Breaking If statements and loops.. Clicking a button once

I am trying to make a keyboard and everything works fine. I just want to break the loop between clicks to stop repetitiveness. I don't want to use a Boolean because user can enter same character more than once. This is the image listener

 a = new Image(new Texture("Sprites/Keyboard/a.png"));
    a.addListener(new InputListener(){
        @Override
        public boolean touchDown(InputEvent event, float x, float y, int pointer, int button) {

            apressed = true;
            return true;
        }

        @Override
        public void touchUp(InputEvent event, float x, float y, int pointer, int button) {

            apressed= false;

        }

    });

And this is what i have in my update inside the activity or state.

   if (keyboard.apressed) {

            builder.append('A');
            currentWord = builder.toString();
            //break; here doesn't work. says its outside the loop.

        }

So in theory this is what i want but can't use because im guessing its to much work for every char?

 if (keyboard.apressed) {

            builder.append('A');
            currentWord = builder.toString();
            try {
                TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.sleep(400);

            } catch (Exception e) {
                System.out.println("error");
            }
        }

any ideas? thanks in advance.