As the sun sank on the darkened suburban silhouette, his heart sank into darkness. He looked out of his vaulted windows on the little town of the most insignificant nature, where a few important people made all the difference. His eyes gleaned at the boring row of boxes on the boring cul-de-sac as he sighed a sad monologue. At the tender age of 17, Coffee was his first interpretation of love. It was only a few years earlier that he had learnt of all the intricacies of his emotions in health class, which presented a useful theoretical base for his infatuation with Coffee. He had been besotted before but never like this. Those were more contrived to fit the definition of love, whereas Coffee defined love for him.

He had asked Coffee to prom and she had initially agreed, though perhaps reluctantly. He couldn’t tell because he did not have emotional intelligence. Then she abruptly changed her mind, deciding to go with someone else, making it known through an MSN message. She was rather tall, and although he was reasonably tall, she would not be able to wear heels, and perhaps that drove the decision. As the glowing sun sank into the darkness, his heart sank with the understanding of a new emotion: unrequited love. He turned down his blinds and returned to his soft, warm and damp Ikea Malm bed. The tall boy she had chosen to go to prom with had a similar one, a little different in colour though. It was much too early to fall asleep but he needed to escape. Other people his age might have turned to easier ways to escape. Instead, he just enacted a Broadway song he liked in his head. She said give me that hand please / An itch you can't control / Let me teach you how to handle / All the sadness in your soul, it went with a pulsating rhythm. The story of Coffee was as much a story of unrequited love as it is a bildungsroman. It is a story with not just sad feelings, but unexplained feelings, of complicated ones. Oh we'll work that silver magic, the song continued, Then we'll aim it at the wall / She said love may make you blind, kid / But I wouldn't mind at all. After repeated iterations, he fell asleep, finally escaping his sadness. 

The story began in grade 11. He saw her walking across the hall, and for the first time in his life took register of the female figure. For the first time, he noticed he was attracted to the small streaks of golden hair on her pale skin, the supple yet modest breasts, the adorable chipmunk cheeks, the mesmerizing grey-green eyes. As boyish obsessions go, Coffee was just a dumb infatuation at the start. He got a cell phone so he could text her. He joined a humanitarian club she ran to see her more. The club went on his resume, and in an interview a few years later in university, he’d tell the truth – that he joined the club because of her. He, of course, didn’t have a heart yet for the poor because he saw life in the most optimistic light. As he became more jaded, and saw world as inhabited by sadness and decided that he wanted everyone to be happy. Unfortunately, he himself had a rather hard go at being happy, especially without Coffee, who he adored for every second after first meeting her.

He had recently been rejected from all the major schools in the Ivy League, and so rejection was not a new concept for him. Little by little he realized that the world would be a much darker place than he had ever given it credit for. He escaped to New York City one weekend and saw the musical that had changed his life so much. By then he was sentenced to go to school at a little known university in the middle of nowhere, to live out his days in mediocrity. By then he had his brain fixated on another girl, another girl that would suit his newfound mediocrity. He had recently received a 89% in English, the first grade he had ever received below the magical number of 90 (which he had managed to snag for physical education, though he did not exactly deserve it). Coffee was quite a literary magnate and so he searched around for girls that were more inept at English. This one was a newer immigrant from a distant land and so made a good prospect. That infatuation obviously did not last long; his mark was changed back to the 95% he deserved and along with it changed his temporary delusion.

In this period of mixed feelings of mediocrity and disappointment, he sat down to watch one of the saddest musicals to ever hit Broadway. Wendla, the subject of the boys’ affection, was no longer being played by Lea Michele, but by a girl named Alexandra Socha, who was a slim, brown-haired, eastern European actress that resembled Coffee in the slightest manner to make the play take on an entirely different meaning. Spring Awakening was one of those progressive/intellegentsia musicals that aren’t afraid to show a bit of skin. And so you see Socha’s modest but perky breasts in what was a rape scene in the play but became consensual in the musical. She resists a bit before being taken by this radical who repeats a few times “It’s just me”. Those three words have since resonated with him despite being completely vacuous, yet are the indicators of comfort, consent, and love. (And since you can find anything on Youtube these days, you can see her in that scene right now if you want). He found himself saying that a few times, entirely subconsciously, when he was in the throws of love beside some girl. There were no direct associations between this experience and Coffee at the time but in hindsight the similarities are undeniable. These events shaped his preferences, his aspirations, his desires.

It is not surprising that the dumb infatuation turned out to be the type of love that confounds even the most rational people. He had recently learnt of entanglement, a theory in particle physics, which could explain the next few years of his life. He was entangled with Coffee and then separated, retaining the entanglement despite being worlds away. To an outside observer, he acted like a normal electron, interacting with other girls and moving forward with his life. Yet their lives were intrinsically linked. They developed lives in parallel, though any observer of any individual would not have noticed. He would become a fairly legitimate figure in the world in finance, and she would become a rather legitimate figure in the world of medicine. Whenever the two electrons bumped into each other, they would get excited after years of separation. When they came back together, it felt like a continuation of what had always been, and nothing could disentangle the two. He was forever hopeful that her initial thoughts of him would be amended. He thought as they two became more mature, that she would see him as the way he saw her.

Unfortunately, that never really happened and he was left in a decade long feeling of unrequited love. He indeed loved her and knew that she was the girl he wanted forever in his life. He was willing to do things for her that he wouldn’t consider for anyone else, like put his career on hold. He had always hoped for a city life and she, a suburban one like their childhood. He always had big aspirations of big dollar signs and expensive wine lists; she was happy to make only five times the national average. He was an avid republican (or conservative) and she was a strong liberal, choosing to support a handsome product of nepotism over the steady hand that had made the country’s economy robust. He was convinced of his own trajectory to the top, a monomaniacal desire to prove himself in an unfriendly world. But when the electrons realigned, he saw himself in quieter times, in a quieter place. He was never particularly fond of children, but could see Coffee bearing his children. His disdain for the suburban life was vastly overshadowed by his love for her. Or maybe he didn’t want a suburban life because he thought it was the symbol of mediocrity but a life with Coffee would be anything but mediocre. After four years apart and meeting batch after batch of girls, and bonding with a few, he would conclude that Coffee was still his all-time favourite. There were times when he would be halfway interacting with other electrons when the memory of Coffee reminded him of what he wanted in his life. He was a classic case of storybook romance that did not have a storybook ending. She defined his aspirations, his definition of joy. He knew what happiness was only through what he did not have. And understood sadness by what he did have.