The Prom Corsage

I hadn’t seen her in over twenty years, but I knew her face on sight; I should have asked her to the senior prom - instead, we both stayed home that night. High school friends who never went on a date because I was too afraid to ask her out; In retrospect, the signs were there, but I harbored a young man’s doubt. Now, with two decades left behind us, in a foreign land far away, I stumbled upon my old high school crush not knowing just what to say. She was quite surprised to see me - coincidences had put us there. She was a successful corporate lawyer; I was travelling without a care. We shared pictures of our children; Told snippets about our life; Her husband was back in America; I had just divorced my wife. The bartender made his last call; Nostalgic smiles were on our face; We kissed and hugged goodbye again as I quickly got out of that place. I was glad to have gotten to see her, though it made me feel inept again; I wondered if we would have made good lovers or if it were best kept just as friends. She was in my thoughts as I wandered around Europe with my back pack; I promised that I would look her up again in three months when I got back. I read about her on the Internet and cried when I saw the story; She had died in an auto accident - leaving behind her girl and boy. It happened one week after our chance meeting in that bar; They said an old high school year book was found with her in the car. Her letter was in the pile of mail waiting for me when I got home; She wrote she was glad to see me - on that trip she felt so alone. She admitted to having a crush on me back in our high school days; She kept waiting for me to ask her out until we went our separate ways. She thanked me for keeping it casual in the bar that fateful night; She probably would have gone back to my room and she knew that wouldn’t be right. She asked me to remember her but not to try to get in touch; She’d rather me stay a memory than get to know me a little too much. I visited her in the graveyard one day in the early spring, and left a prom corsage there as my final offering. A Fictional Tale