After four months of no contact I spotted him in a bar. He drank Coke and laughed with Frisbee friends while I sipped a gin rickey with my own team, the booze fuzzing the breakup’s considerable whys. Our eyes locked just long enough to catapult me back to days of pickup games and movie matinees, of poppy-columbine bouquets and pineapple cheesecake. Back to the pulse of a rain-pecked roof on waterbed nights. On my way to the restroom I stopped by his table. “Call me,” I whispered to him. He smiled. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Tess Kelly's essays have appeared in Cleaver, Dorothy Parker's Ashes, Sweet Lit, and Ruminate, among other publications. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.