Coffee Elves

His hair had frozen in the first stages of thinning. Too far back for his age, too little gone to look really distinguished. Though it didn't matter because his hair was so blond it was hard to tell where it started or left off anyway.

~

He had never been teased when he was in school, he told me once. He didn't understand the idea behind it.

He didn't understand a lot of things.

Like how it didn't bother me if he hummed

but it did if he was silent.

~

He bothered me a lot.

~

He was surprised when his glasses misted over. He pulled them away from swollen red eyes and examined them as if he'd never seen such a thing before.

~

"Would it bother you?" he asked me once. "To sit next to me?"

I asked what he meant.

"I'm sorry. It was a stray thought. Forget I asked."

I didn't.

~

There were many things we didn't talk about.

Money.

Sports.

The weather.

Her.

Instead we talked about many other things.

Angels.

Copiers.

Fumigation.

Not-Her.

~

He swam, he told me. He didn't laugh when I told him I had never learned and he offered to teach me.

I said no.

~

He never seemed to be disappointed.

~

I noticed that we never did sit next to one another.

~

His coffee cup would refill without him touching it.

He only asked about it once.

I told him elves must have done it.

"Coffee elves?" he asked, one eyebrow, so pale it barely existed, raised.

For some reason, I wasn't sure if I was being teased or if I was frightened.

~

He only hummed when he forgot where he was.

~

He didn't scramble or look flustered when I found him at the bus station at nearly ten. He simply turned away, removing his glasses and peering at them through tears he was too well-bred to wipe with his sleeve.

He didn't ask me to go away.

I didn't ask him what was wrong.

I just sat down, my back against his.

"I don't have a tissue," I told him.

~

Swimming made his back broad. I didn't notice until one day when I noticed a wrinkle stretching across his shoulders from underarm to underarm. He slipped off his jacket and examined the back seriously when I pointed it out.

"No there isn't."

"There was."

He didn't argue, just slipped the jacket back on over arm garters

and starched collar.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

Then as he turned away, I noticed the way his arms weren't swinging anymore.

~

"Would you like to sit by me?" I asked.

He looked over at my chicken salad.

His phone rang.

"Excuse me, " he said, invisible brows knitting together in apology, and he moved on.

I realized I'd never seen him eat.

~

"Do you think it's possible," he asked, voice vibrating through the back of my ribcage, "to believe in two different things at the same time?"

"Yes."

He turned and looked at me, a hand supporting me where his back had left.

Without his glasses, his eyes were green.

~

I'd met her.

I liked her.

~

"Did you cut your hair?" he asked, two months after I'd gotten it done. My ends were splitting again and my highlights had faded.

"Yes, I did."

~

He hummed pop songs from the eighties. They'd get stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

~

He held the door for everyone, even when it held him back. He never said anything about it, but he never objected when I waited across the way for him, letting the river of people subside.

~

"I'm not going to forget her," he said, green eyes rimmed with pink instead of white. "But this isn't what this is about."

"I wouldn't think less of you if it were."

"Thank you." His hand was warm on my back. "But it isn't."

~

I found a twist of taffy next to his coffee cup when he was away. A note was scribbled in a surprisingly rounded hand.

'For the coffee elves,' it read on a yellow sticky note.

~

He had little dimples on either side of the bridge of his nose, left by the supports of his glasses.

~

"Is this seat taken?"

I looked up and he sat down, glasses perched on the very tip of his nose and one brow raised.

~

His breath tickled with the remnants of repressed sobs. It made me pull away more than the kiss he pressed just above the left corner of my mouth.

~

She'd left him behind. She'd shook his hand and kissed his cheek as she apologized. She had a better future ahead of her in other places.

He hadn't begrudged her. It'd been two years now.

~

"I'm sorry," he said, his hand lifting from my back.

"Don't be."

"I didn't mean-"

"What happened?"

"This is just... I'm a bit drunk at the moment."

"Mmm, I can see that." His kiss tasted of wine when I touched it with my tongue.

"I'm sorry."

"It's all right. We'll get you home, you'll get a good night's sleep and we'll talk in the morning, hmm?"

I called him a cab and kissed his nose after I tucked him into the seat.

~

"I have a confession to make," I said as he cracked open a hard-boiled egg. He turned to me, his lips suddenly tight.

I leaned forward.

"I'm the coffee elf."