Relationship Coffee

"When I said I was testing, you, I didn't mean that I was trying to see if you were good enough, I was just checking, the way you take a small sip from a cup of hot coffee." He was reading an email from his ex-girlfriend. He knew that she had probably written that metaphor as she was actually drinking a cup of hot coffee. She was an art history major and had lived in big cities her whole life, so the metaphors she used popped up instantly and were based on her surroundings rather than well thought out ideas. He, however, was an English Literature major from a smaller town and carefully analyzed every metaphor, no matter how hastily constructed. And despite initially dismissing this coffee metaphor for being thoughtlessly conceived, he came to like it quite a bit.
He realized that his relationships, at one time, had also been like cups of coffee. They started off too hot, but showed promise of being very comfortable later. So he expectantly kept taking sips, guessing and checking about his partner, until at last he discovered that he was satisfied with the temperature and took a committed, comfortable gulp. After this gulp though, he was so pleased that he would try to savor the coffee for as long as possible, to stretch the contents of the cup into infinity. After a while though, this slow cautious drinking waned on too long; suddenly, one sip would reveal that the coffee had gone cold and he was disgusted with it.
These days, he liked his beverages as cold as possible. They were instantly refreshing, could be drank as soon as they arrived, and he liked to drink them quickly before they warmed up, which would make it possible for him to fully taste it.