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“He still loves you.”
There is a poster of his face here. It’s one of those obnoxious ones. Where it covers too much of the wall, so anybody walking past it can’t miss it.
He remembers the first time he saw it.
How proud he was to see his smug face plastered for everyone to see. In his gold jacket and hat, and even if it was all just printed ink, he remembers swearing that the ink actually glimmered, like real gold.
“It is a testament of his stardom, ma cherie,” He remembers telling you, a grin on his face, “That his next album will get him that Grammy! Shining just as golden as Jean Loo,” Laughter usually indicated mockery, but when it came from you, he remembered feeling none of that.
No.
Instead, his memories tell him that you were happy to listen to him. That when he asked you to come with him and see his new poster. An advertisement for his next album, you were more than eager to join him. You made the suggestion to play his music on your car radio as you made the drive there with him in the passenger seat.
You continued to be impressive by making your own quips at different verses and intervals. Some praises and other witty responses to whatever he was dissing. He was a viral sensation then, so to him, your bars, whilst confident and scintillating, were not as polished compared to him and his shining ensemble, like the one on his poster.
But when you first saw it, your eyes were brighter than that.
“Jean Loo’s Golden Era. Has a certain ring to it non?” He remembers you quipping. Even going as far as to exaggerate your ‘non’ as French as you could, much like he did.
He remembered punching your shoulder and laughing at your sad attempt at a French accent.
Your laughter fills his mind as he looks up at his old poster.
Nowadays, he does his best to avoid it. Why nobody has taken it down yet, he doesn’t understand.
Usually, he can avoid it. It’s not located anywhere near his work or anywhere near his usual routines. In fact, he can avoid this area entirely. To even be in the area where his old poster resided, he would need to take a purposeful drive to get there. He could say that if he were in the area, that walking by it was an accident. That the reason he chose the location in the first place was for the high foot traffic. That nobody who left the train station could miss it.
Now, when he looks at it, it’s no longer the eye-catching piece it once was.
Time has taken its toll on his poster.
There are rips and water stains all over it. The old water distorts the paint, and the tears leave missing pieces all over his face and jacket, especially at the edges. His once teal blue nails now look much murkier. Now in a colour he’d never choose for himself, and as if nature wasn’t enough to ruin the job, there’s also the evidence of man once here.
Posters promoting other restaurants, other events (including music-based ones, too his dismay), cover parts of the poster. As if his old one had run its lease. Its advertisement no longer seen as necessary as others took the spotlight.
What’s more humiliating, if not the reminder of the world changing in front of him, is the graffiti all over it. Some are harmless. Nothing pertaining to him. Just your typical graffiti artist logos and brands being plastered and whilst he can appreciate the artistry, he cannot appreciate the insults that others have painted all over him.
“Lil’ Fraud”
“Massive Shitter”
They even go the extra mile of painting X’s over his eyes. Now, anyone walking past it can no longer tell that his eyes are blue. They will simply glance and believe that his eyes are big red X’s.
But he did not make the drive all the way here to stare at his disfigured poster.
Pushing his black cap down further on his face, hiding any evidence of his blue hair, he dared to take a peek at the cafe window.
He should probably take this as a sign that he shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t make a drive to stand outside a cafe store whose front window faced his sorry excuse of a poster.
But he remembered seeing you reside in this cafe.
He had been forced to take the subway. Had forgotten to put fuel in his car. The mishap of him driving home drunk and not realizing it was empty when he got home. Hungover, morning him was forced to find out, and thus he had to take public transport to make it to work.
That had been a shitty morning. Day even.
Then, when it was time to clock out and go home, he foolishly had taken the wrong line and ended up in an area he thought he had never been to.
His phone told him that he could take a bus from here, so he left the station. Headed up the stairs to the streets as he did his best to follow the directions on his phone to this supposed bus stop.
With each step he took, he decided that he hated public transport. That humans were daft to continue on with a system that was so incredibly flawed.
But by some miracle, a silver lining to his dark, miserable cloud of a day, he had looked up from his phone to the street. He had merely intended to look for the street name he was supposed to go to when his eyes landed on the cafe window.
And you were there.
From across the street, he saw you.
You were surrounded by others he did not recognise. None of his former housemates as you laughed at whatever these strangers had entertained you with.
He had cursed the sun for setting too soon. That the stupid lamp post wasn’t shining enough light for him to properly see you. To see if you were letting out a genuine laugh or were simply being polite. To see if your cheeks were flushed. That blush he hadn’t seen in so long.
Then he saw his bus driving down the road.
He stayed up that night, cursing the bus.
Then somehow, in the same night, he found himself on his laptop opened on Google Maps. Tracing his previous route and trying to find that cafe again. Double-checking that was indeed the route he needed to take to go back and visit that window.
The combination of the lack of light and you had made him miss his stupid poster the first time.
Now it stood behind him. Like a threat as he pulled his jacket over his skin. An attempt to ignore the goosebumps rising over him as he focused on the cafe window.
Where were you?
Were you mocking him?
Was this an attempt at revenge? Making him come all the way to a shitty downtown street just so he could stand outside a cafe like a freak? A cafe that faced a poster of the old him? A naive him? One that had stopped existing even before he took his role as an accountant?
He shouldn’t even miss you.
This was too much effort, and he wasn’t stupid. It did occur to him that you visiting this cafe was possibly just a one-time thing. That you may not even be a regular patron at this cafe. Maybe it was one of your ‘friends’ idea to come to this cafe that day and not yours.
But what if it was your idea? That you had chosen this cafe because they had good coffee or pastry, and you wanted to show off to your friends. Or did you come here because his poster was the prime feature of this cafe’s window?
How many times had you looked at his poster? Did you see it before then? He remembers you being seated so that you would have to look out the window. What did you feel when you saw his disfigured face?
Sure, his eyes were painted with X’s, and that he was now covered in insults and other posters, but he knew you’d still recognise him. That surely there could be no one else in your life that had his stark blue hair, his black ghost roots, his same freckles position exactly like him, or that shit-eating grin.
Surely you remembered when he brought you here to bask in it. Even if it had been a year ago, surely you would remember. You even asked if he could give you a smaller print so that you could have one for yourself at home.
He joked that he could give you one just as big. That it would just fit on your living room wall.
You laughed at that! You laughed! He remembers it!
Where were you?
This was torture.
He hated himself for coming here. For being so stupid in hanging this stupid poster in the first place. How obnoxious he was to make it so big, so jarring. Such an eyesore. It felt like he should be guilty for forcing this cafe’s patrons to look at it every day, but despite it, he didn’t.
Because you would have to see it.
There had been plenty of nights where he regretted cutting you off as a client. His fellow coworkers always complained about poorly financed clients. It came with the job they told him when he mentioned cutting off a client. “Our clients' shitty finances are the reason we have our jobs!” They joked with him before slapping his back.
Yet, he still transferred you to someone else.
Every day coming into work felt like an exercise in agony as he forced himself into his cubicle instead of crawling over to his coworker and having your file again. He still managed to take a peek into your files. Your finances were still poorly managed, but now they were signed off under someone else’s name.
He wished he had taken his coworker’s advice earlier.
This coming to this street, to this cafe. This bitter return to his stupid fucking poster was another, bigger exercise in agony.
Yet, he had seen you in this cafe window.
There was no other reason for him to be here. His car was fine so he did not need to take public transport. He did not drink coffee casually. He had forgotten his poster was even here. There was no excuse he could make to himself to reason him being here.
Only the simple truth that he wanted to see you.
He’d even settle for a glimpse of you.
You talking to the cashier. You taking your time to pick from the menu. You eating a pastry. You typing away on your laptop. He’d even bear the image of you laughing with someone else that wasn’t him.
Just as long as he got to see you.
He did not deserve to call you back. Not after he stopped answering your calls. If he’d tried, he’d just be met with the barrage of missed call notifications from you.
They were months old, but he could never bring himself to delete them.
So he would settle just looking at you.
He wouldn’t even entertain the idea of going up to you. Think of the idea that maybe he could walk into this cafe. That he’d make the door chime as he stepped foot into the establishment. That when he did, the patron’s attention would move to glance at him, and that would include you. That whilst everyone else would go back to doing whatever it was they were doing (he wouldn’t give a shit what they were doing), you would be different.
Instead, your gaze would stay on him, and his gaze would stay on you, too. He’d make his way to you. Didn’t matter if you were sitting or at the counter. He would take those steps to you regardless. It would terrify him. The thought of you slapping him, or worse, ignoring him. There surely was a lot you could do to him, but he’d find his way to you.
And then he’d be standing right in front of you. Taking in the same air as you, looking into your eyes, and you would be only inches apart.
Closer than you two had ever been in the past year.
No, he would not do any of that.
It was more than he deserved.
Maybe.
Maybe he could build himself up towards that one day. After he got one more glance of you.
That is, if you actually showed up to this goddamn fucking cafe.
The cap he was wearing was starting to itch, and his feet were becoming sore. Just how long would he make himself wait here?
Now he frowned at the cafe window as if blaming them for not having better coffee or pastries.
He had never tried anything they had to offer.
Taking out his phone, he checked the time.
2:09 pm
Three hours since he had made his post here.
The lunch rush would just about be ending now. He may have seen you later in the day, but he remembered the cafe’s opening times for his nightly perusal on his laptop. They would be closed before then. Weekend hours.
Maybe he should return on the exact day when he first saw you.
Thursday at around 6:00 pm.
He’d have to leave work a bit earlier, but it’d be fine. He’d just make sure he fuelled his car properly before then, and if he played his cards right, he could best the traffic and return here.
And then he’d be rewarded with a sight of you.
You were probably busy anyways. Work, volunteering. Being the Vice President of Human Experience at Valdivian seemed like important work.
Nothing like a shitty accountant.
Pushing himself off the bench he’d been sitting on, he stretched his legs. Groaning at all the tension he somehow managed to accumulate from three hours of moping around, he let out a sigh and rubbed his neck.
“Oh my gosh, you need to let me see it! Gimmegimmegimmegimme!”
“Dude! You’re gonna rip my hand off!”
The pain of slamming his pelvis on a shitty street bench hit him immediately. But he couldn’t possibly leave now. Not when the sound of your voice rang in his ears.
“Holy shit, it’s huge!”
He heard you chuckle. Could already picture the blush spreading on your face from hearing it.
“I know! I cried when they put it on.” You sounded so excited.
“Well, duh bitch! You’re engaged!”
Glimpses of retellings of your engagement passed through his ears, as you and your friend giggled and made your way across the street. Away from him.
It felt like his neck would snap if he looked up, yet he forced himself to do it anyway.
Again, he saw you by the cafe. The profile of your face lit in laughter again as you pushed the door open and smacked your friend on the shoulder, smiling throughout it all. He could finally see that blush on your face all over as he continued to watch you through the cafe’s window.
His gaze dropped when your arms wrapped around the neck of a different stranger. The last thing he saw was their smile matching yours as they brought their face closer to you.
It was easy to assume what happened next, but he never truly saw it as he left the bench and headed towards his car.
For a second, he was thankful that his shitty poster was still up.
The next day, when his coworkers asked what he did on his day off, he’d just shrug them off and tell them “Nothing. It was uneventful.”
Because he did not ever make that second visit to that street. Did not see you a second time at that coffee shop. Never truly got the chance to hear your laughter as you walked in with your friend.
None of that happened to him.
Instead, when he thought of you. When his client would drone on about their shitty finances. In the middle of a dull meeting. In the midst of traffic, or during late nights when he couldn’t sleep and needed a distraction.
He would think of the last time he got to see you smile and laugh. On that one faithful day. Where he was forced to take public transport and accidentally saw you across the cafe window.
There was no other time after that.
He had chosen that to be his last memory of you.
And he would continue to cling to the ghost of your laugh and smile whenever you crossed his mind, and wonder if you saw his poster when you left the cafe that day.
What did you think?
“But did you really expect the toilet man to be your husband in the end?”