Coffee stains, a decade and the things we don’t say

The air is buzzing. Tingling sensations run through my fingers, maybe it’s the Slow Town coffee, or maybe it’s the thrill of seeing him again.

The stain on my shirt, courtesy of a coffee misfire, already feels like a distant memory. Pax, my friend, someone I haven’t seen in over a decade, eyes it disapprovingly.

“You need to go home and change,” he says, always the perfectionist.

Then he smiles, licks his lips. Did he just size me up? He laughs, tells me I’ve grown into a beautiful woman, and raises his hands in the air to sketch an hourglass shape, a visual appreciation of my curves.

I laugh it off, unsure whether to feel flattered or vaguely alarmed.

“No, really,” he insists. “Back then, you were such a nerd. A tomboy.”

By back then, he means the Namcol years.

He was the so-called wise guy from the Tura streets. I was the suburban girl trying too hard to fit in, always explaining that I was at Namcol by choice. The family needed an engineer.

But even with 40 points, that E in math wasn’t going to get me admitted into any good university in any field of science.

Life, as it does, zigzagged instead.

He teases that I need some kapana in my system, a bit of that Tura spice. He says this meetup should’ve been somewhere with two-litre beer bottles and questionable pricing.

I jab back that I’m not keen on accidentally eating dog meat.

He clutches his chest theatrically. “But that’s the point!”

Our coffee grows cold as the conversation warms – the kind of unfiltered talk only two kids turned adults can have. Memory lane with potholes. Regret. Laughter. Wondering how we survived it all.

He’s hunched over now, belly pressing against his shirt. That middle button is in a hostage situation.

It’s a study in contrast: bulging biceps covered in what he calls “meaningless tattoos”, evidence of gym flirtations, yet his stomach tells a story of late-night carbs and adulting fatigue.

Is this it? Adulthood, a balancing act between the bodies we sculpt and the ones we neglect? Between who we thought we’d be and what we settled into?

We swap small talk. He works for a government agency.

When I make a biting comment about his boss, he raises an eyebrow.

“You studied agriculture,” he says, grinning.

“And here you are analysing politicians. But to be fair,” he smirks, “how else is the man going to afford his third vacation in the first quarter of the year?”

We laugh loud and long at the absurdity of it all. What we became. What others didn’t. The economy built on hollow promises and government tenders.

And then, without warning, he says it:

“I’m in therapy, you know.”

I nod. “Yeah? Me too.”

“My uncle sucked my d!ck when I was a kid,” he says, casual as the weather, then takes a sip of his coffee.

He doesn’t flinch.

“Therapy’s been good, though. I think I’m due for another session. There’s no graduating from this sh!t.” He chuckles, not nervously, but with a kind of defiant clarity.

I stare at him. Bewildered.

“What did you say?” I ask, slowly, as I almost choke on my coffee, unsure whether to process or park it.

*Ozon?u Chronicles uncovers the secrets that never see the daylight. Each story is fiction. Yet, as you read, you may sense that reality has already whispered its own version. For readers 18 and older.