“You think he doesn’t see me as his equal?” Candace gave me a hard squint.
“No, I didn’t say that. I’m just saying if you want him to treat you with respect, you have to respect yourself first. And part of respecting yourself is knowing the power you hold as one half of the relationship.”
“Power?”
“Yes. I’ve known you for all of a week and I see how much power you have. You’re a very strong-minded girl. And look at you. You’re beautiful, smart, funny. He’s lucky to have you and he better know it.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Do you think he knows it?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t been acting like it recently.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. Nevermind.”
“Guy trouble?” A woman wearing an apron approached us. She had long brown hair and brown eyes. “Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I just overheard you guys talking and I recently got out of a shitty relationship myself. He was a real player, let me tell you. Always flirting with girls on our dates. He had this beach condo in Florida, where I first met him actually. He’d go down there and party with chickssooften. It was crazy.”
Candance and I stared at the coffee shop worker, stunned at the trauma dump we just bore witness to.
“That’s, um,” I looked at Candace and she just shrugged. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
I looked at the woman’s name tag. It said Casey.
“Casey? As in Casey’s cafe?” I asked.
“Yep, that’s me!”
“Wow, nice to meet you. I love your coffee.” I held up my macchiato.
“Thank you! It was just a humble dream for so long. With the help of my brother, it came true!”
“That’s really great.”
Casey excused herself, moving on to talk to the customers sitting at the table beside us. I had to admit that I was inspired by her tenacity, and a bit jealous too. She worked hard and was able to make her dream come true, and she looked younger than me. Why hadn’t I been able to do that?
“That was…strange,” Candace said.
“Yeah, very.” I chuckled. “Well, if you don’t want to take my word for it, at least take hers. Everyone goes through guy trouble at some point.”
“Yeah.” Her arms were still crossed, but I had her attention now. “What did yours do to you?”
“Mine used to insult me. Tell me to lose weight or to wear more makeup. Has Alex ever done anything like that?” I asked as gently as I could.
“What? No! He’s never called me ugly or anything like that.”
I watched as she slurped down the rest of her coffee and set it in front of her, eyeing her phone. I’d let her call an Uber and leave if she wanted to, but she didn’t yet.
“Alright. Well, that’s good.”
“It’s more like the opposite. We used to see each other all the time and now that I’m at my dad’s, it’s harder to hang out. He has a car, but it’s a far drive and I don’t really want him hanging around at dad’s house all the time. That’s embarrassing.”
“I get that.”
“So now when I do see him, he just acts all pissy about it. The other day he dropped me off and wouldn’t even look at me when I said goodbye. I confronted him about it, but he just shrugged it off.”
“It sounds like he misses you.”