Summer Memories

A year or so after graduation I heard Potter died, a heart attack. I had intended to make the funeral but missed it. It was probably just as well, it would have been awkward now that I think about it. The last few weeks that summer had been gracefully brief. We went on like nothing had changed but it had, it was always on our minds, wondering and worrying. I looked up constantly for the girl, half hoping and half dreading I would see her, but I never did. None of the hands worked through the next season either and there is no telling where they all went. Life goes on.

I've thought about the girl and the incident over the years of course, (incident; the word hardly does what then girl endured and we experienced justice but I've given up trying to find something more appropriate) it brings both pleasant and sometimes troublesome emotions. Pleasant when I'm single and horny and troublesome when I'm in love with someone and legitimate affections make me feel like a total asshole for being part of that girl's ordeal. It doesn't plague me though and I can go months without it even coming to mind. It was almost twenty years ago now and sometimes I think it will fade, eventually.

Last week I traveled back to town to meet up with an old friend who's mother passed away. It was just a quick trip to pay my respects, attend the funeral, and catch up a little then return home. The night I arrived my buddy offered dinner and I accepted, an eight-hour drive and a single lunch stop behind me. We were sitting there over a steak and beer when a couple sat down at the table next to ours. Yeah, I won't play around with any teasing build up here. It was Trent and his wife. Her.

Evidently my buddy didn't know them, despite it being a fairly small town, as through an hour of dinner we never exchanged so much as a word. Nor did Trent recognize me apparently, twenty years and a few pounds retaining my anonymity. I watched her plenty though, actually getting caught by my friend more than once. I waved it away as just me checking her out, she was still a looker, but it was far more than that to me.

It seemed incredible that I could be sitting here less than five-feet from that same girl. She had aged gracefully, her hair still long and about the same color. She still sported freckles across her nose and cheeks but they were fewer now. She was still thin, her legs shapely beneath the knee length dress, but she had grown an impressive bust line during the intervening years, either from children or implants I couldn't tell. I tried but I couldn't keep my eyes off her, actually drawing a mocking snicker from my buddy.

We finished our meal, sat through coffee, and were about to leave when she finally looked my way. My friend was paying the check and I was gathering my coat when I took what I longingly thought would be my last good look at her. My eyes met hers this time, looking right into me. Her face was blank, seeming to just glance around at her surroundings but they were locked onto mine with startling intent. She knew me, she remembered. The recognition was obvious even through her vacant stare. Her eyes were saying it loud and clear. I wanted to look away badly but didn't, for a few brief seconds there she was, young again, standing atop that truck looking down at me and I felt again all the same intense swirl of emotions. I took a breath and played out something I had imagined countless times over the year. I swallowed hard and silently moved my lips to articulate "I'm so sorry" to her, putting as much genuine emotion in my expression as I could muster.

She turned back to her husband then, answering some question he had formed but then slowly looked back to me. After a moment's continuation of that plain blank stare, she just smiled, more with her eyes than her lips. It wasn't a kind or forgiving smile but a knowing and almost impishly provocative smile. There was no condemnation in it, of that I'm sure, more the recognition of a shared secret. She shrugged slightly, the smile there an instant and then gone.

A minute later and I am on the road, the restaurant and the girl, the woman I suppose I should now say, receding behind me. My heart had been racing in that brief reunion, engorged memories suddenly surfacing in a hot flash . It was slowing now and all the nervous energy replaced with a sense of longing but for what? Was it for the woman back there?

My mind races with the meaning of that smile, the subtle tilt of her eyebrows and playful shrug. Had there been an invitation in them? Could it be she had carried the memories of that day as dearly as I had? Tawdry possibilities fill my head with ideas and intentions I know will only bring me trouble so I'm headed home, suppressing the lingering excitement, determined to leave the memories as they are, sweet, exhilarating but in the past.