you on a lie. The first two words that sprung to Mike's mind weren't sophisticated. He uttered them both under his breath, poisoning the taste of food he'd just salivated over with swearing.

As Daya cut her way between the empty tables, he crumbled the cruller. Say Kruger crumbled the cruller fifteen times fast... But he could not take his eyes off of her approaching. She looked like she had discovered the truth, but she didn't seem mad.

Hollow. She looks hollow... and lovely.

The indigo shadows around her eyes and mouth no longer teased his imagination. They concerned him.

"Mike," she said pulling out the chair for herself, folding her hands on the tabletop, the jacket's sleeves stretched over fists instead of gloves. "I'm sorry."

He crumbled the biggest piece of the cruller into smaller crumbs. How stupid. She was not a dove to peck.

"Something got into me. I thought it would fix things if I waited for you in your room..." She propped one elbow on the table, lowered her forehead to it, and tried to rub off the wrinkles. "Your drawer with the chocolate stash was opened up."

Of all days, it had to be today. "I'm terrible at hiding things."

"You're pretty good at it, actually."

Her tone cut him to the quick. He squeezed the crumbs back into a bigger piece of inedible bread Plasticine. The inside of his palms grew sticky. Good thing it was February, or wasps would chase him all the way home. Or the killer bees. This might be the one day of his life when he'd welcome a swarm of killer bees.

It was too late to confess, but he did it anyway. "I'm not a victim of a sinister metabolic affliction. I eat too much."

"I'm sorry," she repeated. Before he could figure out what she was apologizing for, her voice dropped to a whisper. "I broke your castle."

It took him a moment to realize that she was talking about his Winterfell LEGO set. "Okay. That's okay."

She tossed her head up. Her hair was still undone, he noticed. He let it down when he was kissing her not an hour ago. He shifted to deal with an inconvenient twitching. A flash of misdirected anger passed through his mind. That's fantastic timing... I have a masochistic fetish now?

"No, Mike, it's not okay! It wasn't okay for me to invade your privacy, it wasn't okay for me to break your things. And it wasn't okay for me to steamroll over you. You had never once told me you wanted to lose weight. On the opposite, you outright told me you were fine as you are. And if I was worth two cents as a fitness professional, I would have caught you in a lie, instead of chugging along, and... But I'm just a pretender."

This was a rare occasion when he couldn't put a word in. At the very first pause she took for breath, he tried to rectify it. She was getting worked up over nothing. It didn't matter at all to him. "Daya—"

"Daya what? Daya, you don't suck, it's all my fault? It's not. You aren't fixing stuff by excusing every wrong thing I did. As your life coach, I shouldn't have turned to you for comfort, let alone fallen for you. As a friend, I shouldn't have trashed your life."

For once, he could not stand the dark heat of her eyes. He looked at the cruller and condemned it to the midden heap of history. "There wasn't much to trash. I took care of that myself."

"What you have is good, Mike. You've worked hard to get here, found your place and be content with it. Of all people, you don't deserve a bitch for a girlfriend. Not that I know how to be a girlfriend either. The only thing I know is how to skate, it's all I think about."

He started taking apart the unglazed chocolate donut, adding brown crumbs to the yellow ones. It looked like a pastry slaughter house. "I disagree. I distinctly remember you thinking about me. You cared what I eat, even who I'm fighting in a video game you have no use for."

"I wish it was enough." She swallowed audibly. "Mike, I saw your family photos. Promise me to talk to someone who has more than one brain cell preoccupied by figure skating. To fix the damage I've done."

"Daya--" She remained silent, but he could not say much more. He could not even take her hands, because his were covered in sticky stuff. He rubbed his fingers on a napkin with a vengeance, but it was too late.

Daya stood up. "I've booked myself into a motel. Once I've sorted out my contract with VITAL, I'm returning to Ontario to train with Sorokin. And I'm taking this with me, if you don't mind."

She wrestled the familiar paperback from her pocket.

Winners Do Not Have Bad Days. Like hell they don't. Everyone does. "It's yours if you want it."

"I can't fix things with you before I fixed myself, no matter how much I want to. I'm destroying you otherwise."

He started at the familiar book. "Just so you know, their falling out of love method doesn't work."

The jerky motions with which she leafed through the pages hinted at trembling hands. "A powerful self-hypnosis technique... do not attempt unless you are absolutely sure you wish to scratch the person from your life... " she muttered under her breath, reading. Her brows knitted together as the text sank in. "Visualize things that disgust you..."

She slammed the book on the table and ripped the pages out with vehemence that earned a bewildered look from the bored barista.

Mike's gut rebelled at the appalling sight. His book didn't deserve the savage treatment. He did. Then his brain caught up to the significance of her gesture. He hung in limbo between resenting her violent gesture and fearing to hope.

She ripped the pages in half, then in half again. And again...

Finally satisfied with the shredding, she said, "I'll never visualize you as a rotten onion or maggoty dog turds. You hear me?" The torn pages joined his pile of crumbs. "Good bye, Mike, let's try to..." she choked up, did not finish it, turned on her heels and was gone. 

He always did like how purposefully she moved, and how fast. Always, but not today. What did she mean to say? Stay in touch? Pah!

Mike brought his paper cup to the counter. "Could I get a refill, please?"

Fresh coffee tasted bitter, the perfect taste to cleanse his palate.