Coffee among friends

 "What did you used to think love would be like?  When you were young?"  Anne hated to draw attention to Sylvias marriage, but this new low that Neil had fallen to must have hurt Sylvia and she knew that her friend was reeling from the torment.

 Sylvia licked the paper of a  rolled cigarette and listened to the question as it sent her back to her memories from what seemed like a lifetime ago.

" I always wanted to fall safely into love...I thought it would be a shelter." She lit her cigarette and drifted.

"But isn't it?"  Anne insisted, trying to look natural while she smoked beside Sylvia in the darkness.

Sylvia laughed bitterly. "I always wondered why people cried at weddings...now I know. It's because you young people don't know what you're getting into!"  Sylvia smiled.

Anne didn't believe that it was funny.  Nor did she believe that Sylvia thought it was funny.  "You speak of love as though its a sad trick.  Something that looks one way from the outside, warm and wonderful..."

"But rather starves and burns another way from the inside..." Sylvia cut Anne off for the sake of saying it perfectly.

"But that's awful!  You can't believe that!" Anne protested.

"I don't want to believe it.  I don't want that for my children, but that's what it's been for me. Maybe you can find it in another way. And I hope you do!"

Anne protested the injustice for her friend. "Why don't you?  Why don't you find it in another way?  It's not as though you have to stay!"

Sylvia gave a surprising response that even Anne was shocked by. "Maybe when the children are raised... I'll have a small place of my own.  When my sins and rebellion are no consequence to the young ones.  They can have their own families and rights.  They'll say to each other, 'Mom's gone off her nut and left Dad'!" 

 Sylvia smiled at the thought and the laughter was mingled with tears of longing for peace. "Maybe I'll find a job and suddenly become beautiful and travel the world with a man who likes to smoke and argue Chesterton and tour Cathedrals.  We can find healing together for what the world has done."

Anne laughed as she loved the thought of this for her friend, she added in the play. "He'll have to be funny!"

"But subtly so. I've had enough of the showman kind... "

"And he'll have to make nothing of your insistence on this or that!" Anne teased and Sylvia agreed in spite of herself, "Yes!  No reaction at all to my fickle mood!  Just a dear laugh!"

"And I think he should be thoughtful and write poems and bring flowers..." She poked her friend.

Sylvia blushed, "I don't need all of that!  You know how I feel about short lived pretty things and swift words!"

"But you'll love them because they will be from him. And he will make you fall safely into love, and that will change everything..."Anne patted her friend and Sylvias lip stiffened fighting a smile.

"Even silly things like poetry, huh?" She scoffed but thought of the sacred intimacy of words well placed and savored the remarkable osculate notion of poetry written on her behalf.

They sat in silence for a moment and Sylvia poured another glass of whiskey into their teacups.

"To Love!" Anne raised her glass.  "To the precious thought of love." Replied Sylvia with eyes welled full of sincerity.