Decade

We're sitting across from each other at a booth in the back of the diner where we went on our first date ten years ago. We talk about things so random I know I won't remember them later. I feel like I know him again, like he's not just an ex-boyfriend I'm seeing for the first time in eight years.

The silence between us was broken five months ago, when he searched the internet on a whim, plugging nearly forgotten names into his computer. "It seems impossible that you've gone on living a life separate from mine," he wrote when he found me. "Somehow I'd always thought that when you left, you'd simply stopped existing."

Looking at him, I'm faced with the reality of how foreign he has become. "Your smile is crooked," I announce in the middle of an unrelated sentence. "Has it always been that way?" He can't say for sure if his smile has changed. "It's strange to me, you know? It's almost like it bothers me. This not knowing about these things. I mean, did I never know your smile, or did I just forget?"

"It was a long time ago," he reminds me.

"We were young. Practically babies, right? Just teenagers."

* * * * *

Five months ago, I was laying in bed next to my boyfriend. He slept quietly, with his arms pulled in tightly to his chest. Smothered by the silence, I got out of bed and creaked my way down the stairs. With the press of a button, the computer whirred to life, glaring brightly in the pre-dawn darkness. When I opened my email and saw that name waiting in my inbox, my body went blank, forgetting everything it was supposed to be doing in that moment. I opened the email doubtfully. "I hope you remember me," he'd written.

* * * * *

"I was in town two years ago," I tell him as the waitress places our plates in front of us. "I was driving from Seattle to Albuquerque and made a stop here to see my grandma. A friend of mine was living about twenty miles away from here at the time, so she came to see me and we walked around downtown that day for a couple hours. I remember they had all those stupid painted cows all over the place. The charity ones? We took all these stupid pictures with them. God, I can only imagine what the locals must have thought of us. I assume they still hate tourists? Anyway, I saw you that day."

He pauses in the middle of a bite, his fork left suspended in front of his mouth. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. We were cutting through the park from the far side of the square and I saw you sitting at a table at that outdoor caf� next to the old theater. You were with some people I didn't recognize."

"Why didn't you come talk to me?"

"I was going to. I really was. I saw you and froze for a second, then pointed you out to my friend and explained who you were. She kept telling me it was fate, and I should go talk to you because we were probably soul mates."

"But you were already with the boyfriend then, weren't you?"

"Yeah, but she's like that. And I think the boyfriend and I were 'on a break' or something, you know? Definitely not living together yet. Anyway. I really was gonna do it, but then I couldn't figure out how. I always do the whole best case/worst case scenario thing in my head, and when I did it that day, I decided there was too much to lose. Best case scenario: you remember me, we talk, maybe get lunch, become friends again. It's great, you know?"

"And worst case?"

"You have no clue who I am. I realize that the stuff that was so important to me meant little or nothing to you. I walk away dejected and forgotten, with a totally ruined concept of something that's like this little sparkle in the past."

"That's a pretty bad worst case," he laughs. And totally improbable."

"Yeah, but I couldn't risk it in the end. I thought the best case was unlikely too. The most likely scenario would be that we'd remember each other, we'd say hello and maybe catch up for a few minutes. It'd be awkward in the way talking to someone you used to sleep with is always awkward, and then I'd walk away. The memory still would have been tarnished, you know? I wanted the glass case effect . . . like in Catcher in the Rye, when Holden says that you should be able to put some things under glass so they never change. I didn't want you to have changed, but of course you've changed�ten years, right?�and I didn't know if it would be for the better or for the worse."

"So what did you do?"

I look him straight in the face, deadpan. "I hid in the Thrift Mouse."

"You're kidding." We both laugh.

"The sad thing is that I'm dead serious. I figured I knew enough to be happy. You were still here; you were still alive; you looked the same. You looked good. Happy, you know? You were laughing at something. So I ducked into the Thrift Mouse and imagined a good life for you. By the time we left, you were gone."

"You really should have said something to me."

"I know. As soon as we came back out of the Mouse I knew I'd fucked up. I panicked, you know? I do stupid shit like that and always regret it. Not knowing is always worse than knowing, even if it means knowing the worst. At least it won't eat away at you, right? For the rest of the afternoon I kept hoping we'd see you again. I would have been prepared for it, at least. I think you just caught me too off-guard. Which is ridiculous, considering I was in your hometown. You'd think I would have had some notion that seeing you was a possibility. But I really didn't."

"This might he seem unrelated," he says, "but what kind of life did you imagine for me?"

* * * * *

I had replied to his email that same night, writing one three times as long as his. I hesitated before hitting the "send" button, worrying I'd been too effusive. I sent it anyway. I'd already learned that it was better to say too much than too little.

The next day at work I wondered if I'd imagined it all. I told a coworker all about it, thinking that saying it out loud would make it more concrete. "Maybe you're soul mates," she said, eyes opened wide as she moved a stirrer through her pale coffee. When I got home that night, I looked in my inbox again, just to make sure his email was still there.

* * * * *

"The thing I'll never understand," I tell him, "is how you walked on water." He raises an eyebrow at me, almost seems to frown. "The night of the flood. No one could go anywhere. Most of the roads were closed�my own mother couldn't get home that night. I was all by myself, and you just appeared. There's no way you could have walked. I mean, it was way too far to have walked, right? And besides, it was dark and pouring down rain."

"Do you really wanna know?" he smiles at me.

"I do, but don't tell me. It's one of those things where not knowing probably really is for the best. You'll always seem magical for that, you know? It was hopelessly romantic. Nothing else is like that once you're an adult."

"I never hear 'Sleepwalk' without thinking of you." He reaches over, touches the back of my hand, then pulls away and busies himself with piling his napkin and silverware on his empty plate.

* * * * *

We stayed up all night, hiding from the rain. "This. This right here," he said, kissing a tiny mole high on my stomach. "This is mine, ok?"

I ran my fingers over the spot in question, trying to see it�see myself�through his eyes. "Why this?"

"No matter what happens, no matter who we become or what we are to each other, I'm always gonna remember this little mole. As long as I remember it, it's mine."

* * * * *

We stand outside the restaurant in a moment as awkward as any first date. "Do you want to do something else?" I ask, taking a half a step closer.

He inches back and smiles a wry smile. "I should probably get going, actually. You know what I mean? You should call the boyfriend anyway�let him know you're alive." He pats my shoulder. The kiss of death.

I turn my head down and cock it, looking at him sideways through my eyelashes. "The first cut is still the deepest."

"But there wasn't any cut between us, and you were certainly never in it enough for it to be deep." He pauses, reading my face. "It was puppy love at best; time just makes you remember it differently. You're a romantic like that."

"Maybe it's you who remembers it differently. I know what it was for me." I tap my chest. "You were the smartest, funniest guy I knew. I adored you. You were my first tiptoe down the gangplank."

"Ten years ago, though. Ten."

"It sure does sting for ten year-old puppy love."

* * * * *

He called one night when I was watching my cousins�two scrappy little redheads with a penchant for smiling devilish smiles. "I'm babysitting," I told him. "Sorry."

"I can help," he offered.

He spent the evening lifting my cousins in the air, swinging them around as they shrieked with happiness. "Again! Again!" they demanded, banging on his legs with their sticky hands. He caught my eye over their heads and smiled a private smile. I loved him then. Loved him in the way you can when you're young and green and standing close enough to reach out and touch the boy who is making your heart open up for the very first time.

For weeks afterward my cousins asked about him. "Where's your boooyfriend?" they asked, drawing the word out. "When's he coming back?"

* * * * *

At my rental car, he tells me it was nice to see me, avoiding his rejection and my embarrassment. "Goodbye," he finally says, and turns to go to his own car.

"I've changed my mind," I announce loudly. He turns, raises an eyebrow. "I do want to know. About the storm. How you got to my house. I want to know."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I say, nodding. "I am."

He walks back over and leans in to whisper. He runs his knuckle back and forth on a spot high on my stomach, his lips so close that they brush my ear like a kiss.