text: [Themes: love & dating, romance]
  
  All right. I guess we can tell the story this way. It doesn't really matter, because we find each other in the end. It's a story about how two people meant to be together find each other. When isn't so important. It could have happened a thousand different ways. We're opposite poles of magnets in a shoebox full of styrofoam. Shake the shoebox long enough, and we're going to find our way to each other and click together.
  
  You were doing your sweaters, remembering to take them out before the dryer load, actually hanging them up to dry. I was just finishing my laundry, and we said hello, as we did.
  
  But then, I felt, something shifted. We had missed our opportunity back then, a year ago. And we were a year older. I looked at you, and at your clothes in the laundry basket. It felt intimate, somehow, to see you like this. You looked somehow slenderer than last year, but it may have been just how large your laundry basket was.
  
  > And you talked for a minute and then you said goodbye.
  ...right. We said goodbye, I guess. I'm not sure what the point of telling this story this way is. But all right. So what happens then? How did we fall in love, then?
  
  > Found ourselves sitting next to each other in chemistry class in junior year.
  All right, fine. So let's say, we were in chemistry class, which I was taking as a requirement, and you were taking because you hated your physics class and needed a hard science for a prerequisite or something. You slide next to me.
  
  "Hey, uh, Nicole. Natalie, sorry."
  
  "Hi."
  
  We might think about the cafeteria and also the laundry room. Probably not. Two years ago, one year ago. Probably less than five minutes combined in two years, that's 5/1,051,200 minutes, and my calculator can't do that calculation of percent. 9.5 somethingsomething e-7. Not sure what that means. But a very small percent of your life, is my point, had been spent in my company.
  
  I only sort of remembered why I knew you. You sort of start to recognize people at college, and you were just one of those familiar faces.
  
  > But then, you slowly started connecting, whispering in class and looking at each other.
  This is all right, Natalie. I see why you like this. We were maturer, studying together. We were growing into adults, both of us twenty now, less driven by hormones and more by recognition of someone special.
  
  We shared a book at one point, when you had forgotten yours. You often left your books in your dorm, you'd tell me, not on purpose, but because you didn't want to remember, because they were heavy, the backpack sitting achingly on your small frame. Of course I said I'd be happy to carry them for you in the future, and you said you didn't mind sharing.
  
  We started whispering in the back, sharing things about us, and I looked at your chestnut curls during class when I should have been learning about chemical bonds. But in a sense, I was learning about bonds. Words were bonding us, and something was happening, just the two of us sitting there.
  
  Anyone who has ever been in love understands about just sitting and basking in someone's presence. We were falling deeper in love, just sitting, my hand touching your hand as we turned the pages.
  
  > Actually, although it was nice, you wouldn't say you fell in love.
  So, what then? What happened? We took the class, got our grades, and went on our way?
  
  We just stayed casual acquaintances, drifting away, and then we graduated, and then what?
  
  > Didn't see each other again until seven years after college, in a club.
  I don't go to clubs, of course, so I don't know why I would find myself in one, but let's say I stopped in on a whim, feeling a bit older--28 now!--and wanted to try to meet someone.
  
  The music was pounding and violently trying to expel me, perhaps recognizing me as too old or uncool to be in here. I screamed out my drink order, choosing something I thought was cool, a Scotch on the rocks, and then I saw you.
  
  You'd be dancing, looking, well, you were 28 too, but you wouldn't look it. You'd be wearing a dark green, fairly tight dress, and low heels, and larger earrings than I'd ever seen you wear. Gold circles with a bird in the middle. And your chestnut hair would be a little shorter than before, which was a shame. I wanted to see that mane of curls, but you didn't maintain in the way I liked it, because I wasn't a part of your life, anyway.
  
  You'd be dancing in the middle of the din, with some girlfriends, the lights flashing over you, and you'd look up and I see you, and it would all come back to me. The whole world, the whole universe of possibilities. I'd see you and your beautiful face.
  
  > You'd slightly nod, not really remembering you, and dance away. And never see you again.
  Then, goodbye, imaginary Natalie. It could easily have so. It's a horrible, sad, whimpering end of a story but also traumatic and all too possible.
  
  I would have looked after you as you disappeared into the crowd, your small body quickly out of sight hidden by the other dancers, and I would drink my Scotch on the rocks--disgusting-tasting--and be deafened by the bass, and sit on the side for a while, and gather my thoughts, and then try to chat up two girls from Jersey completely unsuccessfully, coming out fifty dollars the poorer after buying them both cosmos.
  
  And that, my Natalie, is where I would be seven years after college without you. You would be lovely, dancing, having the time of your life, no doubt attracting a troop of sailors on leave, while I was sad and broken. That, of course, is my point. You are everything to me, and I know what you are, and how lucky I have to have you dance towards me, not away, to walk towards my table at the cafeteria, not past. I know, Natalie. And I love you, and I can't bear to think about it anymore.