Lost in the Wind
“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
– Percy Bysshe Shelley
1
I rose to the wind rattling the windows, the sun peeking through the blinds. The windows in this old apartment were no match for March in New England. And I don’t like the cold!
I pulled the covers up, but just for a minute. Cold or not, I looked forward to Fridays.
After dressing for the weather, I gathered the usual suspects for my standard breakfast: fried egg, toast, Earl Grey tea, and a slice of Manchego cheese with three crackers. My friend, The Breakfast Routine.
“It’s sunny at the moment, but enjoy it while you can, because the clouds are moving in…” His voice almost chirpy, Chris Martin giving the morning weather was the kick-off point for my morning routine. Every thirty minutes: if I missed him here, I’d catch him there.
“With this storm moving in, temperatures will drop, the wind will pick up – gusts to 50 mile an hour…”
Yikes. I reached for a second sweater. My easy-looking Friday was starting to look less so. I loved my morning walk to work, and was not in the mood for bad weather.
My phone pinged with a text. As I picked it up, I remembered: Lunch with Janet. So, OK, bad weather AND, let’s face it, I was ambivalent about this date. I wasn’t sure I was in the mood to revisit old regrets.
Text from Janet:
Hi Rob! – Still on for lunch today?
I sent her back:
Yep! – Tequila Sam’s, see you at noon!
She sent me a thumbs up and a heart.
I put the phone down, and wrapped both hands around my hot mug of tea.
It was me that had broken things. I saw that now, and I had accepted it.
But now here she was, asking me to lunch. Is this all it takes to second-guess myself, yet again? Why couldn’t I leave well enough alone? And why couldn’t she, for that matter?
A storm was brewing outside, while inside my head was a murky jumble of emotions. I grabbed my laptop, headed out the door, and stepped into a fast wind under a heavy gray sky. I nearly lost my baseball cap. Ouch – the cold bit my skin with a slap in the face.
2
“Sometimes that means sex, I guess, yeah,” said Janet.
She looked at me over her lunch. This girl continues to surprise me. She was the last person I figured to be “friends with benefits” with anybody. Something had happened to her since we split up, or maybe, she was always like this, and I had missed it?
I had to find out. “So, what’s this guy look like, anyway?” Innocent enough.
She fished around her lettuce. “I dunno, average looking, I guess. Brown hair. About this tall. Average looking I guess.”
OK great, so, Joe Average had taken my place. Could she dig it in a little deeper?
“Oh come on, Rob – don’t pretend to care. You had your chances. You broke up with me.”
There – she had driven it deeper.
“Jimmy’s just a nice guy. He’s just easy to be with.”
I ordered a second glass of wine. Rare for me, at lunchtime – I’ve come to expect productive afternoons of myself, and don’t like anything undermining that.
“Just tell me – How come you were never so, uh, cavalier with me?” I asked her.
“Maybe because you didn’t want me to be,” she said slyly. “You wanted me all nice.”
“Why would I want you all nice?” I asked, genuinely wondering.
“Hmm I don’t know. Maybe it suited some fantasy of yours?”
She giggled. Maybe her finest trait. She straightened up in her chair and sang to me. “You need to break out a bit, Rob.”
God, she was beautiful. Why did I not notice this before?
Her voice softened. “Hey, don’t sweat it. Things change. Maybe we’ll actually get along better this way.”
“I miss you!” I felt like I blurted this out, but it was probably more of a whisper.
As the waitress took our check away, Janet leaned across the table, grabbed my arms, and said quietly in my ear: “You and I will always be connected.” She kissed my cheek.
3
I walked out of Tequila Sam’s on shaky legs, laptop over my shoulder, scarf up to my nose. My skin was no match for the March wind, stinging my face every fifteen seconds.
Janet’s words had made my ears tingle. She did always have a vision of the future, our future, and here again had brought it out to save us. I had written us off and laid us down. And now, with a kiss and a whisper, maybe we were a possibility again.
That second glass of wine had done me in. I had to punt the afternoon, so I texted Jay at the office that I was done, and headed home.
The wind through the buildings closer to the water came at me full bore now, and I had to lean in, and hide my eyes. But the way home from the bar was a bit sideways on the map from my commute from work, and maybe in haste, I headed down an unfamiliar street.
In an instant, a gust of wind flicked my cap from my head. By the time my naked head registered what had happened, the cap was twenty feet away. I watched it dance; thirty feet… Bye bye hat.
I didn’t care. I could swear I felt warm, despite the cold wind. Janet’s words? The wine? I daresay, there was a bit of sun, peeking from behind yet another office building. Maybe Chris the weatherman had missed one.
I rounded another corner, fought through another wind tunnel of brick and glass, and finally, found familiar buildings around me again. I wasn’t lost, just turned around a bit.