Recognizing What They Had, 20 Years Too Late
I would turn my head and kiss him on the cheek, his eyes would crinkle into a smile,
and then he would swing around on his crutches and head back to his friends.
At the end of the evening, he hopped up to me, put his arm around my waist and whispered into my ear, “Will you come with me?”
I saved my tip money so we could take a taxi to the restaurant.
I didn’t believe I had the right to grieve for someone who had not quite been
my friend, not quite my boyfriend, not quite anything I could put a label on.
I had been brought up to believe it was bad manners to ask questions, so it took a bit of eavesdropping before I learned
that his name was Mikey, he was a regular, and he hadn’t been in the pub when I started working because he was in the hospital having his lower leg amputated — apparently because of cancer.
If he was sitting on a bar stool and I walked past, he would put one arm out and catch me by the waist.
