Page 35 of No More Love Songs

“Yes, you are.” I rinse the plate and put it up, then finish up by washing the two mugs left in the sink from this morning. “And I know you think you’re doing a good thing, pushing me out of my own way to some happy ever after you envision for me, or some shit, but I don’t need pushing. Or meddling. Or head messing of any kind.”

“I don’t get what the big deal is,” she huffs, grabbing a handful of flour and tossing it over her workspace a little too forcefully, sending a white cloud across half the kitchen. “All I’m doing is pointing out what you’re clearly trying to hide from me. Don’t want me to call you out? Don’t be so obvious about holding back whatever she’s making you feel whenever you walk into a room I’m already in.”

“I’m only holding it back because you keep distorting things and I’m not interested in having something beautifully simple overly complicated by you.”

“I hate to break it to you, but friendship between a man and a woman is never simple,” she says dryly. “If you don’t think your relationship with Sky Thompson is complicated it’s probably not the sort you think it is.” Then she places her worked dough into a bowl, covers it with plastic wrap and puts it in the fridge.

“Funny, because the way I recall it, it’s the romantic relationships that get complicated,” I scoff, drying my hands so aggressively I nearly send the towel flying to the floor. I don’t even know where this anger is coming from.

“I don’t recall you ever having romance,” she snips, “just toxic bullshit.” Then she marches out of the kitchen before I can think of another comeback.

I don’t even have time to collect my thoughts before she comes storming back in. “One more thing,” she says, stopping at the island as if we need the barrier between us. “I know you let her use your mug. And not just once by accident. She’s been using it every morning she’s been here, and you haven’t said a thing about it.”

I roll my eyes, snorting as if I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous. “It’s a coffee mug, Mavis.”

“Uh-huh.” She shakes her head at me, and there’s no pretending she’s not disappointed. “It’s just a coffee mug. That’s all.” Then she leaves again, this time, clearly lacking the umph she stomped out of here with before.

Alone again, I turn back toward the sink. And the dishrack. And both mugs I just washed and put up.

“It’s just a mug,” I repeat quietly to myself.

Just a mug I took from my grandfather’s cupboard after he died. The same mug I watched him have coffee from every morning I spent at his house. The one his wife, my grandmother, gave him the morning she asked him to marry her, because she’d only just figured out, she wanted to spend every morning of the rest of her life having coffee with him. The same goddamn mug I chose to keep for myself out of all his belongings, because I thought I’d one day wake up and want to give it to someone I wanted to spend every morning of the rest of my life drinking coffee with.

I gave up that novel notion about a million years ago. Even before I got married. My own wife never used this mug. No one but me drinks their coffee from my grandfather’s mug.

Until now.

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