16) The Art of Not Finishing Your...

Tristan waited with his mouth, staring at Rachel. She looked back like he was a pervert trying to watch her pee in the ladies bathroom. His jaw could have fallen off at any moment.

‘…Sentence,’ he finally said, ‘C’mon, do you not find that cute at all.’

Rachel didn’t want to hurt his feelings so she took a giant bite of her burger and responded with a greasy smile. Tristan dabbed a piece of chicken around his plate. When Rachel gulped down her burger, Tristan looked at her in expectation of an answer. Instead she took a long sip of her root beer. She emptied the glass. Tristan stared.

‘Fine, I don’t. I guess I’m just not suckered in by all that romantic stuff.’

It was her turn to stare, to analyse. Tristan didn’t react at first, just stared right back. After a few seconds her blew air out through his nostrils and ate the chicken which had been crushed into a thin, wirey strip. Rachel ate a couple of chips and looked around for a waiter to get her another drink.

‘So are we done with any romance now?’ Tristan said to her back.

‘Ofcourse we’re not. We still have sex don’t we?’ she said without turning around.

She grabbed the attention of the waiter who took her order and scurried off. When she looked at Tristan, his hands were leaning on the table with no cutlery.

‘Is that all you think I need?’ he said.

‘What do you want? I go to work, I come home and I’m-’

‘Tired. I know. That’s one sentence I can finish.’

Rachel thrust herself back into her chair with her arms crossed.

‘So what, you’d rather I just not work, stay at home with you all day and make coochy faces at one another?’

Tristan blinked twice and twisted his nose to the side. This was how he stopped himself from crying. Rachel couldn’t believe how much he cried. It had become a ritual.

‘You know, I’ve been thinking for a while that maybe we should-’

‘Break up?’ Rachel said, ‘Because you do this every time we have an argument and guess what, we never break up. So shut up, get off my case and eat your damn chicken.’

Tristan pushed himself back from the table and stormed off to the bathroom. The waiter came back with a root beer. Just as well it didn’t have ice in it.