It started in the shower. Standing there, applying shampoo when the door swung open and in walked a beautiful girl. Not even so much walked as strolled. While I was startled beyond the ability to articulate it, she looked at me as if it were all perfectly normal. I couldn’t help but notice that her body was everything a female was supposed to be. To me at least.
She smiled and I melted.
And then she was gone.
A couple weeks later, I was walking down a street and I realized she was there walking next to me. Holding my hand.
And then she wasn’t.
At that moment, I missed her even more than I had after the shower encounter. In the shower, I just assumed my sexual subconscious had gone on a brief bender. Feeling her hand in mine, fingers interlaced, was much more real and filled me with a brief sense of intimacy that I hadn’t felt in years.
The next time I saw her, suddenly across the table from me at a restaurant, I drank her in. I reveled in her presence and realized that I already knew every square inch of her. I knew her voice. I knew her laugh. I could smell her. Not her perfume. Her. Don’t ask me how.
And I felt like she already knew me better than I knew myself, and then when I turned my head for a moment, she again disappeared.
Is it coincidence that leads us to stand in certain places, in certain buildings, in front of certain trophy cases? I don’t know.
But I found her.
Well, her as she looked when she was in college.
Her when she was alive. More than ten years ago.
As soon as I saw the picture, I knew it was the girl who had been visiting me. The display I was standing in front of telling me the details of her outstanding soccer career at the school and how she had died tragically in a car accident her senior year.
What it didn’t say, what it didn’t need to say, is what would have happened if she had been anywhere but in that car that terrible night.
How we would have eventually met. All the possible scenarios that now keep me up at night.
How we would have ended up together. The knowledge of which allows me to sleep.
And dream.
Is it coincidence that leads us to stand in certain places, in certain buildings, in front of certain trophy cases? I don’t know and I’m not sure I want to.
But I do know that I can’t wait to see her again.