“No reservation,” I told the hostess.
“No problem.” She smiled at me as she looked around the restaurant, chairs and tables mostly empty, a low chatter echoing from a handful of patrons sipping wine and nibbling cheese on a cold November night.
I followed her to a small wooden table in the middle of the room; I hung my black peacoat on the back of my chair and sat down, waiting. I looked around at the burgundy bottles lining the oak shelves. I picked at my red nail polish. You arrived late. I made an excuse for you. I hadn’t been nervous for a date in awhile. I took it as a good sign that I was. It was date two. I would have made any excuse you asked me to.
We spoke of God, and family, and politics, and travel, and languages, and religion. I had never met anyone so interesting before. It felt like talking to my best friend, equally comforting and challenging. The voices around me traveled somewhere far away.
Fueled with the courage of a glass of wine, I leaned in to catch a whiff of your cologne. I looked at your hands and wondered what they would feel like on me. I looked at your eyes and wondered if you wondered what I would feel like in your hands. I felt the speed of Earth and the electricity of lightning. I gave you access to my every dream and secret and fear.
I drank more wine. You drank more whiskey. Suddenly, we were the only people left in the restaurant; everyone else had retired to their home for the final whispers of the weekend. We closed the restaurant, and still, we would not release the night. We walked. We talked. We kissed. We stood against the brick facade of a corner in the West Village. We kissed again. You lit a cigarette. A yellow taxi drove by. You walked me to the train. We said goodbye.
Home, and alone with my thoughts, hope battled fear. Was this it? Was this that thing I had been looking for? Or would I, once again, face the disappointment of a precious “almost” slipping through my fingers?
I bet my entire life’s savings on hope.
There was magic in the air that evening. It was comfort, excitement, understanding, and intrigue all at once. An infinity of contradictions woven together to create an elusive feeling I had longed for, for so long.
We were to be married in Paris. I would wear a long, elegant dress. You would wear a suit. There would be scarlet roses. These were the thoughts that hope instilled in me as the battle in my mind raged on.
Of course, two weeks later, it was fear who took the victory. We did not marry. I did not wear the dress. There were no roses. All that remained were text messages, unanswered, and floating somewhere in the ether, unreciprocated feelings, questions, complete confusion. I braced myself for the disappointment of another precious “almost.”
Did lightning strike that November night, I ask myself, exactly one year later? Or was it my imagination?
How many times can lightning strike before it kills me?