Surprise Visit

When you're really into someone, and you're as incapable as I am when it comes to romance, it's inevitable that you'll eventually screw up. You end up spending a lot of time thinking about all of the things that you could have done better, all of the things you could have avoided, and all of the things that you would do if you were given a second chance. When that second chance comes as a surprise, you're left with only your wits.

Whenever I pictured myself seeing Betsy again, I didn't imagine myself wearing a blue polyester vest.

When I last saw Betsy, I managed to...actually, I managed to not see her at all, which was the problem. She and I had been in touch through scattered e-mails, but we hadn't really had much contact with each other since she had made her exit.

I certainly wasn't prepared for a surprise visit, but I also wasn't happy that she showed up out of nowhere.

I was working in my aisle, moving stock off of my cart and onto the shelves, when I turned around to see it. Betsy was stalking slowly up the aisle like a velociraptor, ready to pounce on my back and devour my corpse. The fact that she froze, hunched over, in the middle of an empty aisle, in an effort to make herself invisible to me, is part of the reason that I missed her so much. She was so ridiculous in all the most endearing ways.

Betsy would reveal that she was just in town for the day, either visiting some of her friends from the city or doing some shopping for whatever friend's birthday was coming up, and had decided to drop by her old stomping-grounds to see if anyone she knew was still hanging around.

We would have a brief discussion about work-related topics, and what she was doing now that she had finished school, and then I would be interrupted by a customer.

Betsy nodded me ahead, indicating that she would still be there when I was finished with the customer, and, sure enough, she was browsing through the aisle by the time I got back. If it had been anywhere near my break at that point I would have found a way to take her for coffee, but I had just gotten back from my break when she had shown up, and I wasn't sue for another one for almost three hours.

Naturally, I asked her what she was doing once my shift was over, but it turned out that she was in a bit of a hurry and was heading back home long before I would be off work.

As the store got steadily busier during her brief visit, we said our goodbyes, I gave her a very short and extremely awkward hug, and she took her leave from my life once more, though she promised to continue to keep in touch.

For the next year her surprise visits would continue in this fashion, but, unfortunately, she would find herself surprising no one, as she had a tendency to either arrive while I was away on break, before I had arrived for the day, or after I had just left for the day.

Eventually, she would start sending me a message to ask if I was working on a specific day. And that would be the next time I would see her.