A Can of Coke

By Ellie Goodwin

You have arrived fifteen minutes early. Of course, you did. Actually, when you think about it, you actually arrived thirty-five minutes early, but you checked your watch, both panicked and exasperated by your eagerness, and then took to the streets, walking around in no particular direction. You took a call from your mother, a small gesture that you would not have usually done, but there is time to kill and not a lot to fill it with. You talk about nothing in particular. She updates you about the running club, how Siobhan has started to try and take control, not that anyone had asked for it, not that anyone had died and made her leader and, of course, Patrick has taken umbrage with the whole thing, and there is now an indescribable tension in a place that used to be home to such a nice little group of friends whose only mutual interest was a short jog followed by a cup of tea on a Sunday morning. You make the obligatory noises that imply you are listening and that you care but, of course, you do not.

As you wonder how many minutes have passed and how many are left until you are due to meet, the one conversation that you do not want to crop up at this particular time does. Of course, it does. Your mother bulldozes through your interruptions of ‘maybe you should bring this up with him,’ not that it took much effort on her part. They were pathetically feeble interruptions after all. The straw house of one of those idiotic pigs trying its hand against the might of the big bad wolf. You half-listen to her when she tells you about the new woman who is easily ten years younger than your father and without a thing between her ears, how utterly mortifying it was to hear that your father had tried his hand at ice skating and made a complete fool of himself, not that he ever went ice skating with her in all the years they were married or took the slightest bit of interest in anything that she liked.

You make your excuses, but sensing your desire to hang up, her clutches tighten so hard that you can almost feel her nails dig into your skin. More minutes of complaining about your father, grateful that he was some other woman’s problem now, that she was living her best life, that she was now her best self, that she could not remember a time when she was happier. And you wonder how true that is. Because surely anyone who is happy does not feel the need to remind everyone of it, be it during a phone call or an Instagram post, which your mother incessantly posts on nowadays. You count your blessings when she asks what you are up to. You answer, throat hoarse from being out of use for so long.

‘I’m meeting someone for a drink.’
‘Someone, who’s someone?’
‘Someone–’
‘Like, a date?’ Words spoken as though each one was a bite into a lemon.
‘Well, yeah, a date.’
‘How’s Katie doing? I really liked her.’

You feel that punch, the kind when someone knows that weakness and jabs, snatching and twisting it. You know that everyone experiences this at some point, so why do you feel so isolated when the feeling has been shared or will be shared by all seven billion inhabitants on this floating rock? 

‘I haven’t spoken to Katie since we broke up.’ A disregard with the same dismissiveness as a hand batting away a fly.

‘I hear she’s finished her master’s in biomedicine, not some Mickey Mouse master’s that you see sprouting out all over the place nowadays. That girl’s going places, she’s got her head screwed on right. Long-term plan, none of this wishy washy, unsustainable I’m-living-in-the-moment rubbish. How’s work?’ The sudden abruptness in her tone is enough to give you whiplash.

‘Fine.’

‘Still not looking for any other work? Just staying put?’

Staying put. It makes you feel like stagnant water. The type that starts to grow green stuff on top and develop a pungent and immovable eggy stench after a time, the type where, no matter how many times the pond is drained and money is spent on re-cleaning, the result would be the same. Still pungent.

 ‘I like my job, I like –’

But your mother will not get to hear what you like. She cuts across you not dissimilarly to a lumberjack chopping wood, and you get splintered with her tirade about how you should be taking a leaf out of Katie’s book, how much of a good influence she was on you, how ambitious and – what exactly did happen that made you two break up – and are you sure you have done everything you can to get her back, because people can change if they truly want to, they just need to put the effort in, and had you thought about that at all? Questions are thrown, but you are given no time to get to the base, let alone bat. Questions without space for answers.

‘I have to go now.’

It is true. You are due to be at the bar in five minutes. You do not give your mother time to reply. Merely hang up, and switch on airplane mode. You swim in your head, wave after wave knocking you in the midriff. Not enough to unbalance you, it is never forceful enough for that. No, it is just enough to slowly erode you, to make you ache that little bit more, to make bodily movement that little more labored and weighted.

You get to the bar and know instinctively that you are the first to arrive. You take a table for two and seat yourself unceremoniously in the chair. Around you, people talk and laugh. Pint glasses meet in the middle with a declaration of ‘Cheers.’ There are groups at some tables and two at others, and you wonder what all these people are to one another. Relationships? Friends? Have they known each other long or are you seeing these bonds in their infancy? You feel intrusive. That you, your un-whole self, should not be here, that your presence is tainting the wonderfully glorious moments that are being made and shared in front of your very eyes. You have to squeeze your eyes tight to rid yourself of this thinking as best you can. It turns into less of a thorough clean and more of a sweep under the rug thing. A temporary fix.

And then you think about Katie, and all the other people in the world who have a Katie, and if you are Katie’s Katie. Of course, now would be the time you think about her. It has been years, and she is still your favorite pastime. You are unsure how similar the Katie who resides in your head is to the real one, how much is accurate and how much is conjured fantasy on your part. Your rational side tells you its the latter, but it is still sometimes hard to hear it over the never-ceasing rumble of noises that are the never ending anxieties and insecurities. Katie was the one whom you had loved the most. Of course, she was. The one you loved the most would be the one to give you the most pain, too. Television shows, songs, books, photographs; they still tug at the sleeves of old memories. Things that were heard, seen, and read by so many but at the same time, exclusively yours. You had been the best version of yourself with her, you know that. And yet, she had walked. Someone had turned down the best of you and what you had. How do you move on after that? Chewing gum on the sole of a shoe. You can never shift all of it. There will always be some left in the grooves or a lingering stick. And now would be the time that your mother would bring her up, and now would be the time that Katie would be that all-consuming thought, and now would be the time that your mouth fills with sawdust, that the exit is unlocatable, that the nerves have now turned to panic, that you forget all the questions you had conjured for this new person whose name you have now forgotten, whose face you cannot place.

You catch the last part of what he says.

‘Sorry – what?’
‘Can I get you a drink?’

You look at the still vacant chair opposite you. ‘A Coke, please.’

Why bars give you an empty glass filled with ice when the temperature is now in the singles is a logic that you cannot fathom. Like why you insist on tapping the aluminium lid of the can with the tip of your nail before drinking. 

‘It stops the Coke from fizzing over everywhere.’

That is what people say, how the superstition went. And when you tap, a thought occurs. It comes to you gently, like that reassuring nudge with an elbow or a small tilt of the head in acknowledgement. You could have left. You could have made any excuse, but you stayed and you bought yourself a drink. And you are still here, still tapping that aluminium lid, and still waiting. You could leave now, leave that can of coke untouched, throw some cash onto the table and walk straight out. But you are not going to do that, and you know that you will not. You will keep waiting, keep tapping. And you smile. Because that place that you so desperately wanted to be in is where you are now, and you had not realised all along. And that pastime thinking has done precisely that; it has passed. Katie’s there, but she is more of a dim flicker than a supernova now. Charlotte. That is the name of the girl you are about to meet. You have messaged a lot. You have senta lol reply because she had actually made you laugh. She is interesting, she is funny. She seems nice. And you stop tapping that aluminium lid because maybe the fizz will not blow up in your face when you open it. Or maybe it will, but you will cross that bridge when you get to it. And you will clean yourself up if it does happen. In your peripheral vision, you see someone approach your table and you can finally put a face to the profile picture.

End.

The Author

English teacher by trade and keen traveler the rest of the time, Ellie Goodwin has been to 36 different countries, lived in China for over three years, and has lived in Gwangju for ten months. In her free time, she enjoys (you guessed it) traveling, hiking, reading, and the occasional soju. Instagram: @elliee_goodwin