Her long, straight red hair looked and felt like a blood-soaked dagger being withdrawn from his chest. He has only seen hair this red and this straight in one other place; his dreams. This was beyond a “thing” he had for red hair. This was the very reason for having this “thing” in the first place. Amidst the stacks of books at the Barnes and Noble, there she was; sitting with her legs crossed exactly as she used to cross them; at her ankles. Her posture was ballet-dancer upright and her neck was still as long and pale and utterly visible from every angle as he remembered it. She carried a handbag that revealed money was not an object because it was covered in someone else’s monogram. She was one of those women that knew what “season” she was and everything she wore reflected that. Her earthy browns and oranges could only look good on her transparent skin and flaming hair. She was reading a magazine that revealed nothing about her intellect. He remembered People magazines were neatly placed in the wicker basket next to her couch. She would always be a star-struck child that was as much interested in the latest Hollywood scandal as she was in Mozart. The Marriage of Figaro was her favorite….her favorite anything, and it became his too soon after they met. Whatever was in her head, he wanted to know it too. He read librettos and tried to quote Shakespeare with the same ease as she. He read non-fiction and eventually could spew off the Latin names of birds by merely listening to their calls as they walked through the woods together. All this was done for the woman sitting not twenty feet from him. A woman that he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. All this for the woman that loved someone else.
But fifteen years can and should change a face. The woman he was watching looked exactly like she did when they broke up in anger so long ago. It felt as if this was just a day after their explosive ending. He remembered the intensity, the screaming, the tears as he was being told in a million different ways that it was over. When she turned to leave, he knew that she didn’t mean it. She really loved him but it was clear that she was not going to get out of her situation for at least one of those million reasons. He couldn’t let that happen, but had no choice now. She drove away.
With S.W.A.T-like precision, he weaved around the stacks to get a better view. His heart beating into his throat as he wondered if there were cameras watching his actions. He noticed that she never looked up despite having tried a few times to cough out her name, “Jean!” while pretending to pull a book off the top shelf. She never blinked. But she didn’t look up because her name wasn’t Jean or that she didn’t hear him. No, Jean was always the ice princess. As cool as a frozen cucumber. For those very select few that were allowed into her ice castle, she was a normal human being with glimpses of a giddy child. For the rest of the world, she was the very definition of cold.
He played out the entire meeting in his head. He noticed that she still had her wedding ring on so either she was still married to him or she married someone else soon after their breakup. Whatever the case, this guy might still be in the store. He looked around at the magazine racks and noticed a few potential husbands. Possibly that guy trying to hide the fact, not very well, that he is reading a Playboy magazine. He tucked it facing the wrong way into the wrong section of the racks and turned around. He is pretty enough to be her husband and he definitely looks like she purchases his clothes.
Then, without notice, she stood up, tossing the magazine to the bench and began walking. Perhaps she did see her lurker and she was planning on getting away from her husband to meet in some obscure corner of the store. He was already beginning to think that the science fiction section was a good place to talk without being interruped. If even for a few seconds.
He raced around trying not to lose her. She walked, pretend-browsing style, making eye-contact with only book bindings. He was in the very next row and tried to follow her sound as it moved down the aisle. He rounded the corner and misjudged her proximity because she was rounding the corner at the same time. This was not the way he had dreamt about meeting her. They stood only a couple of feet apart from each other for only a few seconds but it seemed like an hour. Awkwardly, he said, “Jean?” and tried to smile. She stared some more, tilted her head and without blinking, said, “No.” Nothing else. “Oh, um, sorry,” he said as she walked past him and out of the store…alone.