Page 7 of Lovesick
Now, it seemed that afternoon had found a much more favorable place in her memories. It took confidence to laugh at your mistakes and find them genuinely amusing - even if that mistake was something as insignificant as spilling two glasses of tea during one lunch.
The Maggie I had dated for a while years ago had been funny, kind, focused, conversational, but just a tad overbearing. If I had changed, living in the same town with the same people and working the same job, how much had she changed from her experiences at Tulane?
I parked and walked inside. “A table for two, please,” I said to the waiter as he grabbed one menu.
He reached back into the holder for a second. “Right this way. Is a window booth okay?”
I didn’t care where we sat. I just smiled and said, “Yes, thank you.”
I sat holding the menus, asked for a water and began the wait. I knew where Maggie’s parents’ home was, and the drive here wouldn’t take her more than a few minutes.
Each minute was 60 seconds. Each second clung to the face of the clock over the bar, pleading with time not to leave it in the past. Each of these interminable amounts of time was enough for another customer to open the door, dragging my attention away from the various knick-knacks on the walls only to be disappointed.
Then a voice came from behind, “I’m with someone who has a table.”
“Maggie!” I spun around and sent her a wide smile as she sat down across the booth. “Hi. How was the parade last night?”
“Pretty great, actually. I didn’t remember it being so long, and there were some pretty incredible floats. There was this one…” she trailed off, eyes skating back and forth as she read the menu. “There was this one that looked like a hummingbird and a butterfly combined. And we got a ton of beads thrown to us between me, my mother and my grandma.”
“Wish I could have gone,” I said, although really, I wasn’t too bummed. After work, I had decided against trying to fight the crowds to go see the half-finished parade and gone drinking with friends I worked out with. We hadn’t had a bad time at all - any excuse to drink was a good one.
Speaking of drinks… “Can I get a draft beer? I see you have two for one.” I asked the waiter when he came over to take our orders. I made my selection off the back of the menu, then paused before handing it back. “Do you want one? It’s on me.”
“No thanks, I think I’m going to drive back to New Orleans later.”
“No problem.” I finished my order, deciding against a second beer for now. I could always get another one later. Two wouldn’t be enough to make it unsafe for me to drive.
Maggie also ordered wings, and chose a mild sauce to toss them in. She hovered over the menu, indecisive. “If I get fries, will you share them with me? I don’t want to eat a whole order.”
“Sure,” I told her, although I wished she had let me buy her a beer if she was going to share fries with me. It might have been a while, but I knew Maggie wasn’t the type to let a guy pay for her meal all the time - especially not when it wasn’t technically a date.
Once I had tried to convince her into letting me pick up the check occasionally, but she had stubbornly sent her own card back to make her point.So much better than a girl who always expects a guy to pay,I had quickly decided.
She ordered the fries with her wings and sat back with a sweet tea, glancing around. ”This place hasn’t changed at all since high school.”
“It’s the same crowd, too. High schoolers playing ball in the park across the street still come… because they can score a couple of drinks without being carded and catch their favorite games on TV.”
Maggie brushed a wave of dark curls away from the lemon on the rim of her cup. “Oh, I remember that. We would come here after the pickup games were over and take up half the tables. Remember how once a bunch of us girls had to come over here to get ice for that kid… What was his name? The one who stepped in a hole playing football and sprained his ankle?”
“Oh, Travis. He always said he was trying not to hurt the squirrel that ran out in front of him.”
“What a lame excuse,” she giggled. “I don’t know why so many of us went to get one bag of ice.”
“Oh, he never needed the ice for his ankle. He just needed it for his bruised ego. His girlfriend saw what happened and was more worried about him loosing his position as captain on the football team than helping him. So, he wanted to make her jealous by asking all you girls to go get him ice.”
Maggie’s eyes sparkled with laughter. “No, really? You never told me that. I was just following along. You and the other guys were helping him to his truck.”
“I guess I never brought it up. He was a real piece of work.”
“All I remember about him was that he was always so stuck on himself.”
“Yeah, and I don’t think there even was a hole… I think he just tripped.” Suddenly, all the names of the kids in our class were flooding back - so many boys and girls I hadn’t thought of in so long. They only existed in my mind as high schoolers, but I was sure they all had graduated and found lives away from our small home town. “It’s weird to think that everyone is off to college or working now.”
“Like you and me. Business and nursing.”
There was a pause while we stared into space. My space was a review of all the decisions I made that had brought me to where I was today. Maggie’s was probably just the waiter, who came up with our food.
“Did you ever think about going to college?” Maggie asked around a bite of chicken.
