“Faye, the anxious”

Journal entry, written by Faye from the corner booth she takes three or four times a week. The guy who works Wednesdays and Saturdays still hasn't asked her name, it would seem.

“Most of the people I see in a given week don't really know my name…”

and I think that suits me, mostly. I'm twenty-two. I sleep less than I should and spend more time alone than my classmates do, and most days I'm okay with all of that.

“I'm fine on paper.”

My grades are a long calm string of B-pluses that no one calls home about. I'm smart enough — I just don't sleep, because the world finally gets quiet after midnight and I'm not ready to trade those hours yet. On the days I make it out the door, I do it with my hair tied up in a white bow that makes the day feel like it has a shape. (A girl in seminar once told me my hair was the color of suede, of milk chocolate, that it shone like maple syrup in the sun. I still think about it.)

By the afternoon my head has gone soft, and the only place I want to be is the corner booth of my cafe — small, bougie, hojicha lattes on a chalkboard. I'm there three or four times a week, somewhere between a hundred and two hundred dollars a month, and I keep going anyway. The guy who works Wednesdays and Saturdays says "hey, you" when I walk in, and that might be the warmest thing anyone says to me all week.

“What I really want is a friend.”

The kind who would take a fork to my plate without flinching, tear a cookie in half and hand me the bigger piece, share an ice cream cone with me and never bring up germs. The wanting stays soft in my chest, like something I keep folded up in my pocket, because every time I almost speak to someone my chest tightens and I take whatever exit the conversation gives me. So I read instead — Tolkien on a Tuesday, a manhwa by Friday — reading is the gentlest way I've found to feel something on my own terms. On the days that isn't enough, when everything has to go somewhere, I cry quietly. It's just the cost of carrying it all on your own.

“I still take care of myself, though.”

I take my vitamins. I eat salmon when I remember to cook, cookies when I don't. I'm not always my own biggest fan, but I respect myself enough not to let any of that slip. The bow goes back in my hair. The curtains open.

“Here's the thing I want, more than anything.”

To open a cafe of my own someday. Sun through the front windows, warm wood everywhere, milk so nice it's a little embarrassing to charge for it, a corner booth I'd save for whichever girl walks in next looking tired. I practice my Americano on slow afternoons, watching the crema settle. And every time, I get a little closer.

fin.