Chapter Text
Olive Garden, aged 31
Greg wasn’t coming.
Mary took a sip of water and checked her phone again. No texts, no missed calls. He wasn’t coming.
The absolute bastard.
She’d really thought they’d hit it off. He was funny, smart, a bit shy, and more than a bit attractive, with dark, heavy eyebrows, short, curly hair, two eternal spots of reddish pink dotting his cheeks. Striking. And friendly in an adorably self-deprecating way.
But here she was, sitting alone on one side of the table, looking at the empty chair before her.
The absolute bastard.
She checked her phone again.
The waitress came back to Mary’s table, eyeing her with a conflicting mix of knowing pity and irritation that a customer was taking up a table without actually paying any money. “Are you ready to start ordering?”
Mary directed her hard glare from her phone to the undeserving woman. “No, Charlene, I am not.”
The waitress sighed faintly and backed away from the table. “Just tell me when you’re ready.”
“Yup,” said Mary in a very condescending voice that even annoyed her. “I will.”
She returned to her obsessive checking of her phone, switching between playing Angry Birds and checking her messages, calls, email. Anything.
But Greg wasn’t coming.
She knew that. She checked her phone again.
She decided to call him. Yeah, it was pathetic, but it couldn’t be worse than sitting in an Olive Garden for an hour, waiting for her date to finally drag his ass through the door and explain why he was so late. She was starting to get stares from the other customers.
She scrolled through her contacts, searching for the Vs. “Greg, Greg, Greg,” she whispered as she went. Valley, Valley…where was he?
Found it. Greg Valley. She smirked in a sort of vicious satisfaction. Her finger hovered over his name. What could she say when she called him? “Hey, I just wanted to know if you stood me up”? Pathetic.
She called his number. And got his voicemail. “Hi, this is, um, Greg Valley. I guess I’m not available right now. If you could call me later or leave a message when the thing beeps, that would be gr—” Beep.
She rolled her eyes at Greg and ended the call. She wouldn’t leave a message. She couldn’t. As she returned to her contacts, a name caught her eye. Just below Greg Valley.
Francis Valois.
Something gripped her body—fear, shock, apprehension. She didn’t know. But her stomach twisted nervously and her palms began sweating. That name. The face it called up. The memories.
She tried to concentrate on Angry Birds. (Which, ultimately, resulted in her miserably failing at the level she was on). Her stomach was still clenched tight, and her head was throbbing, her heart thumping in her chest all because of some pixels on her phone’s screen. She couldn’t think of anything, and yet, she seemed to be thinking of everything.
Even worse, whoever had chosen the music to be played in the restaurant that day had decided to play an Elton John song. But not any Elton John song. No. Mary thought she would’ve been okay if “Rocket Man” had played. “Bennie and the Jets,” “Levon,” almost any song but…
I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind
That I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.
She capitalized the Y in her head. But she didn’t need to, really. Because she knew who she was picturing. She knew who the song was about now. If she hadn’t ever known.
So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue
Anyway, the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen.
Tears stung her eyes, and she rubbed them away angrily. She hadn’t forgotten about him. Hadn’t forgotten what color his eyes were. Blue. They were blue, a brilliant, sparkling blue. Warm and friendly and hopeful. A sunny day sky. She wondered if he’d forgotten about her, or if he remembered what color her eyes were. He’d probably forgotten her long ago. She’d never made the impression he’d made on her, the impression that followed her fucking everywhere.
Fuck fate and fuck destiny and fuck every other fucking thing about love.
Somehow, she’d managed to follow him. And every time he turned around and saw her, he never remembered. And she always would.
How could she love a person she’d met four times?
But she did. She loved the way his forehead curved, the way his hair parted, his beautiful blue eyes, the way he laughed, the lines on his face when he smiled.
And what if he loved someone else? Had always loved someone else? Most of Mary’s friends had kids; two or three. Did he have kids? He’d always seemed like the type of man who wanted to be a father. She could picture him standing behind two little children, grinning up at her from a Christmas card. And who was the mother? All of Mary’s friends were married, some for multiple years. He’d probably met a girl in college and fallen in love, married her when they graduated, earned a secure job with steady pay, bought a small, cozy house together where they could raise their children and let their medium-sized family dogs run.
And here Mary was, being stood up on one of her million dates, obsessing over a man who barely knew her. She thought she knew him pretty well.
He’d always been in the back of her mind, she realized. When she saw a flash of blond curls, heard a laugh like his, smelled rain and pencil shavings, she would stop and look around and feel relief and crashing, crashing disappointment that he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there.
He’d never been there.
He wasn’t coming.
He was gone before he ever could’ve been hers.
She scrolled through her contacts and stared at his name and number. And then she pressed it.
It rang once. She was insane. It rang twice. She was a dumbfuck romantic. It rang three times. Her heart started to pick up speed. It rang four times. She stopped breathing. It clicked as someone picked up.
“Hello?” Patchy through the cell phone, but familiar. “Who is this?”
“Hhhh,” she breathed out, trying to form a word.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Who is this?”
“Mary.”
“Who?”
“It’s me. Mary.”
Silence.
“I’m calling you first,” she said.