From the vault. Written in October 2022.
Based on a true story.

She had worked late and spent most of her Saturday trying to recover from the burden of doing overtime five times a week. She was highly ambitious, but very simple at heart, and content with as little as buying herself a new book, and something tasty for dinner. Even though she had never been to that particular library, making it hard to feel completely at home and familiar with the surroundings, the weather was nice and her spirits were high.

She made her way through the shelves until spotting titles about feminism. His eyes had been following her since the moment that she walked in. His poor eyesight made it difficult to see what books she was looking at, but he could take a fair guess, he supposed. There’s very little you can learn about someone from the books they look at, but most of the magic of sitting in a bookshop is the belief that you can. She looked pretty — but the world is filled with pretty girls. She also looked strong, or so he thought, and he wondered if that was because of the books he assumed she was looking at. He could see her profile and the way the tip of her nose made her eyeliner look sharper — or was it the other way round? 

He was an anxious guy with an inclination to FOBO — Fear Of The Better Option. Having wasted too much time overthinking all of his decisions, he developed the habit of outsourcing everything to the universe; instead of placing on himself the burden of thinking about anything at all, he would just write all the conceivable options on paper, and then follow the instructions of the one he picked with his eyes closed. It didn’t always seem right, but he was committed to this system. He took the small block of purple post-its inside his pockets and, staring at the tip of her nose from afar, wrote down all of the things he could do at that moment. He could go up to the girl and introduce himself, or ask about the book that she was reading, or wait by the door until she was about to leave, or wait by the cashier and join the payment line at the same time as her. He folded them neatly, to make sure he wouldn’t be able to tell them apart just by looking, and tossed them inside his pocket. 

After taking a deep breath and saying a prayer, he was ready to find out what would come next, so he closed his eyes. It was only for a second, just enough time to draw the results but, somehow, she was already gone when he opened them again. Being stared at made her very nervous. She fled the building, without the book, and went out to find a vegetarian bowl she could have for dinner. He stood up to see if he could catch her but he wasn’t sure that was the best option at the moment. Before he wrote a new set of possible pathways on his little purple post-its, she was already sitting and waiting for her order, thinking about the book she didn’t take and about the guy she didn’t speak to. On the way home, he played with the little fateful folded papers inside his pockets until the sweat and oil from his hands began to melt them away. They won’t ever see each other again.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.