The Girl in the Purple Boots Hear it is. Brief love told in a real story.

A heart surrendered to hope and succumbed to ache in less than 30 days. Wins, losses, people in, people out, such things fill my life. One month ago I had never met the girl who wore purple rain boots without rain. Now, the green from her eyes stares at me whenever I close my own. I want her to leave, but I promise not to blink her black hair away. This is it. Real love told in a brief story.

I saw a girl wearing purple boots My eyes scanned the upstairs and down of the two-story coffee and record store where I spend my free time writing. I had a few hours to waste on this Saturday afternoon and sat with my laptop open, caffeine tapping my feet against the wood floor. A thin, brown film leftover from a double espresso lined the bottom of my pinch-sized paper cup. To its right rested a small, red straw bent and chewed. Spent.

She unloaded textbooks from a weighty book bag on the table next to mine. Her face wore the tired eyes of a body that collapsed into her silver chair. I watched through the window as a coiled strand of yellow caution tape attached to a telephone poll stood up and down as the wind commanded. Joggers clipped by on the road, the dark of their shadows intersecting with reflections from the sun. My neighbor glanced around the room and smiled, a charge radiating from her. She wore purple rain boots, and I found that interesting.

I pretended to write while pretending not to look at her for most of the next hour. She never noticed. Her eyes focused on the words of an open legal textbook, and her wrist danced every

few seconds highlighting some passages in green, others in yellow, and still more in red. She was cute, for sure, but something more attracted my eyes from the cursor blinking at me from a nearempty computer screen. Customers, some waiting in line to order and others on their way out the door, brushed her table. She never flinched, aware of their presence but so comfortable in her own skin that she could act indifferent to how outside actions could, or should, affect her. Confidence pulsed from her table, or so I thought as I ordered another espresso so I could sit at the coffee shop near her for a few ounces more.

It wasnt that she was disinterested or unobservant of the people shuffling around her or the other machines buzzing nearby. No, she was just comfortable in her own skin, indifferent to how the actions of other people could, or should, affect her. Confidence pulsed from her table and I knew that as the reason I ordered another espresso to continue my sit at the coffee shop for a few ounces more.

Black hair that reached just above her shoulders and drifted around her cheeks hid most of her face from my view. A drab, gray fleece with black trim at the collar and sleeves gave way to black jeans that clung to thin, crossed legs. The dark clothes covered skin colored fair by winters clouds. A soft smile courtesy of some distraction from her phone or laptop sparked her face every few minutes. Each smile teased my piqued interest just as her purple, knee-length boots hinted at a natural, or practiced, quirkiness.

I hoped to speak with her. I needed a clever introduction to the mystery girl with ribbon bracelets and an affable demeanor but had none. What made her laugh? What irked her? Why rain boots

on a sunny day? What was her name? Silence won and instead I picked at my lower lip with my fingers, a lifetime nervous habit as vulgar as it is repulsive.

I walked away from the table that Saturday afternoon with a stranger on my mind. She stayed behind unaware of my interest. This, unfortunately, would become a trend.

Meeting

I saw her again at the same coffee shop on a Tuesday morning ten days later. This time I sat at a table on the second floor staring out the back window with books and notepads spread everywhere across the space I first inhabited two hours earlier. First, I heard a chuckle, then footsteps as she bounded up the wooden stairs. She approached the back of the room, navigating around a crate stuffed with records by obscure artists on small labels pedaled for a few bucks each. I fixed my eyes on a yellow legal pad and scribbled in blue ink to avoid staring.

She dropped her bag on the floor at the table closest to mine, less than ten feet away, and directly in my line of sight. I had spent the morning writing, paddling in a creative pool without any thought of the girl in the purple boots. She raced down and back up the stairs carrying a stack of napkins to wipe the coffee she just spilled onto the table. Something bounced inside memy heart, maybe, or just nerves. If a fool is born every minute, then I was a sucker entering a world fixated on a girl I had never met. Fucking A, I said under my breath.

Her hair, worn in a style of tousled bed-head, reached just below her jawline and her smilethat damn smilerested on her face. The mystery girl looked happy, but the smile seemed even more delighted by its attachment to her. She wore sweatpants and a spring jacket of colors I have sense forgotten. My watch ticked to 9:15, and I packed my book bag. A job considerably less interesting than the last five minutes of my morning awaited me. Say somethingnow or neverI thought. If chance favors the bold, what does it do with the desperate?

Hey, I mustered. Im getting out of here. If you want, take that spot by the window. Its a better seat. Somehow, I spoke in full sentences.

I stood half facing her table with my feet pointed in the direction of the stairs. Thanks. Maybe I will, she shrugged. I laughed for no reason other than the reason of needing to do something but not knowing what that something should be. On the desk next to her books were headphones colored in a faded, trendy brown with an aqua hint lining the earpieces. I liked them, true story, so I asked, Whered you get those?

Apple store, she said. Want to try them?

Yes, I said.

More than you know, I thought.

I slapped the headphones onto my ears. Voices from customers downstairs disappeared. The whirrs of lattes being foamed to jumpstart the day evaporated. Perhaps the headphones were that good, or maybe sounds faded because of the girl sitting three feet from me whose name I had not learned. The burn of coffee roasting outside faded, too. I suppose this happens, though, at the start of the unstoppable slide towards lust or love or heartbreak or whatever this was. My eyes caught hers for a second. I melted. She relaxed deeper into her plastic chair, full of the swagger that only indifference can bring when it comes to meeting someone new.

Huh, I stammered when she asked what I had spent the morning doing. I glanced down at my blue tennis shoes for answers. Nothing. I looked bad that morning, and knew it. Nine-year old brown dress pants clung to my legs and a faded blue oxford shirt bulged around my midsection. Several buttons begged for a break. A light black jacket stained the previous night from an explosion of salsa covered my shoulders.

Writing. I try to write, I finally said. You?

She mentioned that she was there studying for a series of law school exams looming over the next several weeks. I ignored her words, my attention fixated on how the faint sunlight from outside managed to seep from the window and land on her right shoulder. To hell with you my heart said to my head. I know whats best.

Lets hang out sometime, I said after several minutes more of me asking inane questions and her laughing carefree ease. She reminded me of the player in Monopoly who owns more

properties and more hotels than anyone else playing the game does. The cards rested in her hands. She would determine whether I would pass go.

Sure. She gave me her number, which I wrote in red pen in the back of a tan moleskin notebook I keep in my pocket for occasions when thoughts need to be tracked.

Talk to you soon, Suzanne, I said.

OK. She smiled and laughed as I turned away from her table.

I heard once that in life we are either kings or pawns. Well, I knew leaving the coffee shop that morning that I had no chance in this chess match.

Pizza and beers Social acceptability counting for something, I resisted contacting her for 48 hours. On Thursday, I reached out by text message, of course, and not because calling scared me, but because messaging seemed easier for her to ignore is she had second thoughts about handing her phone number to an over-caffeinated man wearing sad tennis shoes who writes in small notebooks.

I would be traveling all weekend, I said, heading to my hometown for a family birthday party, but if she wanted to grab a beer and some pizza on Sunday evening, then I knew the place. She hesitated, responding a day later. And hedged in her response. An exam loomed that Tuesday and it would be hard for her to slip away from the books. Dont press, I reminded myself, and

left the ball in her court to decide on Sunday. Not many study breaks can beat pizza and beer with a stranger, I said, though.

Sunday arrived and a few minutes before 8:00 PM, I walked two blocks from my house to the bar where we agreed to meet earlier that day. I carried a magazine on non-profit organizations with me. If she never showed, I could still enjoy a beer and read something worthwhile. If she did show, a magazine on the philanthropy of others could only help. I thought.

I sat in the front corner of the dim bar and waited. The smell of stale beer and burnt popcorn filled the room the way cigarette clouds did in places like this before smoking bans. Brass trinkets and rusted antique phones and lamps adorned the walls. My barstool leaned left and the table rocked when I rested my elbows atop it. The best of a battered lot, I knew from experience. Nothing about this place would impress any girl. But as a test of compatibility it was perfect.

She walked in a few minutes after eight wearing an easy ensemble of silver loafers, red pants, and grey shirt. Her smile leapt at me as if we were old friends and not two people whose entire relationship consisted of a five-minute conversation and less than ten text messages. If her purple boots caught my eye, and her smile captured my interest, then the laugh she wore on this Sunday night stole me.

Our conversation came light and easy. It flowed without any of the where-do-we-go-now pauses that make first meetings awkward. She offered a bit of her past and I hinted at mine. We shared a passion for telling storieshers told through video and mine authored with words on a page

and each believed in working in the service of others. We crossed the touch threshold when she placed her hand on my knee to emphasize a point about a blind date gone wrong. My heart skipped at the press of her two fingers on my knee. I returned the favor with a gentle squeeze on her shoulder as I walked past on my way to the restroom.

An hour into our evening, she stood and left her barstool to fill a paper tray with popcorn from a machine in the back of the bar. I rubbed my forehead and massaged closed eyes. Motherfucker I said to nobody. The heart wants what it wants, and I hated the idea of already feeling what I felt for her. Swarms of butterflies flapped their wings in my stomach. I had developed genuine feelings too strong, too fast, and too wrong for the girl whose every look said I know your heart is mine but I dont know if Ill return the favor.

We ordered a chicken and tomato pizza smothered in grease and cheese. I finished two slices. She had three. Sunday night crept into Monday morning and our talk lost steam the way conversations do when each side needs to keep certain things guarded so the other side can discover them later. The bar had emptied by this point, and I settled our tab before walking with her to her car while carrying the leftover pizza.

We hugged our goodbye and made plans to see each other again after her test. Her body language made clear there would be no goodnight kiss, something I welcomed because the angst of kissing her terrified me. Sometimes knowing such pleasure only causes more pain. If our lips pressed together, I knew that I would spend every minute until we saw each other again longing

to stand outside her car with a pizza box in one hand and my other cupped around the back of her neck as we kissed farewell. I feared the pain of kissing her once only not to kiss her again.

She drove off, and I turned in the direction of home. I knew she had all the control over what came next for the idea I had started to form of us. Youre a sucker and a fool for someone you barely know, I thought, as I wished goodnight to the moon smirking overhead.

Falling in love is not for the faint of heart.

Hold me, thrill me, kiss me

Guys want girls and girls want guys to want to chase them. Guys want to seem invincible and girls want to play puppet master, tugging and teasing a guys heart at their discretion. When it comes to wanting to fall in love, the tension of the unknown paralyzes more than the truth could ever imagine. My heart beat faster, and I tossed and turned awake in bed more in the days following the pizza date. I knew what I felt for her, but I wanted to know what she felt for me. Anticipation in one-sided affairs causes the mind to worry for the worst.

The stranger with the purple rain boots who became the girl I asked out at the coffee shop and then the interest I met for Sunday pizza agreed to see me again the following week. We met on a Thursday evening, stopped for 30 minutes at a going-away party where three of her friends sipped vodka cocktails with their boyfriends while sitting in couches from my grandmothers era,

set too low to the ground. Pitch-perfect keys vibrated sounds into the dark lounge from a piano played in the next room.

I introduced myself to the group with a wave and short smile before I squeezed into a tiny space of open real estate on the hard fabric of the low-riding couch. I surveyed the group with the cautious wondering that inhabits the visitor who doesnt know what role he actually fills that night. Was I just another in a line of ready-to-be-devastated saps that she paraded into parties with her friends so they could put a face with the stories while laughing later? Or was I one of the lucky few who might crack the life-is-too-easy veneer she wore?

In truth, I didnt care. As I looked, I realized that she glowed, again, somehow shining more now than the spot of light she cut inside the shadowy bar where we dripped grease from our chicken and tomato pizza onto paper plates. Her black dress, which made a V at her breasts and reached just above her knees, clung to her lithe body. I asked questions of her friends, nodded and pretended to hear their responses. My thoughts, though, stopped at the beautiful girl squeezed to my left. I fought with my eyes to watch people other than her. Everything, from the way she joked with her friends to the feel of her leg pressed against mine, made me want more.

We left the lounge and drove ten minutes to a small piano bar that hosted a singer/songwriter sort. He sang with bad vocals and an even worse song selection. She ordered a Guinness and I asked for a Miller High Life. Our conversation drifted through the get-to-know-you subjects left uncovered during our first date. We spoke about the mixed and messed up personalities that make up our respective families and flashed cell phone photos of nieces and nephews. I spoke of

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looking forward to an upcoming trip to Chicago to see a soul music singer I couldnt stop listening to online. She joked that I had the musical taste of a 60-year old black man. It seemed perfect, for me. Too perfect.

We laughed, together, on a loop over and again, between bites of toasted bruschetta and soft pita slices served warm and dipped in hummus. A plate of overdone French fries disappeared, and a turkey, bacon, and avocado sandwich that dripped from the exploded yoke of the sunny-side up egg placed on top of it washed away, too. Her left hand rested on my right leg. Although her eyes held my gaze, they kept their distance. She protected them with timely sarcasm and enough nonchalance to avoid the commitment either her mind or her heart said not to make. My eyes hid nothing. They said that I was falling, and if her only wish for our just minted friendship was to become the object of some poor guys heartbreak, then I was that guy.

She walked a step ahead of me as we navigated around orange construction barrels and across a platform of 2x4s bridging a vacant section of sidewalk during the three-block trek from the restaurant to her car. I glanced at her hand and watched the tap of her fingers against her thigh. My heart wondered what holding that hand might feel like.

She connected her phone into her cars stereo and scrolled with her right index finger through a catalog of music I cared nothing about in that moment. The volume intensified, loud enough to drown out the decibel of my beating heart. It thumped against my chest, each one a plea for action over inaction, for guts over cowardice. With her eyes looking down for a place to set her

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phone in the center console, I took her cheeks in my hands and coaxed her lips to mine. She obliged.

We kissed for seconds that became minutes. I heard the music switch to something by the Temptations, and those minutes turned to moments I wish never happened. More questions than answers filled my head during our drive home: Was she just being nice? Could she fake a kiss that felt that long and meaningful? Why did she stop mid-kiss and drop her cheek into my hand while lightly scratching my arm with her fingertips?

Sleep came in intermittent, fitful bursts that night. I still tasted her lips. The smell of her hair lingered. When I closed my eyes, I felt her cheek rest in my hand and imagined the peace that would find me if she slept with her head on my arm while I smiled into a dark ceiling. I hated how much I loved feeling the way I did because her quirky aloofness kept her closer than arms reach, but not close enough to hold. Thursdays kiss didnt steal Sundays indifferent confidence, either. Why had I fallen with such force for this person I barely knew? I lived without knowing her for 28 years. Within three weeks and two dates, the longing to see her again nearly toppled me.

Let it be

The empty space of waiting is the hardest for me to fill when I something good starts slipping away. A week passed, then ten days, without us seeing each other again since our kiss. Ive failed at relationships both short-term and long, and know the signs of one that will leap from

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beginning to end without any of the fun present in the middle. Phone calls go unanswered at first before being unreturned later. Just five days earlier, her responses to my text messages arrived composed of quips and sarcastic jabs that left me grinning through each reply. Now, they reached my phone in sporadic instances, the gulf between my words and hers filled with disinterest made obvious even without us actually saying anything. I knew that soon the messages would disappear altogether. Regardless of how many times I powered my phone off and on hoping for a stash of interrupted messages from her to arrive, the notes had likely stopped forever. There must be a reason that I havent heard from her, I told myself, although sometimes no reason is reason enough. I waited and willed my phone to vibrate with any words from her. Sitting and waiting, wishing that I didnt want so much to know all the things about her that I didnt yet know.

We saw each other, finally, on a warm May Saturday afternoon. She had dodged my request for dinner and ice cream earlier in the week, but agreed to take a stroll through one of the parks outside our city. The woods are a good place to bury this boys advances, I pictured her thinking before our date. She wore a navy long sleeve shirt that she pushed midway up her forearms to reveal a collection of red and yellow ribbons tied in knots and tangled on her left wrist. My heart empathized with their entanglement. Wrinkled khaki shorts covered her legs just past the middle of her thighs, which descended into long, narrow legs. The purple boots were nowhere in sight.

We walked a path cut from the woods littered with tree branches and small puddles that collected in tiny dips in the earth. Ten days of space eroded a connection that I now believed only existed in my mind. She tried to mask it, to carry on with the same vitality that first pilfered my heart

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from my chest, but I found the replacement worthless after having experienced the real thing. The smile that once lit her face without effort arrived forced and only after a moment of deliberation. The natural laugh that once preceded every sentence came in calculated bursts that originated from her head and no longer her gut. When we walked, she stayed either a step ahead or a pace behind, the distance a smart separation. At one narrow passage, her shoulder brushed mine. My heart danced. For a second, I thought her wall had crumbled. Then, she sneezed, and I realized the sudden closeness had nothing to do with her interest in me. She only wanted to sneeze opposite our direction.

Whereas on the first three times that we spoke I wanted to extend every second, I just needed this day to end. My heart felt something real the first time we spoke. It collapsed the first night we kissed, and I wish I knew why. I didnt feel pain as she pulled away, only disappointment because I would never learn if the girl who said yes to a date with a stranger at a coffee shop had the spark I imagined for her. Maybe my instincts had only tricked me with cruelty. Failing with so much unknown tortured me. All I wanted from her was a shot, and my heart ached because she would never grant me that wish.

We found a bench near the parks exit 20 yards from the separate cars that would drive us on our separate lives in a few minutes. To our backs and down the nearby hill, I listened to the trickle of a stream climb over rocks and cut its path into the woods. I stared in silence at the ground watching the wind blow blades of grass this way and that. I remembered the infatuation I felt with her purple boots the first afternoon at the coffee shop as I scrolled through my brains

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catalog for the right question to ask to end my confusion. Like a life raft that floats just beyond arms reach, though, the more I struggled the more the right words escaped me.

I stammered and ummd my way through one final question: So, at the risk of being too honest, Ill just say that I like you. I want to see you more, but I dont get the same impression from you. And now Ive come on too strong. Shit. I exhaled into silence made awkward by the confession she left floating in the air. Unreturned interest.

OK. she said after several seconds. Thats OK, but I do have to go now. She embraced me in a half-hug made worse by how far she stretched her arms away from her body to finish it.

OK? What the fuck does OK mean? I asked in my car during my drive home. Then, I laughed, as I pictured the girl with the purple boots smiling on her drive home.

Sometimes emotions run their course from mutual interest to mutual affection to the point where love shared is all that matters. Sometimes, though, love evaporates. Worse, sometimes it is not returned. When this happens, when love bursts and becomes nothing but memories for a past life, it only hibernates. Love never dies. It only waits for the right spring to wake it. For months after, we hope for an unexpected call or chance encounter to kindle the embers of emotions that missed their shot at something great. A second chance, I suppose, to hurt in good ways all over again.

Someone once said that its better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all. I hate that man.

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