Ill-Fated

Since her arrival by bus, I’ve followed her through Thomasville for two weeks, my fated one. Trying to learn her secrets before our preordained meeting, I listen as she walks the town nosing, questioning the townsfolk. I watch as she eats in the diner and know when she brushes her mahogany brown hair each night. The library seems to be her favorite place to visit, spending hours a day on the microfilm machine. Claiming her name to be Teri Meekman, she signs all her credit card slips, but I know her true identity in any incarnation she hides behind.

I’ve been close enough to her to watch her daintily eat a Caesar salad at lunch and hear her as she slurped the chocolate mocha espresso shake she drank each morning for breakfast. I was there when she dropped her notebook, and was the one to pick it up and hand it back to her. Sitting close enough to her on the bus to smell her gardenia perfume, I saw she was busy on a silver Pixel phone, chatting with a contact she’d marked as editor, so I knew she was pretending to be a journalist this lifetime around.

However, when she went to the Thomasville Police Department, I stayed outside. I had no reason to be inside, so I did not want to draw attention to myself by following her into the building. The longer she was in there, the more I feared our ordained meeting was doomed not to happen. I imagined scenes of her telling the on-duty officers about a mysterious stranger following her through town, and her wanting to file a restraining order on the person. I was afraid during the hours she was in the station, that she may have seen my face during our chance meetings and recognized me from our past lives. I played out scenarios where I had to run from the cops because she refused to play out our inescapable tryst and betrayed me to the police.

Finally, I see her come to the double glass doors. Police Chief Walters is escorting her through them, and the two are deep in conversation about something I can only guess. I look around, to see if I can get nearer to hear what they say, but there are no good, unobtrusive spots for me to loiter nearby. So, I wait where I am and watch to see what my destiny does next.

I don’t have long to wait before I see them firmly shake hands, and my soulmate leaves, walking determinedly down the sidewalk towards the part of town that holds the Justine Baker Inn. Knowing her schedule as I do, I drop back and follow more slowly, sure of where she is going. Watching her walk from behind reminds me of my Aunt Meredith, and how my aunt used to sashay while she shopped in town.

Thinking of my aunt always fills me with such mixed emotions and always leaves me feeling a little confused. I didn’t want to think about her, but the walk was long, and the memories flooded my mind. Aunt Meredith took me in and raised me when my mother dumped me on Aunt Meredith's doorstep. Nurturing me, she made sure I needed anything. Wanting the best for me, but unable to afford to send me off to a boarding school, she’d done the next best thing in her opinion, and homeschooled me. She stuffed so much knowledge into my education, that my curriculum was way ahead of most schools. Where most teenage boys took a girl to their school prom, Aunt Meridith threw me a private one, just her and I. My memories of my aunt were bittersweet, and I normally kept them under lock and key.

As we neared the bus station I was brought out of my reverie. I watched in near horror as my luck started running out, and this incarnation of my nemesis entered the station’s doors. Indecisively, I stood for a moment, before I rushed toward the doors. To do what I don’t know, before I ran into my predestination, knocking a piece of paper from her hand that she was trying to put into a brown leather pocketbook. Stepping on the slip, before it could blow away in the wind, I bent, picking it up. Unbelieving in my luck, I could see what it was: a ticket for a bus trip to New York, New York, leaving in two days.

I shiver, as I feel her hand touch mine, wondering if she feels the electric shock of recognition I sense. As she goes on to her suite of rooms at the Inn, I go into the station and look at other bus schedules leaving Thomasville. I’m attempting to compose myself, for I did not plan our final meeting so soon. I stare into the glass on the door, watching the day darken. I can see my reflection, staring back at me like a ghost. I now realize what I was missing when I read our stars.

I won’t have long until I can hold my star-crossed lover. I open the door and head to my house. There are some things I need to prepare for our inescapable, clandestine convergence. Once again, I feel myself growing hard thinking of gardenias and soft, pliable flesh. I sigh with pleasure as I walk on, planning how to make our encounter happen.