It looks how Kurt feels.

Forgotten.

It’s tucked into a side street, lost in a city full of new, exciting, next, big, bigger, biggest best things.

The waitress is old, older than a waitress should ever be. She should be at home, playing gin and chasing after chubby grandchildren. Her grey hair is pulled into a messy beehive on the top of her head, a slash of red on her too thin lips, a slash of blue on her eyelids, and two pencilled in eyebrows.

They’re crooked.

Her uniform dress is red, or was red, faded to age and time, and pale powder blue, just the piping. The two colours don’t match shouldn’t go together. It seems that no one has told the owner that they have terrible taste in uniforms. It’s a form of cruel punishment to make anyone wear those two colours together. There’s a fleeting thought, that someone should inform them, that those two colours haven’t been acceptable since the early sixties.

Red and blue, the colour of blood and bruises.

There’s a palette of loss inside these walls.

The white washed faces of the working girls, neon pink on their nails, black stockings on their legs, eyes the colour of fallen leaves and sorrow.

Helen. The waitresses name is Helen, it’s a fleeting thought. He’s come here often enough lately to know her on sight, to remember her name, but it’s something that gets lost in sorrow between the panelled walls.

Helen is a portrait of pain, age, and the tiredness that creeps into her walk. She moves around the tables, filling salt, sugar, pepper shakers, napkin dispensers, and coffee cups, not bothering to say a word.

He can’t remember if he’s ever heard her voice.

He wonders if it’s just as worn as the rest of this place.

There’s a half full cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of him. The cream and sugar is pale beige sitting in the brown stained cup. It has long since gone cold, but it reminds him, so he places his hand over the top of the cup every time Helen wanders by with a half full pot of too strong coffee. Coffee that is burnt, black, and inching up the sides of the glass pot with every halting step she takes.

He feels like he’s been sitting here for days, ass molded flat by the thin sheet of plywood covered by a thinner layer of cotton batten.

One of the working girls keeps glancing his way, taking in the designer pea coat, the tailored slacks, the impeccably coiffed hair, the appearance of money. She seems to be taking bets with herself as to the chances she could make a quick twenty in the bathroom. She’s slid sideways on her seat a few times, making to move, calling herself back, staring out into the cold darkness beyond the front windows.

Her Adam’s apple makes it a possibility.

He’s missing the connection, the feel of skin sliding slick on skin, the caress of fingertips trailing down his arm, the warmth of a body pressed close to his. He aches, desperate for human contact. Someone to just see him, for a moment, and he wonders if paying for that, for humanity, is worth it.

If he sinks any lower into the seat, he wonders if he would disappear altogether.

Closing his eyes for a moment, a minute, what feels like eternity, he shakes his head imperceptibly, trying to get a grip, a hold, a handle on the past year, his life, the infinite possibilities the universe seems to be placing out of his grasp.

He can’t see her, but he can feel her, hear her sliding into the seat across from him. Her coffee cup scratches the already worn Formica, click, scrape, and slide across the grey top as she slides further into the booth.

He doesn’t want to open his eyes. Doesn’t want to admit, out loud, to himself, to the world at large, how tempted he is by her silent offer.

“The world isn’t ending.” The offer isn’t silent any more, and he can’t help but open his eyes.

“I’m pretty certain it ended a long time ago.” His voice is low, lower than he normally speaks rusty with disuse, fatigue, sorrow.

“Now sweets, you can look through the glass beside you and see it’s still turning, still running, the world goes on.” Her voice is low, smoky, gravelly, bringing to mind bedrooms, sheets, panting breaths in the darkness. Kurt stares for a moment and amends his thought, back alleys and bathroom stalls.

It’s too much. Not enough. More than he’s spoken to anyone in three days. Closing his eyes he cocks his head to the side, weighing his options, words, thoughts out in careful measure.

“You… you’re looking for a… date?” Kurt allows himself to speak, softly, slowly, weighing the words on his tongue.

“I’m always looking for a… date.” She makes the same pause he did, does, careful and slow.

Eyes still closed, he wonders if anyone would notice, care, see the truth in his eyes if he were to, ‘date’, another person tonight.

The decision is made for him as his phone lights up on the table, vibrates and skitters across the sleek table top, until it’s stopped by his trembling fingers.

“Ahhh, another time then,” she winks, slinks away, slides back onto her stool in the corner.

It’s not the phone call he’s been hoping for, a gentle voice bringing him back, pleading, cajoling him out into the cold, into the dark, urging his feet toward home.

Instead it’s a text message.

A dry impersonal message, instead of the voices he’s been waiting to hear.

Why aren’t you home? What’s for dinner? Are you bringing something home? Seb and I are starving!

Never mind that he hasn’t actually been home since yesterday morning when he’d left for work at seven a.m.

Shaking his head he places the phone back on the counter. Lowering his eyes to stare at the dregs in his cup, face impassive as he lets his mind go blank, wander away, ignoring the need that’s beating in his brain. A need urging him that he must respond, that he has to answer. That they would really want to know, want to care, do love him as much as he loves them.

Helen wanders by, the too dark, burnt coffee in her hands as she proffers the pot.

He dips his chin in acknowledgment and doesn’t place his hand over his cup. He lets her fill it with the darkness spilling from the pot.

He wonders if he can disappear into the void created by the black hole contained inside the coffee pot glass.

The next text takes him by surprise, phone jumping across the table, hands scrabbling to catch it before it clatters over the edge.

Over the edge.

It’s how he feels.

He’s gone over the edge and he’s not sure how to find his way back.

Don’t worry about bringing dinner home! We ordered Thai! See you soon Babe x Seb

A third message comes quickly on the heels of the second.

Unless you’ve already bought something in which case we can use it for lunches tomorrow x Seb

Kurt stares blankly at his phone for a moment, fingers moving towards the sugar canister, and the little pot of cream that Helen had placed on the table more than an hour ago.

He’s not sure how to answer, what to answer, if he should answer.

So he fixes his coffee. Cream, sugar, hopes and dreams, all washing away in the tepid beige liquid, on the spin of his spoon.

He’s not sure where it all went awry.

He wonders if he’s the one that’s wrong.