September 28

Year 2016

She walked into that tattoo shop disheveled and completely indifferent.

He looked up and saw a stranger's smile that outshined the fog she seemed to be in.

Year 2017

She walked up to the railing with freshly washed hair and first date jitters.

He looked around, searching for the right first date first words.

Year 2018

She walked around the corner and jumped at the unexpected sight of him and a silver balloon.

He looked straight into her eyes, reflecting a swaying silver speck and a year's worth of memories.

Year 2019

She walked straight out of the bathroom, and into the bed, exhausted from the day.

He looked down at her, and true to his nature, offered her a diamond when she felt most undesirable.

Year 2020

She walked down the aisle.

He looked toward the future.

Year 2021

She walked him toward the door.

He didn't look back--until she'd shut it between them.

September 28, 2022

She headed toward the water, steeling herself for emotional impact. Arms wrapped tightly around herself she dodged puddles and suspicious looking leaves. Once the bench was in sight, she could see him. The back of his head, in a hat, but that was all she needed. She’d memorized him like a puzzle–in that even when only a few of the pieces were joined, she could see the entire image. She slowed, unintentionally but knowingly, and stayed the course.

He looked out at the water as he waited. He wondered why they’d chosen to meet here–somewhere with significance and memories. And then he shook his head, as not a single memory without her seemed to exist anymore. The cold was sharp and he let one hand leave his pocket just long enough to flip up his hood. The wind blew and carried with it the faint, familiar scent of men's deodorant and woodsy women's perfume. The precise combination seemed to conjure her as if she stood right before him. He had studied her like scripture–religiously–so from the mere essence of her, he could recite her every detail.

She focused on his hat as she approached, which somehow brought to mind a spinning top, which led her reeling mind to her thumb which absentmindedly spun the silver on her left ring finger. She wondered if the tick would vanish with the object or if she’d forever be brushing her bare finger when deep in thought or not thinking at all. Her last few steps were taken by sheer force of will as she approached the bench, pivoting her face toward the water and slowly setting down beside him.

He dared not turn at her scent, still entirely unprepared to face the present as it was unfolding before him. The image of her in his mind so clear, he couldn’t decipher the moment she went from apparition to physically occupying the space beside him. Her back was stick straight, but her body leaned slightly forward, as thought she was afraid to make contact with the raindrops that still clung to the bench. Her face was fixed straight ahead, her eyes still and serious, her hair a blonde hive atop her head, her cheeks pink and childlike. She was perplexing in that way--able to construct a severe exterior from features that, when assessed individually, were really more those of child. Even after a full year, she looked unchanged to him. He wished she’d taken the ring off before she arrived. He hadn't thought any of this through, but he didn't want to watch that part.

She couldn't get a good look at his face in the split second it took for her to turn toward the water, as he'd raised his hood almost right as she'd arrived, but his body was different. She couldn't identify any positive or negative feelings toward the difference, aesthetically, but something about it made her feel sad, and regretful. Her eyes stay trained on the water, but she could feel him looking at her--not hard enough to illicit a response, just long enough to take her in, as he always did when he saw her--sometimes multiple times a day. She would swear he had her charted to the freckle. He never stared or even ogled. He just saw her, so many times. He had seen her so many more times than anyone else had ever even looked at her.

They continued to stare, silently, in the same direction.

Suddenly, a gust of wind animated an oddly undamaged Starbucks cup, tumbling along the path in front of them, and they both followed it just far enough until one was too close to looking straight at the other. Their eyes returned to the water.

Though the umpteenth Starbucks cup she’d seen that day, this particular piece of litter brought her back to their first date. He offered to drive her car, to save her from downtown driving, and assured her that the manual transmission of her little Honda Fit would not be a problem. They jerked their way out of the parking lot, fared alright on the road, and only once they were safe in the Starbucks drive-thru did he kill the engine (for the first time). She was easily amused, but she didn’t find many people funny. First date faux pas be damned, any pretenses of a girlish giggle disappeared. Her uninhibited laughter filled the car between gasps for breath and attempts at ordering. If he was embarrassed by this automotive plight to begin with, he’d begun to embrace it. It took teamwork, but they eventually ordered their "grande hot chocolates, in venti cups, with room for peppermint schnapps, I mean cream, a lot of cream." She didn’t even drink, so felt fraudulent coming prepared with a bottle of booze. And as she poured the alcohol into their cups, she realized she no longer had the nerves for which she had originally self-prescribed it. She was actually having fun.

He noticed her tracking the trash that was tumbling along the sidewalk. Somehow his own mind was transported back to that first humiliating but hilariously historical trip to Starbucks and the evening that ensued. He was mortified by his first impression, a painful performance trying to drive them a few blocks, but relieved by her reaction. His memory soothed itself by remembering how funny she found the whole thing. And not in the heartbreakingly dehumanizing way that he deserves--but in a way that made it genuinely enjoyable. He didn’t even react when her laugh went from what he assumes was some generic noise he can’t recall now to the water mammal-like bark that has emanated from her for the last several years. Loud and unchecked and in no way flattering or attractive–but by the end of the night it was his new favorite sound. As they walked around the city, block by block, bar by bar, it echoed differently in every building--but it always echoed and he liked that. She lingered. And it wasn't only in her humor. He was intrigued by her range; he’d already seen her laugh until she was incontinent, watched her body turn stiff and serious when she spoke on certain subjects, and even glimpsed solemnity take grip of her at a few points in conversation of lives past. He felt he had already known her that first time he saw her. Now he was certain of it; she reflected back at him the same hodgepodge of personalities he was made of.

She texted her best friend, “I’m on a date with my husband," from a bathroom stall in the bar.

He asked her to marry him three separate times that night–each of which she reluctantly declined.

They were still watching the water, which wasn’t moving much, despite what felt like an increasingly harsh breeze. They didn’t like the cold unless properly dressed and planned for. They had to get on with it.

She turned sharply to face his profile, hoping the physical action would evoke a verbal reaction. The sky was a gradient of greys and the clouds a soft white that together produced a pale blue backdrop. It looked like his head was laid on a blanket. And she was looking at him now, but she saw a past version of him--pale and shivering, curled on the bathroom floor in nothing but his underwear, a baby blue towel under his head. They shared a blanket she’d brought from the bed a few feet away, her covering and uncovering him as his temperature rose and fell. They were half in a closet, half in a doorway, and he was far too sick to even notice she was there. She stayed beside him all night.

He could feel her staring at him. All he’d done was take that initial glance, but she wasn’t budging. He knew her bullish nature was trying to force his hand–or voice, rather–but there was something else. A feeling he’d felt often over the last several years, but once most memorably. God, he was so sick. Not entirely incapacitated, he was capable of two functions–lying on the bathroom floor and sitting up to vomit. And even on the edge of consciousness, he could feel that stare. But stare didn’t seem like the right word then, and it was beginning not to now. It wasn’t as though she was horrified by the occasional expulsion and uncontrollable drool, or mesmerized by the ten different directions his (awkwardly hot) ginger hair was laying, or even that she was alarmed by the tremors that ran through his body at regular intervals as he went from fire to ice and back again. She wasn’t staring; she was watching. And he didn’t even have to open his eyes to know it. No, not in the woo–woo way that he could sense her eyes on him (yet), but by the very real, very tangible happening that every time he started to sweat, he was miraculously unburdened of the heavy fabric holding him hostage, and within seconds of his starting to shiver, he was wrapped in a warm, soft weight. That went on all night. And it wasn’t her stare he felt just then, he was sure; it was her concern. But why was it still here now?

She’d meant to make him talk, but even if she'd been successful, she wouldn't have heard anything above the blood rushing in her ears and the leaves rustling in the wind. Her heart broke, again, and the taste of iron that filled her mouth was surely from that wound. Dropping her head in defeat, she felt the heat rise in her face until her vision began to blur. Her world was a dim swath of wet grey, dull yellow and muted rust. Very slowly and very deliberately, she raised her left hand, the one furthest from him, to her face, intending to catch a runaway tear should it fall prematurely. But as she did, a bright flash broke through her blurry landscape. She hadn’t used the word 'sparkle' since she was 13 years old, but it was all anyone could say when they saw it–’the way it sparkles!’ And damn it, they were right. It did. She had never owned a diamond, never desired to own a diamond, and was certain that a diamond ring just was not ‘her.’ But she loved this diamond, and this ring was her. She wasn’t sure if she had ever actually seen a diamond before this one. She couldn't imagine not remembering if she had. Sitting there now, knowing she was about to lose it, she couldn’t help but realize it wasn’t the jewelry she would miss--but the sparkle; the spontaneous, but frequent flash that broke through whatever was happening in the present and reminded her of the light in her life.

He could see her arm move. He didn’t know why she did that. If she was trying to catch a tear on her finger without him noticing there were sure to be many more to follow. And once they started, no one within 100 yards would be able to miss them. Guard up until the very last possible moment. Knowing what the attempted stealth move meant, he forced his eyes to the limits of their periphery to see her face without turning his own. She looked lost, hands in her lap, eyes on her hands. He couldn’t believe he was going to take that ring back. After all the time and effort it took to get it to her in the first place. He didn’t buy into her hippie crap. He studied ‘the four C’s’--color, clarity, cut, and carat. He hand selected the stone. He decided on the setting. He knew she would prefer a diamond ring he assembled just for her to any mass produced alternative he would find. And he was right. Even though she never lost her mind over it, or gushed about it in public, he’d caught her too many times, when she hadn’t known he was watching, holding her hand up to the light, fanning her fingers and tilting her head, just to admire it in different light, from different angles. He’d only ever seen her look at one other thing like that before: him. Like she was six years old and she’d discovered a treasure, that if anyone else ever found out about, would be coveted and stolen. So instead of boasting about it, she savored it, all to herself, never losing the sense of awe that it was hers. He realized how much he would miss catching these “private” moments.

She looked up at him, feeling his eyes on her already. If she dared blink, she’d send salty streams down both cheeks. Before that could happen, as though by reflex, in one swift movement her eyes held open, chest held breath, and her opposite hand steadied, sliding the ring off her own finger and right into the palm of his hand that was, like magic, already open and extended out to her. In an almost seamless, but distinctly separate movement, she stood up. Her face out of view, she blinked and the dam broke. Slowly and methodically she stepped forward until she reached the railing she had first approached him at. She heaved an exhale that escaped into the ether and back onto her face, starkly marking the streams that now flowed freely across her face and down her neck, losing speed but creeping slowly toward her clavicles. She raised neither arm to stem the tide; there was no use. If she did, he’d know from her body language exactly what her tortured face looked like. As long as he didn't approach her, she could hold her ground. She wrapped both hands around the cold, wet steel of the railing and held on as tightly as she could--afraid that if she relented, at all, she risked becoming unmoored from the very earth. Although she was only sitting a few feet from the water, and standing only raised her a a couple feet in the air, it was colder here. She shivered, but her body was so rigid, the cold shook only the inside of her. And then she softened, as she was shielded from the wind, by his stature that sheltered but never overshadowed her. He stood beside her. As they’d begun. The thought, that we rarely know that we are experiencing a last time while we are experiencing it, crossed her mind in a moment of clarity. And she felt what she decided were rationally the opposite of the feelings evoked by first kisses and first dates. Instead of excitement and anticipation, a searing pain and mounting panic began to spread. How do you stop the present while it’s happening?

To be continued...