As V and I talked I learned that he lived about five hundred miles away from me. I told him that I was happily married and he said he was in a good relationship too; he had been living with someone for eight years. At first he told me he was a couple of years older than me but eventually I found out that he was twelve years older than me, the same age as my husband.
I decided he was probably socially deprived like me only maybe for different reasons. If he is looking for random sex I'm sure he would change his mind if he could see me now I thought. I was sitting in a messy room stacked with boxes of old toys and papers and I was a mess too.
We made polite conversation. We talked about the kind of work we did, hobbies, we discovered we both could play a couple of songs on a guitar, at one time he lived in New York, I was born there, my parents met in Miami, my best friend died there, I lived on Miami St and he lives in Miami, his birthday occasionally falls on Fathers Day, mine occasionally falls on Mothers Day.
I have a thing about street names. I guess you could say I've developed my own superstition. Ever since my family moved to Florida the names of streets I've lived on seemed to have some connection to my life. We moved here from Atlanta into a house on Georgia Drive, then we moved to Hayworth Street. I met my husband when I lived in that house, his name was Jack Hayworth. When Jack and I moved in together we lived on Destin Avenue, I had relatives there that I hadn't seen since I was a child.
When we were looking for our first house, there was one for sale near the Miami Street home. It was on a short street where I knew two families still living there that lost teenage children in accidents; one was a car accident, the other a fire and my childhood best friend lived on that street when I met her and she died in a car accident in Miami at 23. I know it's dumb; at that point, the odds were probably better that nothing bad would happen to families on that street but I refused to live there.
As V and I kept talking we both opened up a little. We talked about our childhood memories. He told me how his mother taught him to recite poetry when he was a child, and we discovered we both liked to roller skate. I actually liked to skate, he went to the rink to pick up girls and make out with them in the parking lot. The next thing I knew three hours had gone by..
People in my family tease me because I pay attention to coincidences. They probably mean nothing but there seemed to be more than usual surrounding V and I.
The next day I couldn't stop thinking about him. I felt guilty; even though all I did was have a conversation with someone while I was sitting at home. Our talk reminded me of lyrics in an old Supersucker's song something about taking a walk with no point and no purpose.
I wanted to talk to him again and was scared of talking to him again at the same time. I didn't check my email the next day. The next time I did, I found a note from him, just a list of interesting web sites. The next email was to ask me why I was never online
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