White City

N 42.4344° W 122.1828°

None of the dog collars at the White City Goodwill are old enough. I'm trying to finish an art project for my sister's birthday three months late, and none of the collars or belts match the pictures I found at the antique store in Tulsa. To my right, a woman makes brief eye contact and returns to looking at the books.

I stop, and look again. She's thin and grey-haired, but her hair has a youthful cut. Her skin is too smooth, I think. I'm stuck trying to figure her out. Snatch another glance. Her arms and shoulders are too young. I'm trying to not be rude. I hate staring at people; it makes me feel gross. But I keep snatching glances. Her hair is definitely grey, but she's definitely too young for it. She's wearing an unflattering brown t-shirt dress, but that wouldn't tell me anything. The long tribal tattoo showing between her shoulder blades at the scoop of the dress, however, does.

I leave. She's still there, in the back of my mind, though. My mind is vacillating. Should I talk to her? What would I say? I circle the whole store. I haven't talked to a woman--not as a single man--for years. If I ever had game, I don't have it now. I walk back over, see she's still looking at books. Anybody who is that dedicated to finding a book can't be a bad person. Right?

"Hey, just curious--"

"Oh!" She turns to face me. She has a nose that is just at the juncture between large and too large. She has soft blue eyes. She looks thirty, and she's beautiful.

"Did you choose grey hair, or did it choose you?" What an awkward opening salvo. She repositions, laughs, and touches her hair.

"It just happened this way, actually."

"I would--"

"It's genetic; my mother went grey the same way, so I was doomed, as it turns out."

"I would choose grey over bald in a heart beat."

"Oh, you're not so bald."

"It's coming. I'm just preparing myself."

"They say it's your mother's brother who determines."

"And he's bald as a cue ball."
"Oh no! At least you have all this." She's smiling. It feels like a human conversation. She's not afraid of me.
"I've been planning on shaving my head and keeping the beard." I pull on it, a thing I never understood when I saw men do it, but which has now become an unconscious habit. "I'll probably look like Jebediah from Iron Man. You know, the villain."

"Well, it's better than no hair at all, right?'
"Right. I chose this look because I'm going to be in a play, and I have to look Civil War."

"Very cool!" She turns to a boy who has approached us. He looks seven. It's monday, and I don't know why he isn't in school. 

"Look at his beard!"

I pull the corner of my mustache up and touch my eyebrow like a goof. We all laugh at how long it is. I say goodbye and walk away.

Ten minutes later, I'm back in the parking lot. I charge inside. I walk through the whole store, just to guarantee it. She's gone. There was a ninety percent chance she was with someone, and I lack the courage to find out until it was too late. I don't mind that she's older than I am, probably, or that she has a son, or that I won't be in the same part of the country for the rest of the summer. I don't drink coffee or tea, but I would ask for her number regardless of my dislike of that cliche first meeting. The entire trip home I develop wild fantasy situations in my head for how badly it could have gone. I re-imagine the conversation the way I want again and again. I keep telling myself that anybody that confident and light-hearted is so certainly in a relationship that my chance of even being on her radar was less than one in a thousand. I have to tell myself this because I forgot to look at her hand. I have to tell myself this because the moment I walked away, I wanted to turn back. I have to tell myself this because this is not the first time I have walked away from someone.

I worked with her at Southern. We shared a tiny office space for the employees of the faculty, and we graded papers every Tuesday at the same time. I remember laughing and talking for so long that her boss walked in and gave me the evil eye for about two minutes, just to make sure I would shut up and work for once. She and I clicked, but by the time I realized what was happening, it was April, and I would be gone for the summer. I kept telling myself that I would ask her out for a date in August, first thing.

That final Tuesday, the last time I saw her my sophomore year (there was no way to know that), it was raining. I walked ten minutes away and decided to cut into the woods behind campus. It was so beautiful and quiet, but all I could think about was the off-hand comment she had made: "I don't like rain." She would like this rain, and maybe she would put up with it because of me. I vacillated for those ten minutes and then decided to try my luck. I ran pell-mell back to the office, ducked into the doorway and saw--an empty seat. She always worked later than I did, but today she must have gotten off early. I was going to ask her. I swear it.

I walked back out into that cloudy drizzle and meandered through the woods for an hour before I got too cold to keep going. I was melancholy, and with good reason. I blew it.

That summer, she met someone and they were steady for nearly a year. I moved on with my life and rarely saw her at work. I'm chased by this memory, still. I'm constantly bothered by "what if." This walk in the rain, this empty office, this moment led me to two relationships and an anguished sigh in a Goodwill book section.

I walk from the store into the blaze of an early summer day. It had taken me five minutes to find the courage to talk to her and ten minutes to remember that we would never see each other again unless I did something about it. It will take me years to forget. She is the first person I would have asked on a date since 2012, and it's still because of the first person I would have ever asked on a date.

My thumb touches my ring finger again, where my wedding band used to live. Old habits.