If You Could Relive One Hour of Your Past

VERSION 1

Message: What time are you going to be there?
Reply: I’m here now.

Less than 10 minutes later, she saw him walk in. She noticed immediately that he had changed out of the shirt and jeans of earlier that evening, and into the gray blazer she often preferred him in. “Something more appropriate for the night,” she thought. He looked amazing. He held up his hand to signal “one minute” into her direction, as he was obligated to pause and converse with some acquaintances who had stopped him on the way in.

She wasn’t very fond of those acquaintances. Actually, she wasn’t very fond of one woman in particular, who had been vying for his attention during the past few days. She saw him pointing in her direction and was immediately perplexed, “Why are they all looking over here?” she mumbled under her breath. Her friends had been sitting beside her, trying to decipher body language and lip movement. And in an attempt to stop herself from watching him.. staring at him.. she got up gracefully and walked over to the bar.

“One Guinness please.”

“Hey Ro, what are you getting?” It was him.

He stood so close to her that she could feel her hair rise, as each individual goose bump began to form on her arm. He mimicked her posture as he folded his hands together and placed his elbows firmly onto the bar. So close that their shoulders touched, and by turning her head slightly to the right, their eyes tunnel visioned at point blank range.

“A Guinness,” she said with a smile.

As he told her how hungry he was, the bartender handed her a pint ~ to which she mentally chanted “Do not spill do not spill,” over and over again in her head.

"I'll see you back at the table," she whispered, as she took her hand and made a conscious maneuver to brush it down his arm. She could tell by his smile, that he had been charmed.

Her friends were eager for her return, as they sat dying to tell her that the woman at the other table stormed out of the bar after watching him stand beside her. Her friends learned that the reason for the “pointing” and “looking” that took place just ten minutes before, was because he was telling the woman, “I’m having dinner at that table with her tonight.”

He returned.

He took off his blazer… and she couldn’t help but stare at his arms, hands, face. “You looked like a lovesick puppy,” her friend told her later that night, “you both just kept staring into one another’s eyes, and the rest of us wanted to leave.”

She had to go now.

“I’ll call you when I’m done here,” he said with a look of anxiety on his face. He had to stay. He had to entertain new friends that just walked in. He did not want to.

“Okay,” she said, as she turned to walk away. She turned to catch one last glance at him and was shocked to find him already looking into her direction. “Nice,” she softly whispered, “nice.”

Later that night: She checked her phone… one missed call?

“I wish I could’ve gone with you tonight,” she listened as she stood outside the double doors of her place. She was biting her bottom lip, but her mind was doing cartwheels.