Mike was a friend of a friend before he was Mike. I knew him for years before I knew him at all. We'd show up at the same place, every few months, and I'd sit a few seats away or stand across a room and never think of him at all. We were thinking of others, wrapping up loose ends before we could start what would turn out to be our lives.
There was a night at On the Border, eating crappy Mexican food we didn't know was crappy because it was the only Mexican food we'd ever had, and it was just six of us at a table, and Mike and I were two of the six. I didn't even look in his direction, didn't even glance his way. Kyle's smile was just a few feet from me and I was too busy drinking a swirl margarita. He left early that night. Our mutual friend apologized for his bad mood. Huh, I thought. I didn't notice it.
Then there was March 2003, when my friend bounded into my room at the sorority house we both lived in and asked what I was doing for spring break. She wanted a group to head to a beach together, her boyfriend, her, a few other friends, and Mike. "Oh, well, see... I kind of wanted just a girls trip this year," I said. She looked disappointed. Her group headed to Florida and mine to Cancun where the drinks were horrible, the sun intense, and my heart none the wiser.
All those missed chances.
I like to think someone--God, the Universe, Kyle in a different form--was somewhere just laughing at us both. "Just wait," they were saying to themselves. "Oh just you wait."
I am intensely nostalgic, it's my way, and I could miss almost anything including all those single college days, poor and stupid and scared, when the boys were worse than the Mexican food. I miss all that growing up and slamming head-first into mistakes I'm sometimes reminded of during unfortunate Facebook searches. I miss some of those loose ends and the waist I had back then, too. But, mostly, I miss being on the threshold of the best in all my life. It was just about to start, right ahead of me, and I didn't have a clue.
I miss walking into that college bar, early December 2003, when I finally noticed Kyle's smile, drinking a beer and sitting on a couch a few feet from me. Huh, I thought. I see it this time. I wish I could stop time, right then, and slip that girl a note. It wouldn't give much away.
It would just say, "It all starts right now."
Babies, us two, in 2004