Every now and then, you really just...connect with someone. From the moment you first meet them, first lock eyes, there's just a spark between the two of you that makes you speechless. This is the story of that girl, and the day she gave me a chance to catch her. This is also the story of the day she got away.
One of my first nights at work, I met Betsy. The first thing I noticed about Betsy was how insanely attractive she was. The second thing I noticed was that she was using a slew of cosmetics samples draw designs all over her arms. As I got to know Betsy through our shared work experiences, closing almost every night together, I learned that she was very smart, incredibly artistic, and hilariously quirky in all the right ways. I didn't quite realize how well our personalities meshed until she caught me reading an Archie comic; as I saw her look from me, to the comic, and back to me, I worried for a moment that she would shatter the perfect image I had of her by sneering and wondering, either to herself or aloud, what kind of loser I was. Instead, her eyes lit up, and she asked me "what shit [was] going down in Riverdale today?" From that day on we started having all sorts of insanely nerdy inside-jokes that, more often than not, got us in trouble with our supervisors when we got caught laughing with one another instead of working.
There were two main reasons that I didn't immediately jump up on Betsy. Well, three, if you include the fact that randomly mounting pretty girls is frowned upon in today's society. The first reason was that she had a boyfriend, though he was living a few towns away and they were doing the long-distance thing. The second was that she was way out of my league, and I would rather have just had her in my life as a friend than threaten the fun we had by embarrassing myself with asking her on a date. On a good day, when our management team was on our side, we could manage to have breaks together, and they would be the most entertaining conversations possible, the kind that last far longer than a normal break should (which is one of the reasons that we often got in trouble) and that felt far shorter than they were.
I would never dream of breaking up a relationship for pretty much any reason, but especially not for my own gain. But when I saw a few pictures of Betsy with her boyfriend, and noticed how much like me he looked, there was a part of me that was somewhat encouraged by my chances with this girl. Also encouraging was the fact that she often told me how much funnier I was than her boyfriend, and how much I loved her smile when I made her laugh.
Betsy and I had a mostly at-work relationship, and we were always really happy to see one another, because that meant that our night shift was going to be supremely entertaining, whether the night manager yelled at us or not. We also had a healthy online relationship, sharing e-mails like nobody's business, but we almost never saw each other outside of work to do anything that would have actually been fun. A part of me was worried that I would try to make a move if I saw her in the 'real world,' but I was also very content to just continue on with what we had and not try to screw anything up.
Then came the day that I dreaded: Betsy quit her job. The first words out of my mouth were "I have to take you out to celebrate!" and, fortunately, she was thinking the same thing. What I was not prepared for was her telling me that it would have to be soon, because she wasn't just quitting, she was moving, and she would be doing so within the next two weeks. She had three more shifts, none of which I was scheduled to work, and had several others functions and events to attend, and in the end, the only time that I would be able to see her off would be the morning she was leaving.
Betsy and I made plans to go to a restaurant for lunch, and we were going to meet at our store first, have a walk down to the park, maybe do something else before she had to leave. Since she was so busy packing, she asked that I send her a message with the time that I wanted to meet her, "if [I] still want[ed] to," and I agreed to do so. The following is an example of my own technological illiteracy that still haunts me to this day.
In the early days of my facebook profile, I apparently did not understand the wall-to-wall function. And what I meant to post to Betsy's wall, including when and where we should meet, I, of course, posted to my own. So I went to meet her, and I waited for roughly a half hour, just watching the time tick by, and finally I figured, maybe, she had gone straight to the restaurant. So I headed over there, couldn't see her, and went back to the store to wait once more. Eventually I assumed that she had been so busy packing that she simply forgot about me. It was only later that I found my own mistake.
I, of course, immediately sent her a message apologising for my fuck-up, and she responded with an "it's okay, maybe I'll come to visit sometime?"
I wasn't able to give Betsy the send-off I felt she deserved. But this wouldn't be the last time we crossed paths.
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