by Alexus Pargan
“I never stood a chance, did I?”
Her pause is only momentary, her thoughts a slow huddle from the few glasses of wine that were paired with her meal. He looks at her from across the table, hands in his lap while his eyes focus on the way her lips curve up into something that belongs on the thin line between the sun’s grace and the moon’s gaze.
She nods her head though. The deep warmth of her eyes always reminded him of a golden eagle’s keen vigil, and he finds himself just as entranced in it as in every moment before. “You did. Once.”
Those might be the words that’ll haunt him, he’s sure of it. But only for tonight when he goes home. Maybe they’ll creep into the midst of his slumber, dreaming of things that might have been and will never be.
He smiles at her, fingers unhooking the top-most button of his crisp dress shirt. He’s off the clock and sitting across the table from a woman who has always been on the cusp of his grasp. But not because she thought of herself as too much for him.
“I did. When?”
The tilt of her head used to be comical. It’s the tell-tale sign she’s trying to remember something, eyes lost in some distant space as she scans through memories of past laughs and smiles and tears and heart-wrenching moments of sadness. Within seconds her lips curl around words he stumbles to hear over his own thoughts.
“That summer after we graduated.” She doesn’t tuck her chin with her next words, like most women who he’s spoken to tend to do. “And for the year after, too.”
She’s unapologetically herself, he muses, a small smile gracing his face before he rubs at his growing shadow. He figures it would distract her, but her eyes are still focused on his. He isn’t sure how to respond to the last comment.
“I thought I only had one chance?” His confusion bleeds into the quiet settling between them. He isn’t sure if she’ll answer him, but he’s curious.
Much too curious, she always said.
“I had more than one chance, then,” he concludes, eyeing her to see if he guessed wrong.
This woman just takes a breath in and out, her body relaxing into the back of her chair. Her waiter approaches the table to pour her another glass, but the man, once a different boy in a past time, doesn’t wait for the extra pair of ears to leave before he tries to ask his next question.
“Did,” he pauses with his struggle to try and put the words together. “Did you-”
“Did I want you to take those chances?” He doesn’t know how she was always able to do that. To think ahead of his own brain and to make sense of the jumble inside it. She steals the very words that are elusive in his own mind, making works of art of his measly attempts at thinking that would make the renaissance masters flare with green and red; a turbulent mix of those potent emotions that leaves a much too familiar bitter edge in the back of his throat.
He can’t help his quiet nod, just one as his fingers pull at the end of the table cloth laying over his lap. The pad of her thumb caresses the narrow stem of her glass, the blood-swirl inside as rich as the bottle’s label looks. He isn’t sure who he replaced, but her dinner partner’s glass sits finished a few inches in front of him. He stares at it, his mind quiet while he waits for her answer, thoughts straying to a realm of possibilities and alternate truths.
Her tongue runs over the tips of her teeth, a deep breath filling her lungs before she answers the question that she plucked from his mind. “Back then, I did.”
She cradles the stem of her glass in her fingers before raising it to her lips. Her nerves are firing with a slight shock from seeing him in person after so many years. So much time just spent online, and now is the time she meets him again. She swallows back the butterflies with her sip of wine, taking the time to settle herself while she surveys him.
He’s slightly taller than what she remembers, his build a bit larger and beard shapelier. He seems more comfortable in his skin, a confidence that surpasses all others emanating from his stance across from her. He sits comfortably, just watching while she finishes her glass. She remembers how carefree he used to be and briefly wonders if he still has those same habits; of making friends with everyone, of dragging people along with him for his own ride.
She smiles to herself, nodding along to her recollection of leaving behind things that would never grow beyond its stunted height. You can only ever expect so much from someone.
He looks at her, eyes tracing over her form of ease. She’s dressed in something he’s never seen her in before, her dress and jewelry not gaudy enough to attract attention, but she does so anyway. The warm red and orange tones of her outfit counter the cool way she sits at the table, poised under his gaze. There’s nothing of the muddle-toned teenager he once knew in this woman across from him. For the first time he sees her exterior matching the maturity of her interior, enhancing that aura of pure strength around her. It was always something that intrigued him; her quiet fortitude.
His mind slips thoughts together like puzzle pieces snapping into place. He can’t help but wonder how things would have been if he had known then. Questions blur into smudges of what almost tastes like regret in the back of his throat, something slightly sour and faintly familiar.
He doesn’t even remember his thought finishing before it spilled past his lips while her wine slipped past hers. “And what about now?”
She remembers him chasing things he wanted from the girls who fawned while she worked to climb her own ladder of success. She remembers him always looking in at the diamond she was crafting, cutting corners and peeking at parts that weren’t meant to be seen. But he was him and it took her some time to put that past her. He should have taken a longer look at her back then, because the woman she is now barely glances at him over the rim of her glass.
That coy smile raises into something sharper, louder even as a chuckle leaves her too. He sits, shoulders back and head high as he waits for an answer he knows he isn’t ready for.
Why did I even ask? He bites the corner of his lip, holding it between his teeth.
“Now?” She shakes her head at him, smiling wider in her mirth. “Now I’m glad you didn’t.”
