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Her message was so ominous that it sparked his curiosity.
Sanyi parked his car with a defeated sigh, placing his head in his hands as a dejected exhale escaped his parched mouth.
He was so weak.
He should have stayed in the comfort of his home and pretended his mother had long since passed. He was too curious about her desperate pleas to hear from her baby boy.
What did she want this time?
He wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Perhaps it was to see why he had fled home at the age of eighteen without so much as a letter to explain his actions. Why he had no longer wanted to be smothered by his mother’s constant attention like he was an infant. Why he no longer wanted to be prevented from growing up to be the man he had to become.
His husband, Felix, had understood Sanyi’s curiosity. He even gave his blessing to meet up with his mother, but there was a well-meaning if not blunt approach of caution peppered along with it.
From the stories he’s heard of how he grew up, how else could Felix have responded?
Regret settled in the moment Sanyi left his small apartment. He should have stayed home and fallen back asleep next to Felix, who was still bundled up into the thick wooly blankets that covered their full size bed. Even if that meant he would have to share that cramped space with a small tuxedo kitten curled on Felix’s pillow.
Felix had insisted they couldn’t keep the little kitten who followed them home one night. Yet, three weeks later, their new pet had made herself at home. She didn’t have a name yet, but they would certainly think of something.
Sanyi would probably have to. After all, if he didn’t, that kitten would be called ‘Cat’ the rest of her life if Felix got his way. Either way, he could think about that later. He wasn’t home to have that discussion with him.
Right now, he was in the empty parking lot, trying to piece together why he had caved into his mother’s pleas. Sanyi could leave. He could just drive off and pretend like he had slept in and forgot.
He paused to glance up from his phone right before he made the call to Felix to let him know he changed his mind. The person he saw first was his mother, waiting at the cafe’s door and scrolling through her phone with a deepened, sad expression and…
She looked horrible. For someone that spent his entire childhood pampering herself with all the finest luxuries in life to delay the natural process of aging, it caught back up to her twofold. Her beautiful, vibrant red curls were replaced with a frizzy, untangled mess with gray streaks through her hair. She did still look her best though, as she always insisted she had to be. She was sharply dressed in a green dress, but her posture was unstable, as if a blow of the wind would cause her entire body to crumble.
Yet, for how beautiful his mother’s appearance was, it was a ruse. A disguise to hide the monster that lived underneath. A nasty, vile woman that criticized everything her children did when they tried to form their own paths in life.
When they listened — especially him – she would suffocate with a thick blanket of something she called love. In hindsight, it was not that at all. It was the relief that her children had started to conform. The sense that she was still in control. The children she tried so hard to have were coming out exactly as she imagined.
The day that thick smothering smog lifted was one of the worst of his life. Sanyi admitted he accepted an offer to a college across the country. He had foolishly thought she would be excited for him, but the makeup she used to cover her black soul crumbled. Her lips twisted into the nastiest scowl he had ever seen. Her eyes blackened before she raised her voice and wailed at him, asking why he would leave the mother that raised him.
He left. No, he ran out of that family and never looked back.
Yet, five years later, here he was, caught in his mother’s deceitful web once again. All because he had failed to learn to say no. The cry for help she had sent at three in the morning sparked a desire of finally being able to close a door he desperately wanted to slam shut.
After today, he had no intentions to speak to her again. He could do this. He unfastened his seatbelt, kicking the car door open with his left foot. He stepped into the autumn breeze, a chilly wind hitting his warm cheek. He placed his hands in his pockets, averting his eyes away from his mother. If she got a glance of his eyes, she would cling onto that pity and destroy him from the inside out to get her way.
He had only come back home for Felix’s job for one month and it’s already been a disaster. He already felt the looming target growing on his back, and his mother would be the first to strike if he kept his guard down.
He made his way to the cafe he once considered a place of comfort. The place where he met his now husband when he was an employee. A very cranky employee, but one that noticed Sanyi’s spirits were down and got him a cup of coffee so Sanyi could speak to someone.
That conversation changed his life.
Yet, the moment his mother suggested they meet there, he knew she had been lingering here since he came back, keeping an eye on him from a distance.
Perhaps a cup of his favorite tea would settle his nerves. He quietly ordered his usual — a warm gyokuro latte with cream and a hint of sugar. He sat as far as he could from the entrance of the cafe, perhaps as a futile way to try to blend into the scenery. Maybe his mother couldn’t see him and she'd leave without a fight.
Yet, he had already established today that he was a fool and the next noise he heard confirmed that. A high pitched wail echoed the quiet cafe as his mother stepped in.
“Sanyi!? My baby boy?!”
Sanyi swallowed as his head hung to glance at the wooden floor. A slam on the table raises his head and the gaudy hot pink Micheal Kors purse that his mother always had on her is now across from him.
“I’m gonna grab a drink and we’ll catch up.” Her singsong voice rang as she glanced down at him. Though there was supposed to be a smile, he only saw a mass gray static covering her entire face. He immediately turned his head to get that horrid sight out of his mind.
She hadn’t, true to her nature, noticed at all as she stomped her way to the cafe.
The gentle music playing in the background was not helping his nerves — if anything, it only caused his heart to thump out of his chest, trying to escape so he couldn’t feel anything about this awful interaction.
A little pink and white teacup was sat down in front of him, forcing him out of his thoughts. It had a gentle line of steam floating from the cup. It’s the right soft green he had grown so accustomed to. A cute heart design was drawn by the barista as usual with the milk art. He offered a weak, forced smile, desperately trying to show nothing was wrong.
The barista nodded before making her way back to the register. His mother had coincidentally finished ordering and made her way back to the reclused table, sliding her petite frame across from him, sitting down.
He made the mistake of looking up again. The static was still there. He had no idea when it had shown up, but he couldn’t make her face.
“I can’t believe you actually came.” His mother spilled out. The static hadn’t only affected her face, but her voice as well. Disjointed, raspy, and forced. Almost as if it was fake.
Sanyi offered a nod as his mother began to ramble on and on about something or another. He tried to listen, but her voice was just grating. Though he noticed one thing.
She did not once ask about him. The entire conversation was about her.
He stared into his mint green tea, hoping somehow it would suck in him to drown out her high pitched chatter.
“Sanyi.”
She finally stopped monologuing enough to notice his presence. How much time had passed was a mystery.
He glanced up at his mother. “What?”
“…You haven’t even touched your drink. It’s gonna get cold.”
Sanyi nodded before reaching out with a trembling hand to try his drink. The flavor was one he’s had a couple of times and every time, it was vile. A simple mistake made by the novices of the cafe when they let the leaves in the drink simmer for far too long. The bitter flavor couldn’t even be covered by the sweet undertones of cream and sugar.
However, he wasn’t mad.
It was far too fitting to have such a drink like this on such a dreadful day. It was almost ironic but… the caffeine rush from that sip of that awful, bitter concoction woke up his thoughts.
He could get a drink like this at home. No, a better drink. Sure, it would be a cheap coffee brewed from a twelve dollar coffee pot, probably with a weird aftertaste he can’t place a description to, but it had more heart than this.
Besides, in the comfort of his home, there was a silly little tuxedo kitten that would rub up against Sanyi’s legs as he drank the coffee.
Felix would lean in and give him a tight, firm hug, squeezing him as close as possible, reminding him that in spite of what he had been through all these rough years, he had security somewhere in this horrible world.
It wasn’t here.
It wasn’t across from the woman that made his skin crawl in this cramped cafe. He didn’t want her reasons. He didn’t need them. He should have never answered that first message.
Besides, he couldn’t take the damn static anymore. It was going to give him a headache.
He shook his head, pushing the drink to the middle of the table. “I’m done. This was a mistake.”
“What?” His mother’s voice got cold, finally steady for the first time since he arrived. If anything, it was a threat. “Sanyi, what are you talking about?
“I don’t need closure.” Sanyi frowned as he grabbed his bag. “Don’t contact me again.”
With that, Sanyi stood up and left the drink as it was. Bitter, disappointing, and not worth how much he paid for it. Just like how his interaction with his mother was.
The shrill calls of his mother echoed in the cafe as he slammed the door hard enough to shatter the glass — provided, if he was physically stronger. He didn’t look back as he made his way to the car. He heard the static from his mother’s shrills again, but without any hesitation, he sped out of the parking lot, leaving behind that horrible overshot tea and his wretched mother in his rearview mirror without looking back.
He would find a new favorite coffee shop and make new memories elsewhere, even if it took him the rest of his life.
By the time his mind had focused again, he was back home in his tiny apartment, turning his key inside the lock in his front door. The smell of eggs and the scent of black coffee made in that cheap coffee pot was brewing. Felix walked out from the kitchen with the little kitten in his arms.
Felix tilted his head. “You’re early.”
“No,” Sanyi shook his head with a deep sigh. “I was there too long.”
Felix frowned. “Didn’t go well?”
Sanyi shook his head.
“I see.” Felix put the kitten down before opening his arms for a welcoming hug. “Come here. I can tell you need it.”
Sanyi nodded as he fell into Felix’s embrace with a sharp sob. He wasn’t sure where that had come from, but he held his tears in. Felix’s pine cologne hit his nostrils, that familiar scent of home consumed him. He wrapped his own arms around Felix’s torso, pulling him closer.
This was definitely better than a bitter cup of tea. Anything was better than lingering on his past.
“No tears for that vile woman, alright?” Felix whispered before kissing his crown. “I made coffee. Want some?”
Sanyi nodded in Felix’s chest, muttering the next words. “Please.”