Love at First Sight

Watching her curled up in her favorite chair, reading her Kindle, he thought about how lucky he was to have found such a beautiful creature to fall in love with. He thought about those three little words that couples in love tend to say to each other and knew that even if those words didn’t exist, he would still know that the woman he had chosen truly loved him. The twinkle in her expressive blue eyes and the way she smiled at him whenever she saw him expressed more love than any three words spoken aloud could ever say.

When she paused from reading her Kindle and placed it in her lap, he wondered where her mind had wandered. While the soft glow from the device illuminated her delicate features, his thoughts drifted to the first time he met her. He laughed internally when he realized he couldn’t actually refer to that memory as the first time he “met” her since they hadn’t actually spoken a word to one another the day she almost ran over him in a parking lot.

To be fair, though, they were probably both to blame. While she had been bee-bopping and singing along to whatever horrible techno-sounding music was blaring from her car radio, he had been completely distracted by his phone and a text message he had received. Neither of them was paying attention when she carelessly sped into the parking spot that he happened to be crossing at the same time.

He held his hands up in a “What’s wrong with you? I’m walking here” kind of way, but she still wasn’t paying attention and hadn’t acknowledged his display of frustration. He just shook his head, wondered what was wrong with people nowadays, and resumed walking towards the grocery store, stopping briefly when he heard her car door open and close.

When he turned around to look at the rude woman who had almost maimed him, his previous frustrations slipped away. It was love at first sight. She was absolutely glowing in the sun's reflection as beams of light perfectly accentuated the blond highlights in her shoulder-length hair and danced along her silver necklace and earrings. It was as if the heavens had used the sun as a spotlight to highlight her presence just so he would notice her. He regained his composure, pretended to look for something in his pockets, and hoped she hadn’t caught him looking like an idiot as he stared at her.

Following her into the store, he watched as she pushed her cart towards the automatic interior doors. She paused momentarily to allow an older woman to enter before her. Perhaps she wasn’t as rude as he initially thought. She also didn’t seem to concern herself with the invisible threats of the world as she casually walked past the sanitizing wipes to the right of the entrance. He felt a pang of jealousy and wished he could be the same way. He lost sight of her when he was forced to stay behind to wipe his cart handle three times.

As he rounded the corner to the cereal aisle, the tables turned when he was the one who wasn’t paying attention and had almost run over her. He gave her a look of apology when she turned to glance at him. Despite not being a tea drinker, he looked through the selection of teas on the other side of the aisle from where she had been looking at her cereal options and pretended to read the back of a box that featured a sleepy bear in pajamas on the front. He wished he could come up with something witty to say, but his mind was a complete blank.

Standing that close to her, as the smell of her perfume, which smelled like lilacs and vanilla, permeated his senses, everything else in the busy store seemed to disappear. There was no music streaming down from the overhead speakers, no sounds of registers ringing up other customers, no random chatter, and no carts with squeaky wheels banging lopsidedly on the store’s linoleum floor; it was just the two of them.

He was about to offer her help when he saw her reaching for a box of cereal on the top shelf, but she managed to grab it while standing on her tiptoes. When she lost her balance and fell into him, she grabbed his arm to keep from falling further. Their eyes locked for what felt like an eternity to him. This should have been their moment to talk, but an impatient shopper came around the corner and appeared to be in a hurry to get past them. She removed her hand from his arm without saying a word, just a quick look of embarrassment for falling into him before quickly pushing her cart out of the way. His heart almost leaped from his chest when she glanced back at him, tucked a tiny bit of hair behind her right ear, and smiled before continuing down the aisle to finish her shopping.

He didn’t have the nerve to talk to her while he was in the store, and he knew he shouldn’t have done it, but he felt like he had no other choice. As soon as she got into her car and pulled out of her parking spot in the same careless way she had initially pulled in, he followed. He didn’t plan on following her home. He knew it was creepy, but he just needed to know more about her. He made a mental note of her street and which house was hers before he turned around in a driveway a couple of houses away.

He thought about her the whole way home. He noticed she didn’t have a ring on her finger. Of course, that didn’t mean she didn’t have someone significant in her life. Not that it mattered. He couldn’t deny the spark between them, and he couldn’t shake the way she looked into his eyes during that moment they shared. A brief moment in which their whole future together flashed before his eyes. A happy future with a house and kids and growing old together. He knew she felt it, too. He could tell by the way she had been flirting with him when she walked away. He picked up on the subtle cues and the mental messages she was sending him, beckoning him to follow her. Perhaps she was also shy and just needed him to make the first move. He just needed to figure out a way to do that.

He tried to come up with a plan to see her again. He knew he couldn’t just walk up to her house; that would be creepier than following her home. Then he remembered the name tag for a local bank that she had been wearing on her light pink blouse. He figured that’s probably where she worked. If he pretended to be interested in opening an account, he would have to talk to her then.

Two days later, he pulled into the parking lot at the closest First Trust Bank he could find. He sat in his car for a few minutes while he mentally psyched himself up. Eventually, he found the nerve, and as soon as he walked through the doors, he saw her. She was sitting in a huge glass office just to the right of the entrance. Despite the small amount of sun streaming in through the windows behind her desk, she still had that same familiar glow. Another man was already in her office sitting across from her, so he opted to wait on the uncomfortable-looking couch in the lobby for her to be available.

He could see her perfectly from where he sat and waited. When she reached out and gently touched the man's arm across from her and then laughed, he wished with every fiber of his being that it was him she had been reaching out to touch. The longer he waited, the more he lost his nerve. Just as he was getting up to go, another employee came over and asked if she could help him. Before he could say anything, she was distracted by another customer who walked by and said hello to her, which was fine because he didn’t want to talk to her anyway.

He turned away from the woman who had greeted him, grabbed a couple of pamphlets, and headed toward the door. As he was leaving, he took one more glance into her office. At that exact moment, she looked up from her desk and made eye contact with him again. She smiled at him, coyly tucked that same bit of hair behind her ear, and waved. He took a mental snapshot of that extra twinkle in her eyes. Confirmation again that she had been flirting with him and might be as interested in him as he was in her.

He wondered if she recognized him and if he should stay. He decided to leave their future in the hands of fate and walked out to his car instead. Now wasn’t the time. He would think of another way to actually meet her. He knew that someday they would laugh about these “chance” encounters and have such a great story to tell their friends and family whenever someone asked them how the two of them had met.

****

Now that summer was slowly turning into fall; cooler evenings were starting to replace the heat and humidity of the last few months. Since her husband had already gone to bed, and his snoring had been particularly loud that night, she decided to retreat to the now cooler and quieter atmosphere of their screened-in back patio. She had been looking forward to curling up in her favorite chair with her Kindle to finally finish the third book in the series she had started a couple of weeks before.

After a few minutes, she stopped reading and placed the Kindle that had been illuminating her face onto her lap. She glanced at the wedding ring set that once again resided on her left ring finger as it glistened in the light of her Kindle. She was devastated when she lost one of the stones and felt naked for days without the rings being where they belonged.

She smiled when she thought about how surprised she was when her husband stopped by the bank earlier that day after he retrieved her rings from the jeweler. She just wished she could have spent more time with him. Thankfully, she was able to steal a few extra minutes with the love of her life after the creepy guy who had been staring at her from across the lobby and had obviously been waiting to see her left. She had smiled at him politely when he walked out because he looked familiar, but he had definitely been giving off some strange vibes.

She looked down at the Kindle sitting in her lap. The light was now extinguished from the case being left open too long. She didn’t know why, but she had been having a difficult time concentrating on her book. Something just seemed off. She could sense an uneasiness in the air. The world seemed too quiet, and the night had seemed particularly dark. Perhaps it was just the eeriness that accompanied what appeared to be a moonless and starless sky. She could feel the heaviness of the quiet. A slight breeze tickled at her senses and rustled the trees along the fence in her backyard as a cold shiver crawled across her skin and left the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. She peered deeper into the darkness. She didn’t see him; he was hidden just out of her sight. He had a perfect view of her for the second time that day. Hidden in the darkness beside an old oak, he quietly sat and watched. That’s what he did when he found the perfect woman to love; he watched and he waited.