RICK ANDREWS

I guess the big thing from this week was that I went on another date. I don’t want to get over my skis, but it went pretty well. Might turn out to be nothing, but I’ve got that hopeful feeling you get down in your stomach for some reason. 
        I got home from work around six, which gave me time for a quick jog. Did the standard loop—nice for about two minutes. Pea soup out there. Took an efficient shower, bodywash all over, even on top. I’m not sure I’m ever going to be a fancy shampoo person like you hoped, but I’m staying open minded. 
        I went with the one plaid shirt I know looks good on me. Started with jeans, but got paranoid that I’d look too casual, so I switched to khakis. And I put the watch on, so you know I must have been nervous. I like having it on, if only to have something to play with. 
        I knew she’d emailed me the name of the restaurant—she’d mentioned it was near a Ted Drewes, so I searched “Sarah” “Ted Drewes” in my inbox. I found her email, but at the bottom of the search list was a thread of ours from high school, the summer after senior year. I was curious about how “Sarah” and “Ted Drewes” factored in, so I read it. We’d gone to get Ted Drewes, and in another email in the chain you wrote how your friend Sarah Melli wasn’t going to like college very much because her favorite activity was asking people where they were going to college, and how boring that would be once she was at school. “Where are you going? Here? Me too!” 
        I forgot how funny your emails were! It made me so fond of you. You never wrote in that way where someone considers themselves a good writer and they are trying to show off. You were just naturally funny. 
        Reading my response was so embarrassing. I was trying so hard to make you like me, even though we were already dating! I don’t remember being so desperate. Maybe that was an age when I was trying to impress everyone and I couldn’t tell. It was strange that I recognized you more than I recognized myself in the email. 
        By the time I finished reading the thread, it was already 7:50pm. I texted Sarah to say I was running behind and that I was sorry. 
        You know I hate driving stressed, so when I got in the car, I took two deep breaths and accepted that I would be tardy. I caught myself reflexively thinking of plausible excuses, like saying that I got stuck at work, but I stopped. I’m trying to not make up a lie if I don’t have to. Not that I planned on letting her know that I was late because I was re-reading old emails, but I would just say that I really was sorry and not provide any excuse. That felt kinder to me, but I wasn’t sure how it would feel to her. These are the kinds of things you worry about on dates as an adult, I’m discovering. 
        Sitting at a light, I tried to remember more about when we’d gone to Ted Drewes. We went there many times, obviously, but I remember that day from the email in particular because before we got custard, we went to the roller rink that used to be nearby. Everyone else was in middle school and skated circles around us. I know I played that game in the arcade where you put tokens in that little “flipper” and try to shoot them up into a jungle. There were different holes worth different amounts of tickets. It was right next to that game where you put the token in the slot and it rolled inside, and there was a lever pushing back and forth and the more tokens it knocked off the ledge, the more tickets you got. There were always tokens hanging alluringly off the edge. It seemed like you could just run up and shove the machine and knock down forty tokens; maybe that’s why it was right by the prize desk. 
        We changed ten dollars and went to town, me on the flipper and you on the roller. You kept reaching over and shoving me on the hip, and I remember how much I liked that, being touched on the hip by you. Afterwards, we exchanged what little tickets we’d earned for some fake poison dart frogs and a couple of those small rubber cups you’d turn inside out and they’d snap back with a jump up into the air. 
        We got Ted Drewes to go and brought it out here to the parking lot of this empty roadside office building. We made some jokes about this being “our spot.” I think the joke was that it wasn’t a very romantic place, which is true. But it does have some charm. It’s easy to park behind the building where no one can see you, and it’s on a little crest so the view from the picnic tables strikes out over the trees. It was unclear if the offices were even being rented. If they were, it must have been the kind of job that no one would come in on the weekend for. My memory is that we ate the Ted Drewes with the stick. I always disliked that taste of the little wood stick, but there was something wrong about using the plastic spoons. I picture us seeing the sunset but, as the building faces south, the view couldn’t have been as dead on as I imagine it. We probably hooked up in your car. 
        Before I realized it, I was parked at the restaurant with that alarming discovery that you have been driving without concentration. 
        She looked really sweet, and didn’t seem too put out by my lateness. I didn’t give an excuse, but tried to make the apology seem genuine because I really was sorry that I was late. 
        We sat and chatted a bit. She’s in technology consulting and focuses on green technologies, so she’s doing a lot of solar and wind out here, I guess. I think you would like her. She has an easy way of talking about something that she knows a lot about; she doesn’t go on and on like you’re not even there, but she’s also not bored of her life or apologizing for existing. I liked that. Actually, I wrote down a few positives, just an exercise I’ve been doing, let me see if I can find it. 
        Therapist recommended, by the way. Been heavy on the gratitude stuff. I think it’s helping. 
        Okay, here we go. I wrote down that I liked how comfortable she made me feel. I liked that her hair was a length where she kept trying to tuck it behind her ears, but it wouldn’t stay for long. I liked that she seemed like a genuinely curious person. She talked about looking after her neighbor’s dog while she was sick, and I got the sense that she was one of those people who was giving of their time and energy. I liked that she seemed to enjoy talking to me. I liked her bag; she had a PBS tote that looked like it was thirty years old. I wondered if it was her mother’s or something. And this might not make sense, but I liked the way she let time pass—what I mean is: she didn’t rush to fill up every bit of silence, but she didn’t hesitate either. Talking together had this easy, relaxed rhythm. 
        After we finished, she asked if I wanted to grab some Ted Drewes. That shouldn’t have thrown me, since I knew we’d be eating across the street, but it did. I said yes because I didn’t want to be awkward and I did want to keep spending time together. We left our cars at the restaurant and crossed the state road. We both got vanilla and sat down at one of the open tables in the middle with the reflective silver top and toadstool seats. I must have gotten quiet because she asked if I was ok. 
        I didn’t really know how to respond. I don’t want to be closed off, but I don’t think I’m imagining this pattern where people tend to pull away. It’s like: you’re considering buying a house, and then you find out that the roof needs to be redone. It’s just another thing to worry about, so why not find a house that’s just as good with a working roof? 
        But I’m trying to have candor. To be candid? They both sound weird. I’m trying to accept the consequences of confronting reality with people rather than trying to live in a pretend one. She asked if anything was wrong. 
        She was sitting across from me at this tiny circular table, using the wooden spoon to eat the custard. I told her that I was feeling a little weird, but that it was absolutely nothing that she had done. She listened and let me work into it rather than nervously adding or over-empathizing; she just nodded with these kind eyes and kept eating the custard. I really liked that she kept on with the custard. 
        And I took another breath, and said the reason I was feeling weird was that when I had searched my inbox earlier for the restaurant name, I had found an email thread between me and my ex-wife back when we were in high school about a day where we had gone roller skating and picked up Ted Drewes from here, and that you had passed away two and a half years ago, and that it felt a little strange to be here eating Ted Drewes after thinking about that day. 
        I guess I got a little upset when I was trying to—the part I got choked up on, and this is what’s been happening lately—it’s not talking in any way about your death. It’s in describing some nothing, like a day we got ice cream. Frozen custard, sorry. I know, I know! 
        And she did something else I liked, which was that she reached out and grabbed my hand when she could tell that I was upset and held it while I finished telling the story. And that felt good, because often people freeze up and say they’re so sorry, and talk about how hard it must have been, or say that their friend’s grandfather died, etc. Everyone always says the same things. I believe that they mean them. They’re just words, though. 
        I think this week I put my finger on something: I don’t think that most people who meet at our age are good fits for each other as they grow. I think most people who meet at our age—nowadays—they don’t stay together and happy for as long as we did. 
        And I think what I’m coming to understand is that meeting someone as a teenager, it’s different than meeting someone as an adult. As a teenager, when you fall in love with someone, there’s this feeling of being swallowed whole by that person. 
        Maybe there’s a similar feeling when you fall in love as an adult, but maybe it’s different? You’re more complex, so there are more layers to percolate through for that love to soak into the soil. When you’re a teenager, you’re really quite simple. You present very complexly, but what’s complex is your defenses. Inside of those, you’re still so vulnerable and raw and scared. Maybe that’s why we fall so in love as teenagers. 
        But I guess adults who meet each other, they don’t fall for each other like that. Or if they do, my therapist was saying, that can be a bad sign, actually. 
        You and I had a relationship that morphed as we grew, and I think I’m appreciating that it is rare, that people who meet young often end up unhappy because there’s so much change you go through as you become yourself. 
        Sorry. I’m going on. She held my hand while I told her about you, and I apologized that I hadn’t mentioned anything about it. She said that I didn’t need to apologize. That put me at ease, but I did still start the egg timer in my head. I’ve been down this road before. Someone seems sympathetic and then a few dates in, they discover there’s no spark for them. Honestly, sometimes the more sympathetic they seem at first, the more they pull away, and then I feel like the one weird cucumber left on the shelf. 
        Not to make this into a therapy session, I know that that’s what actual therapy is for, but I sometimes worry that I’m a simple guy. Even though I’m a lot more multifaceted than I was when I was young, maybe I’m too simple for someone to really find intriguing. Maybe I’m not interesting enough for someone to picture spending their whole life with me. Or maybe I’m just not that attractive of a guy. I know I’m no Brad Pitt or anything. But I wonder if maybe some of my good qualities—which I definitely have—I wonder if they’re not enough for most people? 
        The Ted Drewes was crowded with lots of teenagers, but I didn’t feel embarrassed to be having an intimate conversation. I felt very taken care of in her presence, the way she listened. She doesn’t just sit there like a therapist and let you tie yourself in knots, but when it’s her turn to listen you can just really feel that she’s not waiting for her turn to talk, which is more than I can say for myself sometimes. 
        She said that she was glad I told her, and that she understood why I would feel weird about it. She asked if I wanted to go somewhere else and I said no, it was fine, it had just been on my mind, and I felt a lot better just talking about it. 
        We finished our custard and crossed the road again, which felt a little more fraught because it was fully night by then. 
        When we got back to the gravel parking lot of the restaurant—no lines painted on, by the way, I remember how much you hated that, especially if you were the first one to pull in, and you had to think about the whole future configuration of the lot just to park the car—it’s funny how I’ve taken some of your opinions on things like that and I say them now as if it was something I thought of—and I walked her over to her car and she came in and gave me a really good hug. She’s a different height than you were, which helps, I think. And she pulled away and had her hands on my hips and I asked if I could kiss her, and she blushed a bit and said that she appreciated me asking and that yes, I could kiss her. And I did, I leaned in and kissed her. Our lips met well and there was a hint of tongue but mostly it was a kiss with just the right amount of force, and it felt like we had been practicing together for a while. 
        We hugged some more after that. I told her I’d love to see her again soon and she said she wanted that as well, and we’ve been texting and I think we’re going to the SLAM later this week. I kind of like that she’s not funny, at least not in the way that you were. She has a sense of humor, but it comes out with more of a smile. 
        I know I’m not in the usual spot, but I figure you can hear me anyways, if you can actually hear any of this, which, you know, probably not. I don’t think you’re up there on a cloud leaning over on your elbows looking down, watching me like a tv. But I got curious to see if this place was still here, and it is, though I think the company name on the front is different. The picnic tables must be different, too. I remember them being wood, but these are that kind of over-hard plastic. It’s still a weirdly nice spot, and when I got out of my car and sat down on top of the table, it just felt like you were here with me. Or it feels like I can look over and picture you sitting on the top of the table with me, so I figure I’d do my normal check-in here instead. Maybe I’ll keep coming here in the future. I really don’t know what I believe, but it feels like you’re more here than you are there. 
        I can picture you so easily. How I remember you, at least. You were dweeby and excited. You knew everything about me back when that was the scariest thing in the world. You knew just how to nestle into my back in a big sweatshirt. Your kisses smelled like cigarettes when we were young and coffee when we both quit smoking. You made me do fun things like pull off into the parking lot of a random roadside office building. 
        It’s not a sunset per se, but the sky is doing something worth paying attention to. I hope if there’s existence in some form for you, there’s peace there, and there is no more pain. I hope if love fills my heart again, it fills you up somewhere out there, too.