Charming, but single

Sunday afternoon I was minding my own business, shopping at the Pricey Fancy Grocery Store near my house. I try to avoid doing much grocery shopping at a place that has such reasonably priced wares as $8 bottles of maple syrup, $6 loaves of sandwich bread and $19 a pound mushrooms, for obvious financial reasons. But I love the smells and the tastes and so I sometimes splurge on Rosemary Sourdough bread and fancy cheese and the best damn salad bar in the world. Just because. I was dressed for the grocery store, wearing those jeans I wear when I’m not out to impress anyone – they slide down my hips a bit and they’re a touch too short to wear with heels – and a T-shirt from a football game in 2000 (I swear, there’s a date on it), with flip flops and my hair in a messy bun and no make-up whatsoever. I was there for goat cheese, not socializing. I’m shuffling through the aisles and getting some veggies from the salad bar and I look up and there he is. The Nurse. I wasn’t sure it was him until he looked up and I made eye contact with him, the guy who gave me butterflies and then took them away without reason or explanation or apology. Now, I’m not saying that there’s a right time to run into the most recent man to drop off of the face of the earth and reject you, because there isn’t. (Though I did have this fantasy involving me in a short dress with shiny hair on the arm of a Hot Doctor, but it was immature and unrealistic.) But Sunday, when I was in my crappy Around the House clothes with my crappy Around the House hair, I couldn’t think of a less right time to see The Nurse. Couldn’t I have least been in my nice jeans or in a cute shirt with cleavage? And brushed hair and lip gloss? I don’t know why I care about looking unkempt for someone who’s seen me first thing in the morning with bad breath and worse hair. And while in my fantasy I walked up to him with my stilettos clicking to punctuate each step and sexily say hello, in the cold hard reality of my grocery store nightmare, I rolled my eyes and headed quickly down the center aisle and away from the salad bar, past a case of frozen edamame, around to an aisle of fancy root vegetable chips. I flipped open my cell and called friends until The Lawyer* answered. I kept the conversation peppy as I checked out and loaded my bags into the car, but as soon as I was safely alone in my car, I spilled the beans. “[The Nurse] was in the store. I just saw him and he saw me and he hasn’t talked to me in weeks and he just saw me and IT WAS NOT GOOD,” I said, describing my old T-shirt and jeans and the pint of Ben and Jerry’s resting in my basket. “And so I had to be on the phone with SOMEONE to distract me.” The Lawyer commiserated with me and offered up this suggestion, “Maybe it wasn’t him?” “Maybe, but no, we made eye contact, I’m pretty sure it was him,” I said as I put the car in reverse and drove through the parking lot. I turned down the next row, heading to the street. And The Nurse was walking toward me with an older-looking woman and I had to laugh. “It is definitely him,” I told The Lawyer. “And he just saw me. He is walking in my direction looking at me in my car driving right by him. And he’s with a woman, but he’s not being affectionate. So it could be his mom or something.” I paused. “I could run him over.” She persuaded me against this choice and said, “You know I bet he calls you this week.” I just laughed because I knew this would never happen. “You laugh,” she said. “But boys forget. And now that he’s soon you, he’ll remember.” I appreciated her sweetness, but knew she could never be serious. BFE called me later and I told her about seeing The Nurse. “God, what was he doing in MY NEIGHBORHOOD,” I fumed. “That store is three minutes from MY HOUSE. He lives a ways away. There is another PERFECTLY GOOD grocery store near HIS HOUSE.” She laughed. “I mean, this is CLEARLY my grocery store,” I continued. “CLEARLY,” she agreed. “I should have run him over when I had the chance.” “Nah,” she said. “Messy.” * Things with The Lawyer are fine now, thanks for asking.