San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec




San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

FICTION: What the end of love looks like

By Kristen Ace Nevarez, Senior Staff Columnist

When I eat alone at a restaurant I can tell people are wondering: Am I waiting for someone? Did I get stood up? Am I a loner? Once a man offered to join me, as if he was afraid I was on the verge of some crisis. Why else would someone go to dinner alone? The reason I go out is because I like people-watching.

The other night I was at Harney Sushi in Old Town when a couple walked in.

He was dressed in that Enterprise-Rent-A-Car employee look, that earnest young blue dress shirt, black pants, belt and shoes, gelled spikey hair, real-estate-bench-ad look. He’s handsome. His companion had the distant high heeled look. Not ditzy — perhaps a bit dim; a Nordstrom mannequin.

They sat down at the table directly next to mine, almost uncomfortably close. These tables had clearly been pushed together for some large group who didn’t make a reservation and hadn’t been divorced to their customary distance.

Neither of the two noticed each other as they sat and perused the menus. He didn’t look up when he said, “So how was your day, baby?” and picked up the chopsticks with familiar ease.

“… I’m thinking about getting bangs.” She doesn’t know what to do with the chopsticks; she puts them aside as if they could turn into a fork if she ignored them long enough. You can almost see the italics when she speaks.

Their conversation went on like that for some time. It makes you wonder how these people got together.

Was there real attraction? Did she think about him all day? Did he try and show off for her? Did her beauty attract him or is there something so wonderful about her that makes him love her? After their first kiss, did she smile large enough for there to be cracks in her lip liner? Who gives in when they fight? Do his parents invite her to everything? Does she ever wear his college T-shirts?

He doesn’t look particularly happy when her cell phone buzzes. The sushi had just come. She doesn’t look bothered though. She opens it, reads a text. Stands. He looks up as if he’s going to say something, but doesn’t. There was no unspoken moment between them as she swings her Gucci tote over her shoulder and leaves to take the call.

A few moments after she vanished, he pulled a Tiffany & Co. ring box out of his pocket. The rock on the solitaire engagement ring fireworked in the low lighting. It was beautiful. The moment needed background music and a camera crew.

He reached across the table and puts it on her plate. Centered it. No. Tilted it jauntily. Closed the top, opened the top; closed it again. No, open. OK. Fine. He sat back in his seat. He looked around, as if for the waiter or a sign from God.

Our chairs are only a few inches apart. I felt like a foreign intruder in this private moment.

We both waited.

He asked the waiter to bring a fork, explaining she didn’t use chopsticks. He ordered two glasses of champagne. Her phone call was taking a long time by any standard. The seconds dragged by, and soon turned into minutes.

My dessert came.

He was watching the door as patrons filed in and out. Nerves changed to impatience, but that slowly shifted to a sense of dull apathy. His foot stopped jiggling. He checked his own phone again. He was experiencing one of his girlfriend’s habits. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

He ran his hand through his hair, messing it neatly. Alone he seemed so much smaller, deflated by his own humanness.

The door opened and he looked up, slower this time. She was finishing her call at the threshold. He was watching from across the restaurant. You could see him studying this woman he loved so much. Without a noise and in one motion, he snapped his hand across the table, grabbed the box and put it back in his pocket.

She strode back across the small sushi restaurant and sat down.

“Who was it?” There was all this terse hope in his voice, begging for that phone call to have been an emergency of some kind. Pleading for some justifiable reason why she’d been outside for so long.

“Jill! She wants to know if we want to grab drinks with her and Keith tomorrow. I haven’t talked to her in ages. Aww, baby, champagne!”

I paid my bill and left the restaurant. Through the front window I saw him eating his meal quietly as she waved her fork to punctuate some story she was telling.

—Kristen Ace Nevarez is a theater arts senior who will be seeing “Paradise Hotel” tonight at the San Diego State theater.

—This piece of fiction does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.

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San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913
FICTION: What the end of love looks like