Can I Have a Muffin and Talk?

Every morning I sit in a café with an absent look. I have to wake up three hours before my job starts to go to this place and sit there for an hour. I don’t even remember why I do that, but I repeat that process every day. I eat a muffin with chorizo, cheese and egg. The muffin is very small, especially for its price, but there is nothing cheaper than that. I used to enjoy this muffin, but now it’s a part of the routine. I am torturing myself again by being here. It’s time to go to work. Tomorrow I will come again to repeat the same thing.

I arrived on Nantucket, a small island in Massachusetts, in May to work for the summer. When I came there, I didn’t feel like I was in a different environment because a lot of students from my university come to this island to earn money.

I stumbled upon that café when I was looking for a job. The place was very small, around 15 square meters. It had a long couch for half of its territory and nine small red tables for companies of two people. A lot of table lamps all over the café created calm atmosphere. In front of the couch was a big fridge with salads and sandwiches. All of them were very expensive, but coffee was relatively cheap.

One day I decided to stay for a bit. After an hour of sitting surrounded by table lamps and small cute tables, I realized that I had fallen in love with that café. I left the place and continued searching for a job. I found one which was just five minutes away from that café, so sometimes I had time to grab a cup of coffee before going to work.

One day I came there again and just froze in the middle of the café. I saw a girl I loved back at university. She had just started working there. I knew that she was planning to work on the same island, but I couldn’t imagine that it would be that café.

She noticed me. She smiled and waved. I had a chance to talk to her when she was making coffee. She told me about her vacation before coming to Nantucket, friends she was living with and her first days on the island. I felt happy.

At some point, I found myself constantly staring at my phone just not to talk to her.

I came back to the café on my lunch break just to see her again. This time I ordered food to sit there for longer. My choice was a muffin, the cheapest and actually tasty food they had. I sat at the corner table and started eating while she was passing by from time to time. The muffin was small but satisfying. Spicy chorizo was combined with over-medium egg and a slice of cheese between them. I was extending the time of finishing the muffin for as long as I could just to have another chance to say something to her when she was walking around. By the end of the lunch-break, I said bye and went to work.

Since that day, I’ve been there every morning. It became a kind of tradition for me to talk to her for a bit, take the muffin, sit at the corner table and watch something on the phone waiting for her to pass by to refill napkins or silverware at a coffee station. That hour in the café was a dose of happiness I got every morning.

Everything changed two weeks later when I asked her about plans after the summer. She said that she got accepted for an exchange program for the next semester. That answer hit me like a bullet. I realized that the upcoming year was her final one. I also realized that during her final semester I would be on an exchange as well and I would never see her again. I tried to react as if nothing happened, but that time I finished the muffin as fast as I could just to leave the café.

I had been going there for a couple of more weeks just to see her again. I’ve been doing the same things, but it was painful to do it every new time with the understanding that she would leave in less than a month. I didn’t talk to her much. Then I stopped doing that at all. At some point, I found myself constantly staring at my phone just not to talk to her. I stopped enjoying the muffin, cozy lamps and small cute tables around me. I started torturing myself by being there every day and refusing to approach her. All this continued until one day I just stopped going there.

I’ve never seen her again.

Oraz Kereibayev is a second-year student at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) from Kazakhstan. He is majoring in Political Science and International Relations and Journalism and Mass Communication with a minor in European Studies. He prefers to get out of his comfort zone every time possible.