My coffee is cold because I'm too involved in my book to touch it. And then suddenly there is fresh chai tea on the table next to me.

This is how I meet Sam.

For a long time we've been going to the same coffee shop to read. When I am not telemarketing for Stanton Insurance, I am here. It's one of those artsy places where they serve free trade coffee and soy milk in hand-made ceramic pottery with uneven edges, so you have to watch how you're holding it all the time. There is new-age experimental art on the walls. All the napkins are recycled from when you were there two months ago and all the tablecloths are from thrift stores.

The people match the shop. They've recycled their personalities from the people they had coffee with two months ago and picked up parts of themselves at thrift stores so that nothing ever really matches.

Like the vegetarian who always wears Nikes. Save the animals. Oppress the humans.

One of the paintings on the wall is mine, but no one's bought it yet. It's too traditional, I guess. It is oil paint on a black background. Deep blues and intense purples. The picture is of a girl huddled inside the hollow of a dead tree. A pencil is balanced on a near limb. The pencil is blue, too. 

Contrast this with the other art:

The giant-sized blow-ups of Superman's nose hairs.

The magazine collages of Bill Clinton jerking off.

The splatter-paint therapy sessions.

The boy who brought me chai tea says: "I've seen you here before.”

I hate chai tea, I say.

"At least we have that in common," he says, and sits down to share his hot chocolate.

A month later and we're feeling each other out over hot apple cider.

The guy at the counter with spray-in green hair is always giving me looks. Sam hates it.
We're each trying to decide, who is more involved? Who stands to lose the most? What are my odds? I keep a straight face when they show celebrity weddings on the six o'clock news. Am I involved? Who knows.

Someone is ordering a latte, and insisting it be made with SOY milk. His belt is leather. Rummage sale morals.

My painting is still on the wall and there's a layer of dust collecting along the top of the frame. Sam hates it. He says: "It doesn't speak to me."

Of course it doesn't, it's a painting. But I don't say that. I tell him I must just see something he doesn't see.

"Okay, Van Gogh," he says.

I tell him I'd rather not talk about my artwork that no one wants.

"It's not the worst piece in here," he says. He gestures to his cup which is way too thick on one side. You can see the finger indentations from whoever lovingly sculpted it. What a piece of crap.
He is comparing my art to someone's vain attempt at functionality. I wonder how long this can really last.

It's been five months and we are annoying the hell out of each other. His idea of a romantic gesture is buying condoms that are ribbed for my pleasure. We never talk about anything beyond the moment. I don't show him my paintings anymore.

At the shop I order a chai tea for nostalgia's sake, but I don't drink it. Sam calls my cell phone from a party I didn't want to go to and tells me I should come. There are a lot of people there, he says. The pot is A-plus. And am I mad at him?

No. I'm not mad. 

I just hate feeling alone when I am not alone.
  I have to go, I say. I'm fine, I say.

As it is, I have to scream. A group of lesbians are shouting lines from a play between sips of espresso. It is Julius Caesar and all the actors are women. Take that, Shakespeare. Everyone is wearing togas. Even the director.

Static.

You're breaking up, I say. Call me later.

The girl playing Brutus is at all the same protests as me, but she works at the Gap.

Et tu?

I look at my painting that's been hanging there forever and realize that the wallpaper is probably darker underneath it. 

Sam is infinite distances away.

It's been almost a year and I've developed a taste for chai tea.

"You're breaking up with me?" he says.

I hate that he says it like that. I'm not breaking anything. I'm not putting a baseball bat to the time we've spent together. I'm not taking the way his pillow smells and backing over it with my car. I'm not running between us with one of those machete swords and chopping at everything in my path. Everything will be intact, just stopped short. This is not a complete amputation from my life. I'm putting everything on hold.

I'm just putting you on hold, I say.

"This sucks," he says.
No kidding, I say.

What is this, a movie? You have to narrate? I say.
He doesn't even justify it with a response. "Can I ask why?"
He has to ask if he can ask. At this point, we owe each other nothing.
There are a thousand reasons and then there are none. I can't think of where to begin and then I can't think of anything at all. The tag on the tablecloth is rubbing against my leg and I glance down at it.
Made in Indonesia. I roll my eyes.

He doesn't look at me the way he did when we first met. I haven't been surprised in months. In college, there are no relationships; only getting drunk and screwing. I don't say any of this.

I say: I dunno.

He looks like he might cry and I try my best to look like that too. But I just don't feel it. This was resale love. This was someone else's relationship. The sleeves are too short or the pants are ripped at one seam. I don't know.

He leaves and I order a chai tea, but it never tastes as good as that first one.

I stayed away from the coffee shop for a little while. I guess I got sick of those Abercrombie and Fitch types who buy clothes at full price that are faded to look like they came from thrift stores. Plus, I heard a rumor that they don't use free trade coffee after all.

But of course I missed it. Everything, I mean.

So I go back and nothing's changed. The head of our recycling committee is throwing his plastic juice bottle in the trash.

The owner walks up to me and drops thirty dollars on the table.

"Someone bought your picture," he says.
I get excited for a minute before I ask.

Who?

"That lady who has a new palm pilot every week and never tips."

Oh, I say. It wasn't Sam. And it didn't even leave a dark spot on the wall.

It's like it was never there.