It was a fantastic spring day,sunny with the occasional perfect whit cotton candy cloud the break the perfect blue sky. My sister and I had spent an afternoon of strolling around downtown and not quite window shopping as we caught up on news and gossip that somehow missed our various communications.  We had just taken outside seat a café when we saw him, coming out of a side door of the same cafe.

Yes, that him.

He was donning sunglasses as he came out, Looking as haughty as ever. Looking as good as ever.

My heart dropped a beat. Several beats in fact. My sister saw my face, turned  to look and let out a curse. Yeah, it was like that. We had a thing once.  No, that’s not correct. I had a thing. No, that’s not correct either.

We were both going for our doctorate and wound up in a lot of the same circles together with mutual friends until we became friends ourselves.  Good friends. And then I made the cardinal sin. I fell for him. And it was bad. Really bad. And he knew it. I never said a thing to him, but I know he knew.  He never said a thing to me but I knew long before I fell that I would never be someone he would love like that, yet deep inside I had hoped. Still, because I am a glutton for Punishment 101, I lied and said we’re just friends we continued to hang out. We hung out so much at one point some people thought we were a couple.  He was always gentle, but damn quick to say we were just friends.

Naturally it had to blow up and blow up it did. The argument was ugly and my heart was torn asunder like nothing I had ever imagined could hurt so bad. My only solace was that the semester was over and I didn’t have to see him for the summer.  Then fall arrived and fate cruel continued placing us in the same circles. It was agony. I gave up all social contact with everyone then and poured it all into my school work, finishing my studies, my thesis everything.

That was over a year ago. That was over a year ago and this doctor eventually healed herself. Enough to not want to cry at the thought of his name.  Enough to be able to talk about him with my sister and even laugh. With he and I no longer  travelling so many of the same circles any more, I even healed enough to be able to idly chat with him on the occasions our paths do crossed.

A woman came out behind him donning her own sunglasses. I recognized his fiancé immediately as we had at an even a month or so agao. He turned, saw me smiled and waved. And I’ll be damned if a shaft of sunlight didn’t find him at that instant, with a soft breeze blowing through his hair. And for a moment I was back in time, back to when things were good, when he and I were together, but not.  It felt so good for a moment and then reality rushed back into place. My heart broke again for the briefest moment. It was the oddest bittersweet feeling, like feeling homesick for a place that doesn’t exist.  And much to my sister’s surprise I laughed as I waved back actually happy for him.

I really was in a good spot at last.

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My hand at trying Kellie Elmore’s Free Write Friday. The prompt was based on an image, but the quote that came with the image struck me more and I went with that.

#FWF – Free Write Friday – Image Prompt