Starbucks, Heartbreak And Lies
I had been working at Starbucks for a year-and-a-half or so, and had yet to call in sick. Not only is my moral compass typically pointing in the right direction, but I was also 22 years old and needed every single cent of my paycheck. I was working at a Starbucks in the center of my small town; the downtown location was the one everyone knew about. I loved that job. I got to meet everyone in the city, all because they had to have their finicky cup of coffee.
When you meet nearly everyone in the city, you have a high probability of meeting someone who catches your eye in much more than the traditional customer sense. I had met this guy about six months prior, though I admittedly thought he was a pretentious coffee hipster upon first sight. When I next encountered him — it turned out he worked for Starbucks, at a location a few miles up the road — we were introduced by our mutual friends. He was less pretentious, though still very much a hipster. His thick, dark beard was so attractive — and this was way before beards were a thing. I had a hard time not falling in love with him, and by that I mean, I left his house completely in love with him.
Clearly my Posh Spice haircut and orange Old Navy hoodie appealed to him as much as his dark beard and local t-shirt appealed to me, because we started spending an insane amount of time together. The two of us became best friends with our mutual pals, though we were also sneaking a lot of alone time together. I didn’t have a car at the time, so he would always drive me home after wine and a movie at our friends’ house — though he would never make it back to his own home. I spent many nights watching an additional movie with him, trying to contain my insecurities about, “What This Is?” and “What Is He Thinking?”
We had not quite declared ourselves a “thing,” “boyfriend/girlfriend,” or even “casually dating.” We had one brief conversation about not getting attached to one another, but he led that conversation as I tried to keep my beating heart to a low volume. I thought I was in love with him after that first night at his house — I knew I was in love with him at that point.
One night, unexpectedly, he came over to my house after closing his store to talk to me. Briefly, he explained that he was afraid of leading me on, that he didn’t want to give me the wrong idea and that he thought we should work on being “just friends” for a while. I agreed with him because I didn’t want to lose him, not because I agreed with that decision at all. I let him talk at me, willed myself not to cry until he left and fell into a puddle of my own suppressed emotions when the door shut.
I was set to work a midday shift at Starbucks the next morning, and though my boss made me work even through the flu, nothing had ever felt worse than that day. I called first thing in the morning, praying that I talked to anyone but my boss. She let me off the hook when I cited something along the lines of “a migraine and intense vomiting?” Though I had never called in sick before in my life, I felt like my first broken heart was a good enough reason to spend the day in bed.
I turned on “Titanic”, my go-to comfort film, and let myself watch it twice, crying the whole time for the loss of my innocence, as well as Jack and Rose’s. Broken hearts will always feel worse than the flu. It was a white lie worth telling.
I have never been so broken, even many years and many breakups later. There is nothing as significant as your first, real, true, Earth-shattering heartbreak. No one deserves to go to work feeling as low as I felt that day. It has never been a lie I regretted telling.
