"Damnit!" I muttered as I shifted into reverse again and made my third attempt at parallel parking. It was hot and it had taken me ten minutes to find this tiny spot when I was already ten minutes late. I finally parked the car and breathed a deep sigh of relief. I flipped down my visor mirror to check my lip gloss, took a couple of calming breaths and smiled nervously at my reflection.
Nervous didn't even begin to describe how I was feeling. I was about to meet up with my high school boyfriend, my first love, after more than fifteen years. For three years we had been inseparable, best friends who shared everything, including the hottest making out my fifteen-year-old mind could have imagined at that time. It had only ended when my parents forced me to break up with him and then I went to boarding school.
Over the ensuing years, I met and fell in love with someone else, moved away from home, began a career and had children. During the same time he had finished college, traveled the world and settled two thousand miles from our old home town. Now I was newly single and we had gotten in touch again through Facebook. Over several months we exchanged e-mails, phone calls and text messages, getting to know each other again.
We had never forgotten each other. I always felt as if he was the one that got away, given that our break up had been my parents' doing. I wondered many time what he was up to and where life had taken him. When we found each other online the thoughts and dreams happened with greater frequency.
Our communication revealed that he was much like he'd been in high school – witty, well-spoken, intriguing -- only now his dreams of artistic greatness had been realized. He worked for a large tech company, designing new aspects of technology for keeping people informed and in touch while also dabbling in film-making and photography.
And now. Now work had brought him for a week to the city where I lived. We snatched up the opportunity to get together for dinner and drinks. I had butterflies in my stomach so bad I felt like I could almost puke. I hoped I could settle down once I was seated with a drink in my hand.
I stepped from my car, smoothing my long white linen skirt and straightening my cool blue camisole top. I carried a large leather handbag and wore matching leather sandals.
The restaurant was half a block away and I made my way to the entrance quickly. He was seated at the bar, a cold beer in his hand. He hadn't changed much. In high school he'd been an inch or so taller than I but a late growth spurt had put him near 6 feet, compared with my 5'6". His hair was still blond, still a bit shaggy looking. It suited him. The green eyes I remembered so well sparkled as they met my blue ones.
"You're bald!" he exclaimed.
I laughed nervously. I had shaved my head a few months before to help raise money for cancer research. I discovered that I liked it. It was strangely liberating not to worry about, frizzy hair, limp hair, hair in my face, hair on my clothes. So I continued shaving it off every few weeks.
"Yes. Yes, I am," I replied. "What do you think?"
"I think ... I think it suits you," he said. "It's actually pretty sexy, now that I think about it."
"That's good. I think." I giggled and then cursed myself for sounding like the fifteen-year-old I used to be.
"What are you drinking?" I asked.
"It's a local brew. Pretty good stuff. You want to try it?" He proffered his glass and I took a sip. It was dark and heavy, almost chocolatey. Very tasty but not what I was in the mood for. I took a seat next to him and ordered a vodka tonic.
We made small talk for a few minutes, sipping drinks and waiting for our table. He seemed almost as nervous as I felt, although the butterflies had settled a bit.
When our table was ready we settled in with menus and second drinks. We ordered and then got into deeper conversation. He told me about his work project, I told him about my job as a nurse, about my kids. We carefully avoided the subject of significant others. I knew he had been single for a few years from our previous conversations. He knew that my boyfriend and I had split amicably, although painfully, a couple of months prior. But neither of us wanted to talk about this.
Before I knew it we'd finished our food and a couple more drinks. We split our check and stood to leave. We left the restaurant and stepped into the balmy evening. It was summer, about 9:00 pm on a Saturday and the sun had just set. A light breeze blew through the trees, bringing cool air down from the mountains.
"Would you like to walk for a while?" I asked. "This is great neighborhood for people watching."
"Sure," he replied. We took off down the street, mingling with the other post-dinner walkers. Almost without realizing it, we joined hands. My pulse quickened when I realized what was happening. With him nearer to me now I could smell his scent – no cologne, just the clean, fresh scent of his soap. The heat of his arm against mine sent shivers over me. I wondered if he was experiencing this the same way I was.
