He had it pretty good until he met her.

Neither of them meant for anything to happen. She had kids, a husband. Her husband loved her, took care of her and the kids. And she loved her husband, too, but…

He wish he’d looked down and saw her ring instead of looking straight into her pale, blue eyes that first day. After that, it was too late.

They tried to be just good friends but he could feel the gravitational force between them, pulling so hard it distorted time and space around them.

One day he knew he had to leave.

He wrote her a long letter and put it in the mail the morning he was leaving. But the fates decided to get fancy… the mailman, recognizing the address, delivered the letter directly, at about the same time his clutch blewout in front of his apartment house. He had the car, packed up to move, towed to a local shop and he was sitting on the stoop of his empty apartment when she showed up.

Her eyes were puffy. She sat on the stoop next to him in the early afternoon sun. Her knee bumped awkwardly against his, more gesture than accident.

“I have to go, you know,” he said, looking at her Taurus in the street absently.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He could see the child’s safety seat and some kid’s toys in the back seat.

She reached across and lightly pulled his face toward hers. Before he knew he was kissing her. In public. On his stoop. In broad daylight.

It was a strangely innocent kiss — but a passionate kiss, too, even in its bittersweet deilcacy.

She got up, didn’t say anything, walked to her car, got into it without looking back and then she was gone.

After a few moments his soon-to-be-former-landlady appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

“Wasn’t that Kristin from…”

“No.”

“I coulda sworn…” and she wandered off, making a show of sweeping tiny specks of something or other off the sidewalk and into the street.

previous AYoS version (September 28)

Kristin (Was Never Here)

Kristin was never here
You didn’t see her slip in the back way
You didn’st see her float up the stairs
You didn’t see her perfect hand on my door
Because Kristin was never here

She loves me twice as much as him
Lord, I know that’s true
but she loves those kids 10000 times more
and, man, I know that too

Nothing adds up or works out right
Nothing’s gonna make it so
I’ve run the numbers a million times
at the bottom line I gotta go

Kristin was never here…

one last time I swear we only kissed
for a moment there were only two
eternity is where parallel lines meet
and all lies are true

You didn’t see her slip in the back way
You didn’st see her float up the stairs
You didn’t see her perfect hand on my door
Because Kristin was never here

(C)1996, TK Major