Have you ever been obsessed with a person? Like, not in the ultra-creepy, stalker-ish way. Just in the way that makes it hard to think about anything else. Like no matter what you do they’re always there. A watermarked thought placed over all your other thoughts, always there no matter what else was going on.
That was Loren.
I wondered constantly about where she was, what she was doing at that exact moment. I knew I wanted to see her again. So much so that I found myself back at that same bench at that same park at the same time on the Tuesday of the very next week. It was as if my body was on auto-pilot, flying itself there without my permission.
I guess I was hoping she’d be there, even though I knew it was a long shot. And when I got there and didn’t see her, disappointment washed over me like a bucket of ice water.
Still, I sat down. I got out my notebook and a pencil, but before I’d even flipped to a new page, I heard movement beside me. I looked up to see her smiling at me. I smiled back. She said hi to me and I said hi back. But then we were both quiet for a while. Like neither one of us had anything to say. And I was scared for a minute. Scared I was losing her. Losing someone I’d never even had. We were strangers to each other. That’s all we were, really. Yet somehow it hadn’t felt like it the week before.
Then, finally, she spoke. “To be honest, I was kinda hoping you’d be here.” Her cheeks turned the color of roses and she bowed her head to stare at the ground.
“To be honest,” I replied, “So was I.”
And all of a sudden things went back to the way they had been the other day, the two of us talking as if we’d known each other since the day we were born. We took a walk together. The path went all the way around the park, encircling it and probably totaled about two miles all together. We walked the whole thing three times before we noticed how late it had gotten. Neither of us wanted to, but we said goodbye and turned to walk in opposite directions home.
We weren’t even ten feet apart when she turned around and jogged to catch up to me. “There’s actually something I really wanted to ask you today,” she said.
“Go for it,” I replied, giving her my most encouraging smile. She looked nervous. She was staring straight ahead, avoiding eye contact. And she was picking at her fingernails absentmindedly.
“I…” She closed her eyes and I could hear her take a deep breath. “I wanted to know if maybe you would want to go get dinner together sometime. Or lunch, maybe. Or we could see a movie. I don’t know.” The words came out fast as lightning. It was kinda cute.
I couldn’t help but giggle. Although it was clear almost immediately that that wasn’t exactly the most appropriate response. Horror flashed across her face as she visibly braced herself, probably for rejection.
“I think that would be nice,” I said quickly before the poor girl had a heart attack. And immediately her entire face lit up. Her eyes seemed greener and a smile appeared on her lips that showed all her teeth. I gave her my phone number so we could figure out the details later and walked home in a daze.