Bud remembers

[same_sky]

lizardek and carrieb really should have known better than to encourage me (but I was flattered that they did!)

He'd never married. When he turned forty, he had decided that it was never going to happen, and had put away those expectations without a fuss. Truthfully, he had felt a vague sense of relief. He hadn't been avoiding matrimony all those years--at least not purposefully. Rather, he had been waiting for that special someone to fall into his arms and stay there.

She almost had, once upon a time. There was moonlight and roses (that was before his disdain for flowers took over his life) and the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen broke a heel on her fancy yellow shoes while walking by him. She had stumbled; he had caught her. Their eyes had met and he had felt like he was falling, falling into himself and into her and it had made him dizzy and nervous and scared. She was staring at him as if he had saved her from something far worse than a stumble, and he had very nearly kissed her, even before he knew her name. There was a spark, a life between them. Her hair was red, her eyes were green, and he knew he had met the woman he wanted to marry.

She had fallen into his arms just as he had hoped, but she hadn't stayed. Before he could even introduce himself, another man walked up, asked her if she was okay, if she was ready to leave. As the man took her by the arm to lead her away, he thanked Bud for helping his lovely fiancee. He could have sworn his damsel in distress looked wistful as she looked at him, but then she walked away, and the moment was lost.

It hadn't occured to him to follow, and each day faded into the next until years had passed, and he ran into her again at the grocery store. She had a baby in the cart and a redhaired girl following along behind her, and he looked at them and thought of the children he would never have, and how tired her eyes were, and how he would have made sure she never had to clutch coupons in her fist just to buy a half-gallon of milk and a jar of peanut butter, but he did not say any of those things. He just nodded politely, and thus, the first conversation they ever had was not, as he had once wished, "will you marry me?" but "isn't the weather lovely this week?"

He had never forgotten that long-ago night, though, the only time he had ever felt his heart stir. She came to the store now and then, always buying silk flowers. He knew she remembered him, as he remembered her, but they never spoke of it aloud, and he for one never would. It was too late for regrets, after all. He had heard that her husband had died a few years back--drank himself to death, they said. He had felt only a twinge of bitter triumph at the news.

He had lost the war, but he had won the battle. Somehow that didn't make him feel any less lonely at night.

Comments

[paradisecowgirl.livejournal.com]

Fantastic writing -- leaves me wanting more More MORE!! :)