The Story of A.

I saw A. at pool league night, and as always it ended up leaving me a little shaken. I was in good spirits when I got there, but seeing her just wore me down as the night went on. I'm not sure what I even want to say about all this.

I got her some presents a while back and I've been trying to get them to her; each time I offered to drop them by, I was met with some excuse as to why she wouldn't be there. I'm not sure if the excuses were real or not, but the overwhelming feeling was that she didn't want me to come over. I mean, they're presents for God's sake. You only balk at receiving presents from people you're uncomfortable with. Like bums on the bus. Not too excited if a hobo reaches into a dirty sack and pulls out a package marked for me. Awkward. So, it looks like I'm that hobo. Anyway, the only time I see her anymore is at pool night, and even then it's awkward and odd, for me at least. I guess the only reason it's weird for me is that I just can't stop thinking about her.

There it is. Now it's out.

She said something to me not too long ago, with tears forming in her eyes, that the reason she's so bent out of shape with her ex-boyfriend (yeah, seriously, she talked about that guy *a lot*) was that it felt like something that meant so much to her ended up meaning so little to him, that their relationship changed her in big ways, changed who she was, how she thought, and when it was over he just moved on like it was a minor stop.

I'm paraphrasing, of course. We were drinking when she said this. But now, I find myself in that same position.

When I met her, I was doing well. I had a good job, my first real job in Chicago, making decent money using my degree, I had a healthy attitude about relationships and sex and people. I was confident and sure of myself and who I was. Not that everything was peaches and cream. I found out that the girl I was dating at the time was married (yeah, that hit me like a brick to the groin) and I was ramping up to call it quits. Which was fine, really, since I was justified in ending it and, honestly, I understood where she was coming from. There were no real hard feelings and we still talk here and there.

Then I meet A.

She was rude, and brash, and loud, and funny, and smart, and cute. She had enough of a punk sensibility to disregard punk. Individualistic but surprisingly caring and thoughtful. Everything I found out about her surprised me; everything she said made me laugh. We talked one night in late January, over a game of pool, about literature and politics and people and we became friends. She saw me juggle and felt the need to kiss me, and I fell in love with her. And I fell far. I drove her home that night and we made out in the car like I was dropping her off at her parents' house, pawing at each other's winter coats with a desperation that was less about sex and more about staying in those private confines where this thing was exciting and real and comfortable. I remember driving home later through a cold rain thinking the street lights as they reflected off the the wet asphalt looked like stars.

Our first date was on Valentines Day, which is normally a bad omen, and it's somewhat comforting to know that omens aren't fake and should be noted. I picked her up holding a bouquet of flowers and a pair of tickets to a live radio show that she's been dying to go to, and she made reservations at a restaurant knowing my deep and abiding love of Cuban food and how much I missed it since I moved to the city. We talked excitedly in the car as we drove to dinner about the little things that mattered only to us, laughing and noticing how good it was. Four blocks from the restaurant, the flashing red and blues of the CPD lit us up from behind. I remember thinking that they just wanted to pass us when I pulled over. The officer walked up to my window and told me that one of my tail lights was out and that I should get it fixed as soon as possible, and A. and I smiled at each other as he took my driver's license to write up some quick paper work. We continued to talk as he did his thing, stopping only when he came back and asked me to step out of the car to speak to me. Honestly, I had no idea anything was really wrong until he shut the police car door with me in the back seat. Even when he was frisking me I thought it was standard procedure for his safety. Seriously. I'm kind of naive like that. The officer's partner hops into my car and drives it off towards the impound lot and as the squad car pulls away I see A. standing ankle deep in the snow talking on the phone with her hand on her forehead. I find out later that she's talking to her mother who called to find out how the date was going that she's been looking forward to. Awesome.

So, I'm in the back of the cop car and I start laughing. Not maniacally, as you'd probably imagine, but sincerely because, well, it's pretty funny. Officer Alvarez, a nice man, really, short with a traditional cop mustache, asks me what I'm laughing at. So I tell him the whole story, from meeting to moment, and he immediately apologizes.

"I'm really sorry I had to do this. But after this date, she's *gone*, man."

I thought about it for a second, and realized that I wasn't worried at all. "I don't know, man," I said, "I think it'll be okay." Just then my phone, which he let me keep (I wasn't even cuffed), buzzes with a text message.

A.: I'm on my way to get you.
Me: Thank you so much. You kick ass.
A: I know. see you soon!

Officer Alvarez and I got to the station, and knowing that I'm not much of a trouble maker, he let me walk in still uncuffed. I say hello to all the officers milling about as we make our way to the back where paperwork waited for us. It was all very amiable. At one point, after finding out that I work with computers, he asks me some technical questions and I end up fixing one of the laptops in the station. He tells me about all the honest mechanics I can bring my car to. When his partner Officer Santiano, a stocky brusque woman in her late thirties, gets there, he tells her my story. She starts laughing.

"She's totally gone, man!"
"He says she's on her way."
"Wow, she sounds like a keeper."
"Yeah," I agree, "she does indeed."

Like something out of a movie, the station chief storms into the little cubicle and starts bitching them both out for "shoddy paperwork" and storms back out. Seriously.

"What's up his ass?" I ask quietly.
"He just likes to be an asshole," Officer Santiano whispers and Alvarez grins, going back to his paperwork. We all chuckle conspiratorially and Santiano and I make small talk while Alvarez finishes up.

"You want some cookies, honey? You must be hungry. Someone brought them in for Valentines Day."

"Sure, thanks." She disappears and comes back with a small stack and I smile thinking about the irony of a cop giving me cookies while another one books me. Would've been better if she offered me donuts, but the cookies turn out to be more appropriate.

I munch down a couple of cookies while we talk, and soon the station chief calls out my name yelling out that someone is here for me. Alvarez and Santiano look at me, and I grin as I wrap up the last cookie in a napkin. We head up to the front desk and A. is just finishing up paying my bail. She turns around and I notice how beautiful she looks even with the worried expression on her face. I look at her with a sheepish smile and hold out the cookie to her.

"Happy Valentines Day, honey."

She takes one look at the heart shaped sugar cookie with silly red sprinkles all over it and starts to laugh. She throws her arms around me and gives me a kiss.

This is the single most memorable moment of my life to date.

If you're wondering what I was actually arrested for, it turns out that my license was suspended from unpaid parking tickets that I had gotten several years earlier, before I even lived in the city, when I was just passing through visiting friends. Alvarez told me they had suspended my license only a week before and that my insurance card expired two days ago, which is why they had to impound the car.

After we left the station, A. and I grabbed a cab and a bottle of Sambuca and went back to my place. We drank heavily, and she told me what she had been up to while I was hanging out with the local PD. Apparently, she has had the worst luck on Valentines Day historically. She called her roommates and told them what happened and met them at a nearby bar while she waited for me to finish up my paperwork. She walked in and was greeted with a round of applause by all of her friends that rushed over there to meet her, proclaiming this Valentines Day has topped all others, which was met with another round of cheers. She had a quick drink, went and got some money and then bailed her date out of jail. We laughed.

Despite all this, we had a great night. We talked and drank; she almost choked on her shot when she found out I was a Republican, and we made out after having a heated debate on Capital Punishment. It was fantastically strange. At one point my door buzzer went off, and A. and I looked at each other wondering who it could be. It was Officer Santiano returning my car keys. I met her halfway down the stairs as she made her way up.

"Is she still here?" she whispered.
I nodded and she shook her head. "Wow. That girl's a keeper."
"She is indeed." She gave me the thumbs up and I waved good bye. I went back upstairs and shut the door.

*********************************

We broke up two weeks before the next Valentines Day. Almost made it a year. I feel like I lost someone that I've known my whole life, and we didn't even make it a year. If you're wondering about our relationship, it was just that. A relationship. It had it's ups and downs, we both have our issues, and I'm not going to psychoanalyze either one of us to try and find an answer, at least not here, cause I've been doing that for the past couple of months and I've come up with more questions than answers. This past winter hit us both pretty hard and we were both going through a lot, she was switching jobs and her parents moved away, and I was dealing with my Mom getting ill and them moving away. We just grew apart, I guess. After awhile there was this weird tension between us, and it went unspoken. Instead of looking to me for comfort, she withdrew, and instead of being understanding, I got offended. I can't say it was anyone's fault; I may have been the one to break up with her, but she left me a while before that happened.

The presents that I finally gave to her were long overdue and, honestly, I just wanted to give her something. I thought they might be a little dumb (I've never really been good at giving gifts) but she was so excited when she saw them. She jumped up and down and gave me a big hug and told me how much she loved them. And seeing her that happy made me happy, but a little sad too. It made me think of the night we were coming back from detroit after possibly the worst party either one of us has ever been to. Before our car spun out into a snow drift, we were in the back seat and my friends were in the front, and she was resting with her head in my lap. I looked down at her and stroked her hair and thought to myself that I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life with this girl. I looked up at the passing street lights on the way into Chicago and thought about that first night.

There were a lot of things that I wanted to tell her that last night at pool that I never really got a chance or the nerve to say. I wanted to tell her that, despite everything that's happened, I still loved her, that our relationship meant the world to me, and that she still means so much to me. I wanted to let her know how much I regret that things didn't work out, and that I was glad that she was doing okay. I wanted her to know how much I sorely missed her and that because of that, we couldn't be friends anymore, that it was too hard for me to see her. I wanted to tell her goodbye.

All I could say before I left was a quick 'take care of yourself' and I walked out. Better to play it cool than sappy, right? I feel like now I'm in that position she was in with her ex. When I see her act so casually towards me, It's almost as though it *didn't* mean that much to her. And, seriously, why would it? Wasn't even a year. Maybe it's better that I didn't spill my guts, and this is all in my head, and when I get over this we can be friends again. I don't know. When I walked to the train station that night, though, I looked up at the street lights as they floated overhead and, honestly, they just looked like street lights.