Paisley was special, different, an electric connection. I’d never, and haven’t since, felt pulled to someone with immediacy and urgency in equal measure. We talked for two hours, ranging from her obsession with Laffy Taffy (disgusting, in my opinion), to our shared love of Lord of the Rings and early aughts rom-com films.
She said I had lips like Peter Facinelli (I’d watched Can’t Hardly Wait recently, and felt proud I knew the actor she was talking about), and I replied with a suaveBut do my lips taste like his?She said she didn’t know what his lips tasted like, and I suggested she give mine a try so if the day ever came that she kissed Mr. Facinelli, she’d be able to compare.
The grope-smashing commenced.
The next day, fully sober and one hundred percent mortified, I sent her a text. Shooting for levity, I saidHey, it’s Klein, the guy you probably hoped to never hear from again.
I must have hit the bullseye with that joke, because she did not respond. I waited a week, feeling more and morelike an idiot with every day that passed, then deleted her number. What was I even thinking, a guy like me and a girl like Paisley? She had class and sophistication oozing from her pores. She sat with good posture, well-spoken and well-mannered, and I thought maybe I’d hit the lottery, or that God had decided to make my dreams of finding the perfect woman come true.
Yeah.No.
Reality was more than an ice bath, it was a caveman’s spiked club across the head.
The experience taught me a valuable lesson: never get so drunk you cannot properly kiss a woman.
But that’s not where the story of Klein and Paisley ends. It gets worse. Way, way worse.
The following semester, we found ourselves in the same creative writing class. She pretended I didn’t exist. But me? I loved her from afar with a burning desire that consumed me. I lived for that twice a week seventy-five minute class. I went rain or shine, sickness or health. A gnarly cold didn’t keep me away, but it did keep me at the back of the class, a polite distance from people. I could never get up the courage to talk to Paisley, not after that kiss she clearly regretted.
The regret gnawed at me. A connection like that doesn’t come around often, and never so effortlessly. It wasn’t the mind-altering substance either. Paisley herself was the mind-altering substance, a woman sent to complete me.
Did I know all this from one evening with Paisley? Yes, I did.
Except I’d squandered it.
And my misstep? Another dude capitalized on it.
Shane Michael (really? Never trust a guy whose last name is a first name) was meticulous about his clothing. And his shoes, which were too clean in my opinion. He made his move. Paisley began walking with him to class, then one day he was sitting beside her.
And me? I felt like I’d been gut-punched, only the fist never left my gut. It was lodged in there, a thorn, the pain a fresh wave every Tuesday and Thursday.
Until the day we handed back our assignment to anonymously critique a classmate’s story. To be fair, I didn’t know it was Paisley’s story I tore apart. I was convinced the class was full of people who weren’t serious about writing, like I was, people who took the course because it sounded easy.
The professor taught many of the classes in the creative writing program, and considering my life goal was (and still is) to be a writer, I saw an opportunity to impress him, and I took it.
I eviscerated Paisley’s story. She cried. That’s how I knew it was hers. She knew it was me because I’m the only asshole who took the assignment seriously enough to use a red felt pen, and guess who had that pen out on the table when her eyes performed a search for evidence? Between that and the sheepish look giving me away, I was toast.
And the look in her eyes?
I’d expected the hurt, but the disappointment had confused me. She looked like she didn’t want to believe it was me who’d said what I’d said about her work. I didn’t apologize, because I didn’t know how to. Mortificationfrom what I’d done to her writing, paired with her not responding to my text, swirled into a mass that left me unable to speak to her.
Which was tragic, because my infatuation did not wane in the months that followed. The semester ended, and it was like Paisley dropped off the face of the earth. Two serious girlfriends later, she became a figment of my memory, a stalwart in my daydreams.
Unbelievably, here she is now, situated to the left of the bride. She wears her hair loose, meandering curls falling over shoulders left bare by her dress. I bet the royal blue fabric makes her eyes more blue than green, and suddenly I’m insatiably curious to know if this is true.
She’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and the memory of sitting beside her, of being the recipient of her thoughts on life and basking in her ebullience when she liked something I said, hits me hard in the center of my chest.
She’s drinking one of those damn lychee martinis, and looks bored. Or sad. It’s hard to tell. Her shoulders are stiff, and the corners of her mouth turn down, and that could mean a lot of things.
Lexi’s push at my lower back knocks me from my reverie. It’s good to be literally shoved back into reality; I could stand there and stare at Paisley all night.
I allow Lexi to urge me through the crowd for two reasons. One, there are probably an astronomical amount of drink tickets to work on. Two, I don’t know what point there is in saying hello to Paisley after all this time. Probably best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Two cocktail servers send me death glares when Iduck behind the bar. I don’t explain my absence, because it’s too loud for them to hear me anyway.
After a solid twenty minutes focused on slinging drinks, I’ve reached a point where I’m caught up.
My pocket vibrates at the same time Raul says he’s going to run to the back and tap a new keg.
