The Blueprint

Coffee tastes different when you’re anxious. It takes on a more milky quality, perhaps due to the way your body trembles as it sloshes down your throat. Peter decided to set the coffee aside out of fear his stress would cause him to choke on the drink. He’d been waiting in the cafe for more than an hour. Him and Christie had planned to meet at three in the afternoon but he decided to get there a half hour early. He had been standing around thinking about the meeting since the second he woke up, part of him hoped it would be easier to wait here than his apartment. The suspense was made greater by her constant delays. First five minutes. Then fifteen. Then thirty. Then forty. It was mostly the fault of the public transit system she wasn’t familiar with but with each passing minute the tardiness felt more personal. She had flown in from Denver the night before, the first time he will have seen her in six years.

Peter and Christie had met working at a pretzel stand called Crispy Twists, a privately owned stand that was banished to the first floor of their local dying mall. It wasn’t even in the main food court, it was in between a used book store and a defunct shoe shop at the quieter end of the building. They maybe dealt with half a dozen costumers each day, half of those bunch just asking where the bathroom was as if they were working as mall tour guides. Most of their shifts were spent talking with another about their schoolwork or the books they’d been reading. She liked to read biographies, telling Peter the more people in the world you knew inside and out the better. It made Peter wonder if there was anybody he knew inside and out. He mostly read comic books, with Christie he used the term “graphic novels” to seem more sophisticated than the helpless child he worried he would come off as. Peter had just started college when he met Christie while she was finishing her final semester. She always made jokes about how he seemed like a baby to her which always left a salty twist in his stomach. Sometimes he felt she forced him to only look upwards at her, in his view he could fully see her but in her view he was fuzzy and harder to make out. He was hoping at some point they’d level out, but something about the distance felt intentional.

He was infatuated with her, it wasn’t hard to see right through that secret, if anything Christie was more aware of it than he was. Peter had never really fully liked somebody before and he wasn’t entirely sure how to pursue the feelings, or if he should at all. He figured eventually the visibility of the feelings would force her to say something which he would then use as the opportunity to say something, even if it was responded to with a no he just needed the curiosity extracted from him. He’d done this quiet dance a few times before with girls in high school, a dance that always left him alone on the floor, emotionless. Part of him knew he had to get up and move but the safety of the empty dance floor was a little too comforting. The pretzel stand was like a little bubble that he was too scared to break out of, the idea of asking her to do something outside of the bubble would be too dangerous. Sometimes he would flirt with the idea of suggesting doing something after a shift but could never make the leap in fear of the bubble bursting.

There was a way that he and Christie talked that felt like they were speaking their own language. There was something more artistic about the way they shared a conversation that rang deeper than words, and a deeper satisfaction when she would agree with or laugh at something he said. The insecurities he would typically have worrying this connection was one sided seemed irrelevant in the moment. He noticed things in her he hadn’t in people before; the way her eyes squinted when she laughed or the way she played with her hair when telling a long story. Each of these fidgets and ticks he noticed only endeared her more to him.

Peter had accumulated a good amount of what he called “halfway friends”, people who he could talk with comfortably, but didn’t have any real connection with. The conversations that felt more transactional, they could text one another for help with homework or to show a funny video, but he could never ask any of them for real advice. They were the level of friend however, who he felt comfortable inviting over to a party. His nineteenth birthday was the next week and he had subconsciously been waiting for someone to make plans for him, as if some magical birthday fairy was supposed to come with an exciting day for the now grown adult. Perhaps since this was his first birthday away from home he was used to a default birthday dinner or outing, but his family was halfway across the country. All he would get from them are scheduled texts and maybe a quick phone call on the day of. The idea of a birthday party wasn’t even really appealing, Peter didn’t enjoy parties much, especially one centered around him, but it’d be the perfect opportunity to see Christie outside of work.

He sent invites over text, first to his classmates and people he’d met at school clubs, perhaps a way of convincing himself this whole ordeal wasn’t just to talk to a girl. Most of the victims of his social instigation decline, those who show interest most likely would attend any party they’re invited to, it’s like clocking onto a shift for them. He ended up posting the invite onto his Instagram story, an account with over three hundred people apathetically watching the fragments of his life he shared with them. He refreshed the list of viewers of the story, waiting for the icon of Christie’s account to appear. Throughout the evening he would check in on the list hoping to see her, a moment Peter thought back to as he waited for her in the cafe today.

The next day at work they had their usual batch of conversations, Peter waiting for an opening to slide in a birthday invitation. It was peculiar as she usually saw his stories early, a fact he was embarrassed to be aware of. Crushes always made him feel creepy, he got a little obsessed, less so with the person but perhaps more the idea of proving himself worthy of them. He would give those he was interested in a control over his brain they were unaware they had, and it made him feel bad for giving them such an invisible burden. The whole shift went by without mention of the party. Peter got home that night and crashed onto his bed, falling under the spell of an involuntary nap. When he woke a few hours later he had a message from Christie.

“Just saw your story! I’ll lyk closer if I can pull up!”

Just the message was enough to make it all feel worth it to Peter. The days faded away and he started to set up the party in his tiny apartment. Boxes of pizza, cans of beer and soda, a ten dollar speaker. Ten or so people showed up over the first hour, half of whom he had only spoken to once or twice. He wasn’t sure if he should be touched or confused by their appearance at the event, he knew he wouldn’t go to their birthday parties if invited. Maybe they were better people than him. Christie hadn’t updated since her message if she was coming and he didn’t want to pester with any sort of follow up message. Any of his guests who tried to talk to him weren’t offered his full attention, he was caught between checking his phone and eyeing the door. The night was moving fast and every hour that passed there was no update from Christie. More people arrived and some left, eventually they all left, the apartment feeling emptier than he’d ever found it. He laid in bed and tried to sleep as his birthday was over, the birthday he wasted on someone else.

He wasn’t proud of it but he began to resent Christie after that night, more so the image of her in his head that had now started to crack. They would still talk at work but she never asked about his party or birthday, surely simply forgetting it, but the innocence of that only made it sadder to Peter. Their conversations were just as bubbly as before but they didn’t feel as exciting. A month or so later she left Crispy Twists, her degree was complete and she needed to find something she cared deeply about. Despite him being younger than her, he still felt some level of competitiveness, wondering how long he would be stuck at this pretzel stand. She hugged Peter on her last day and thanked him for being the best coworker she ever had. They promised to stay in touch and went their separate ways.

They never saw each other again in the six years leading up to today.

Peter finished his degree and went on some dates throughout college. It was curious how he would compare every date to the last, and each person he considered getting to know felt in the shadow of the person he felt saw him best. It felt like each relationship or half relationship or whatever you would call some of those confusing people that you feel a spark with for a moment, were all working off the framework of Christie. It’s that thing when you think you’ve found your person, and then they disappear, and you have to spend whatever time after wondering how you let that person exist somewhere without you. It’s an impossible feeling to fully get over, you can distract yourself but you can’t really fix it.

Peter finished college and moved to New York City for a job, by this point it had been four years since he’d last seen Christie, who had slowly morphed into that coworker he once had an embarrassing crush on. Following each other on Instagram allowed a sliver of a window into the other’s lives. By this point her posting would be the only time she would enter his mind in a given week. Christie had turned into a political activist of sorts, her story often crowded with issues that Peter didn’t think about much. It made him feel as if he didn’t care enough and that him not reposting everything of hers came off as intentional silence. He cared about people but also was concerned anything important in the world was greater than anything he or his social media had to say. He admired how vocal Christie was, sometimes they’d like each others stories and it would be a nice acknowledgment that the other existed and that at some point there was some indescribable thing between them.

Christie reached out on a random Tuesday via text. Peter was walking down the street with his phone in one hand and a stack of books juggled in the other. He had gotten two new phones since they last spoke so it took a second for him to realize who the Christie texting him even was. When the pieces fit it made him dramatically stop in the street. If there was water in his mouth he perhaps would have spat it out.

“Hey is this still Peter?”

A question like that is almost an acknowledgement itself that you haven’t spoken in god knows how long. His finger hovered over the message as any semblance of a coherent reply escaped him.

“Hey yeah. Christie from Crispy Twists?”

He put his phone away, acting as if not watching the reply bubbles form a message would make the response appear quicker.

“That’s the one! You’re still living in NYC right?”

“I am yeah.”

He always sounded so boring over text. He was allergic to exclamation points which always made his messages sound so uninterested in any given conversation.

“I’m heading up there this weekend for a work retreat! Would love to see you if you’re free.”

He stared at the message hoping the longer he looked at it the faster a reply would appear in his head. This was a person he once thought about so much, someone he had gotten over thinking about so much. Someone he used to often text, both terrified and excited as to how she would respond. Someone he wished would just once instigate a conversation for him to hang onto any hope she felt the same way about him. All these childish and selfish feelings he had grown to wince at ever having suddenly floated back up. The excitement at the opportunity to speak to her however, was fully back.

The two agreed to meet at a cafe a few blocks away from his apartment. Most of his favorite spots in the city he already had used up on other dates, it felt dirty of him to take someone out where a failed romance had once been attempted. It was unfair to them. This cafe he had been two once or twice and liked, he felt Christie would like it too. She had landed the night before and they agreeed to meet at eleven. He couldn’t sleep much the night before, the same anticipation he would have as a kid on Christmas Eve kept him up as he awaited for whatever gifts the next day would bring. He woke up at seven and got ready nearly right as his eyes opened. He spent more time on his hair than usual, he usually would shave before a public outing but he thought the remnants of a beard would show the distance he’s grown from when they’d last seen another. It was silly, he knew it was silly. He arrived at the cafe at half past ten, figuring his jitters would calm down when at the location. They did not.

Christie didn’t arrive at the cafe till a quarter before noon. The hour of waiting was exhausting for Peter, he had ordered two coffees he didn’t enjoy, and spent the entire time feeling like he was under watch. As if every other patron of the cafe was staring at him, wondering what kind of freak would drink coffee alone and who would ever want to meet with such a low life. These type of absurd thoughts didn’t typically enter Peter’s head and he wasn’t sure how to get them out. Every patron that entered or exited the building, and the infuriating bell that accompanied them, only heightened Peter’s heart rate.

It wasn’t until the bell ringed once more and she stepped in, that his heart was able to stop. They stared at each other for a few seconds after registering the other, as if they were both thinking so this is what you look like now. He had seen her grow up the last few years over social media but he wasn’t staring at Christie of today, he was staring at the Christie he hugged goodbye at Crispy Twists six years ago. They didn’t wave at another or even really smile at another, they simply walked to and met the other halfway and resumed that hug.

They sat down and chatted, first simple things like how her flight was, how their jobs were. Eventually they got deeper, about their relationships, their struggles to maintain them, how much simpler it all was when they were students working at a pretzel stand. They talked to another the same way they would on shift all those years ago. The light they had wasn’t gone, it just needed its bulb replaced. Peter asked her what made her remember him, a question he was instantly embarrassed for asking.

“You made it hard to forget you.”

She said it in between sips at the green tea she ordered. He smiled at her.

They left the cafe at around three, she had a meeting she had to get to which Peter offered to walk to alongside her. They ended up taking the subway, continuing their chat about what she planned to do with the rest of her free time in the city. When they boarded the train there was an older man with a thick beard playing a saxaphone. Peter could tell by the way Christie was moving that she wasn’t sure if it was New York etiquette or not to dance along to the man’s music. If there was some sort of contract that by moving along to it you were forced to pay a fee. Peter had worried the same when he first moved there. They stood there, staring at another with matching smirks, both felt the rythym but neither knew when to move.