it seemed so simple

​It seemed so simple how they met. She on a cruise with her family and he at a bar near where the ship docked for the day. Casually he sat on his stool leaning over the bar grasping his brown beer bottle with his right hand. Slumped and slightly defeated his look said to her, as she entered with her sister. He didn’t notice her, not at first. As she and her sister crossed behind him he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror before him that sat awkwardly behind the bar. His eyes opened a bit more, but he did not turn around. He tracked her by her voice, or what he assumed was hers. He hadn’t noticed the sister and was unsure if she was with a male companion. He remained in his pose as he heard the first laugh and chills danced along his spine. This forced him to sit up abruptly, which gave her what felt like a long awaited reason to glance over. Their eyes met. He, ..he, dropped his shoulders and a solemn expression dripped onto his face. She, … she, nervously smiled and looked away as her pulse quickened and she became unknowing of how to respond. She felt a longing and a sadness that she could not determine. Slowly her gaze found his again. His face had not changed and the sadness was flowing into her. She crept up to the bar beside him and placed her left hand on his right shoulder. She slowly tightening her grip before he lifted his head and simply said, “I’ve found you.”

15 years later, he again, sitting slumped at a local watering hole where they lived, beer clutched in his right hand and his left hand softly laid on the bar with his silver wedding band exposed, she walks in unknowing he was there. Again, she walked behind him and he saw a quick glance of the woman he had devoted his entire self to since the first glance in a mirror behind a bar. His posture changed this time. He sat up, a smile charged through him and developed on his face. He was rejuvenated and full of life and hope. He placed his beer down with his right hand, slowly turned his stool in the direction in which she had walked. He lifted his left hand off of the bar and his right hand ever so immediately grasped the wedding band as his emotions took flight. Once the stool met its stopping spot caused by his foot on the rung of the stool his eyes found the object of his happiness. His fingers still laced around his wedding band, his heart so full of feelings, of desire and happiness, he saw her face; he saw her eyes looking at him. Every ounce of his breath, blood, emotion, and being fell beneath the stool, dripping out of his soul and his body. That look. That one look. That look that he had believed was his, was no longer. He could not gather his physical self to do anything. He simply just floundered to keep his balance. Not because he had drank too much, in fact he wasn’t much of a drinker, but because like a car sputtering the last ounce of gas and then dies, is what his mind, body and heart just experienced. She never saw him that day. He found his way out of the bar before she noticed him. He never saw her again. He never heard from her again. He never told any one of what he saw. He packed his things and he was gone. He left the state. He left , in his words, everything behind, because she, she was everything. He never recovered and he never was able to deliver happiness to his eyes, his self or allow himself to be steady within his emotions. 

She, she left that bar with her male companion that day. He drove her to a fine dining restaurant and as he walked around his car to open her door, she glanced at her wedding ring and felt every piece of love she had ever had for him. As the male companion opened the door, she slowly and awkwardly rose from the seat and met his gaze. “I didn’t know what was missing in my marriage when I agreed to this date, but I know now. It’s me, I am missing from my marriage. He is the reason my blood runs through my body. I am sorry to you, but I must go.”

With that, she closed the car door and walked past the male companion as he looked annoyed and confused. 

She walked the first block and quickly realized that with every step she was going faster and faster to get home to him. She was running and the wind was chapping her cheeks and she did not care. She dodged the occasional people on the street and tried to manage the streets as she crossed them, until it her. The blue Honda Accord struck her so intensely that when her head hit the windshield her legs and torso were already bouncing off the roof. She died instantly. 

He, … he grieved his loss for the rest of his breathing existence never knowing that she was gone. He longed for her to find him, but never knew that her last act was running straight to be in his arms.