Fate, Free Will, and What Are the Chances You’re Free Friday?

The room was dark, cold—square. It felt lonely and immensely, oppressively sad. As if it carried a weight too heavy for its creaking floorboards. Why it felt this way was not discernible from any single object. It’s not what the room had—but what was missing—that filled it with this all-pervasive sadness that settled upon everything like an early morning mist.

It was an ordinary boys room. Full size bed, TV mounted on a dresser, nightstand. On the nightstand was one book, “The Male Model Handbook,” and polaroids of a twenty-something that looked very much like the twenty-something seated on the bed. Piercing blue eyes, diamond cut jaw line, hair like a field of wheat, and just as wavy. The gold necklace worn by the young man in the polaroids, waving at the camera and shaking Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hand, was now clasped around Bailey’s neck.

He was surrounded by a posse of four silent and one barking dog. He sat on his bed drawing hands. His phone was silent, his feet were bare—the arrow of light emanating from the unclosed mini-fridge door was the only light in the dark. It glistened off a needle tip embedded in the ground, and pointed towards a dusty box that sat forsaken beneath his untidy, dog-infested bed. He was frustrated, but he kept drawing anyway. Frustrated because he realized too late the hands were all missing a finger. Frustrated because he wasn’t too good at it. Frustrated because he didn’t know whose hands they were, and why he was drawing them in the first place. But most of all, he was frustrated because there was no more Jim Beam. He took a bite of a sour patch kid. At least he had his candy.

His alarm went off at 3am. He awoke in a pool of sweat. Tapped his monitor to his arm, 33. He walked to the bathroom, splashed his face with water, and after one accidental glance in the mirror resolved not to look back at it again. He pulled on jeans, hoodie, work boots. Ran down to the fridge for a coke and joined Nate, who was outside waiting.

He and Nate went into work together. It was a miserable day like any other, except today he met the new girl. He saw her in the middle of the blue belt, nearly buried in boxes, but quietly, calmly unloading the lockers onto the belt in a confused, yet composed manner surrounded as she was by chaos. Screaming heads, screeching belts, tumbling boxes and many busy hands. He walked down the line, she lifted her head—their eyes met. Neither looked away. Not immediately, at least. Her eyes opened wide, but the rest of her face didn’t move. His heart nearly stopped, and this time, it wasn’t diabetes. The moment lasted only a split second, but in it, the world fell away—the screeching went silent, the busy hands went motionless, the violent voices went mute—and it was just them, two young strangers in the prime of their youth and beauty, seeing each other for the first time, stirring within them a curious combination of intrigue and awe. It lasted only an instant, but in it was eternity.

It was her first day at UPS, Harrisburg. It was also her birthday. 24. She felt like a rat on a conveyor belt, and just as insignificant. She knew how sad her father would be if he saw her there. And she missed him so much. She continued to sort through misty eyes. Top red. Middle yellow. Bottom blue.

“Bo, come with me. Blue belt is slammed.” She followed.

Huge mounds of packages piled up high along the narrow belt. Bo did as she was told, and began unloading the packages from the lockers to their proper truck. As she bent over to set down a heavy box, she heard somebody walking by with a speaker. She looked up and saw the most beautiful face she’d ever seen. Blue eyes, diamond cut jawline, hair like a field of wheat, and just as wavy—with an expression that could melt even the coldest heart—an expression of infinite kindness, the kind only born from the depths of the deepest sorrows. His eyes were smiling at her, and she felt something magnetic—something that made it difficult for her to avert her gaze, embarrassed and abashed as she was to be met with such a godly presence in a place so low.

Bo, energized by a new excitement, and without a soul to confide in, bought a Little Black Book as a release from these foreign feelings that threatened to burst from within like a balloon filled with too many bouncing molecules.

Weeks later, at the end of an otherwise nondescript shift, Bailey saw Bo standing outside West End Center. He loaded the last heavy piece into the truck, and stood there a moment longer, trying to slow his beating heart. Without courage, wisdom is a pale thing in a cavernous place. And it wasn’t courage he lacked. Without more delay, he swung his bag over his shoulder, and walked determinedly towards her. He saw that she was utterly confused. “You good?” he smiled. “Were you calling my name?” she gibbered, with furrowed brows and eyes wide. He shook his head as he continued past, looking back at her over his shoulder. He bumped into Andre, the West End Supervisor, a big man with a wide mouth and large glasses, that resembled something very much like a toad. It was his voice that’d been calling Bo’s name.

Bailey’s heart sank; he hadn’t had enough courage or enough wit to overcome the clumsy circumstances.

Bo, transitioning from preload to driver duty, ran out to her car for her DIAD pouch. But as she sprinted out the security gate—she saw Bailey seated on the bench, with his blonde hair glowing beneath the golden Autumn sun. The momentum of her legs carried her towards him faster than her doubt could prevent it.

“Sorry for being so awkward; for a moment, I was very confused.”

“You looked it,” he laughed. “I’m Bailey,” he said.

“Bo.”

“Nice to meet you,” he continued, “I would’ve introduced myself earlier except that I was intimidated. Maybe not intimidated, so much as shy,” he added. When he spoke, his eyes darted back and forth as he searched for the right words, and when he was done speaking, his blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight as he squinted up at her. A puff of cigarette smoke curled up into the air like a question mark, between half parted, half smiling lips, that seemed never to have known a frown.

He was struck by the color of her eyes—a distinct shade of yellow, like 14k gold, or the eyes of a cat, or a buttercup, or a jar of honey when a beam of light shines through it.

She thought about giving him her number right then and there, but the words never quite reached her lips.

Many Winter months passed, and they did not see each other.

One Sleepless December Night Bo wrote in her diary:

Perception is a weird thing. Your greatest romance could be nothing more than an illusion. Delirious sensations subdued by a pointed word, or a quiet touch. Strange, how you could believe it to be true with your whole heart through your whole life. So it goes for many things, we carry our delusions to death, where warm blood and beating hearts turn to beaten dust.

And she wondered if she’d ever see him again.

It was her last Saturday at UPS. This particular Saturday was miserably cold, and she was stationed in an unfamiliar area. Following Dre’s verbal instructions, she went past the belt, right; ducked under a vent, past the break rooms—made eye contact with Bailey. She didn’t notice him early enough to say anything but a shocked “Hello.” The butterflies in her stomach couldn’t fly due to the suffocating sense she’d missed the opportunity she’d been waiting for. So she turned sharply on her heel, and with beating heart, and zero plan—

“I’m lost,” she announced, taking a noisy sip of tea from her steaming XL Dunkin cup—for once okay with looking dumb and ditzy if that’s what it took to take initiative. The burly man on the platform asked what she was looking for. “BLO6.” He started giving verbal direction. Bailey, however, taking the bate, announced, “I’ll take her there.”

After months of silent suspense, he spoke, “So, you’ve been doing a lot of driving?” A dumb thing to say, but under the pressure of nerves, anything goes. “Actually, I just put in my 2 weeks.” “You moving somewhere?” “Texas.” Silence. “So where were you all of peak?” Bo fumbled. He said they moved him here because he talked too much. At least you don’t complain, she said. In a quiet voice he replied, “Yea, I don’t do that.” They arrived at BLO6. Cheeks red, nose red, hands stiff from the cold, he spoke up, from somewhere deep inside him, “Bo, would you like to see me outside of this place?” She smiled, took her hand out of her pocket, and put her hand in his. Her hand radiated an incredible amount of heat, and besides the smooth surface of her skin, was something else. Her eyes looked into his confidentially—and they had in them too a mischievous glint. She turned and climbed the ladder to BLO6. On a charcoal-stained, rain-weathered, wind-beaten, tumbled-dried-low scrap of paper in his hand was her number.

For two weeks, they were inseparable. And he was filled with a determination he’d never had. He cleaned his room, opened the shades, threw his candy away. He made doctors appointments and got things in order for his drivers license. As he grew in a new direction, old friends fell away. He went through the forsaken box of most important things. In it was his dad’s diary, a Little Black Book very much like the one Bo carried with her everywhere. It was his dad’s workout log. But going through it this time, he noticed two pages had been taped together. When he unstuck the pages he was struck to find a $20,000 bond in his name. This was more money than Bailey had ever seen, and for the first time the doors of life opened to him a garden of possibility he thought belonged to that realm of fortunate beings, among whom he never thought he’d have a place.

For the first time in his life he dared to imagine a life beyond a back-breaking minimum wage job and diabetes. Overwhelmed by gratitude, and overflowing with love and determination, his eyes filled with tears and he felt there was nothing he could not do.

Bo left for Texas, with the promise of coming back, better-equipped for their journey together.

It was Super Bowl Sunday, and the first time he’d been in her room since she left. It didn’t feel the same without her. All signs of her were gone. No pile of makeup on the floor in front of her mirror. No smell of peaches and bergamot lingering in the air—Aventus Creed. No empty beer bottles from the nights they stayed up talking. No laughter to fill his ears with music. Just silence, and a bed made a little too neat. He looked out the window, and saw just below it that’d she’d moved the pictures of her father and his from the TV stand to her desk. And beside these two was a little black book. He felt the cool, smooth surface of the notebook beneath his fingers, and he kissed it’s leather spine knowing its pages contained the heart of the girl who to him was dearest in the world.

He opened to the first page and began to read.