The Girl With Green Eyes

I watched my pen etch crooked black letters across the page of my moleskin, making notes about dreams I had and stories I wanted to write. Often when I jot notes in my notebook, they’re in the first person, reminding myself about wisps of stories or moments I want to stuff in a book somewhere if I ever get the wherewithal to write another. When I want to clear my head enough to write like that, I hunker down in the back of one of half a dozen different coffee houses littered through out my normal routes.

For some reason, sitting anonymously in the back corner of a room dripping with the scent of fresh coffee is always the sort of pick me up I need when I’m struggling with new ideas.

The anonymous solitude is always welcome, but there is always the risk of being recognized.

Indeed, it can get annoying when some acquaintance or another who wants to catch up or opine about politics or chat about films recognizes you, but it comes with the territory. It’s worse when you can’t remember their name.

But there I sat, watching my fist work across the paper, leaving behind a trail of my consciousness, pausing every moment or two to look around the room to refuel my head. Once I’d finish my idle gazing about the room, I would restart, with a new line, a new sentence, a new thought.

A man is sitting on the other side of the coffee shop, I find myself writing, with bright and brand new blue jeans, and a flannel shirt that still has the creases from it’s original folding. His gold watch, hip-holstered phone and overly complicated drink, paid for with a wad of cash clipped neatly in his front pocket, give him away as someone not accustomed to dressing down. He’s probably less accustomed to sitting down and enjoying his… well, when it takes two sentences to order, is it still coffee?

I looked up again, hoping for more inspiration but was met with the most vibrant pair of green eyes I’d ever seen. They were like a pair of translucent jade emeralds with a bright, beautiful light shining through them, rimmed around the edges with a dark, crisp pine green. They belonged to a girl at the counter, waiting politely to order her coffee.

Affected, I looked back down to my writing and described her eyes in my book and bobbed back up for another look.

Had I seen those eyes before?

I flipped through the catalogues in my brain, knowing that I’d described eyes such as these exactly in something. Not just once, but a tired cliché. They were eyes I’d inserted sentimentally into a dozen stories, maybe more. Into screenplays and novels. Into any story that played out in my head, they all seemed to have a character with those eyes.

Mesmerized, I couldn’t disguise the fact that I was staring. When her eyes met mine, I looked back down to my pad.

But I couldn’t write anything. I was a like a deer in her headlights.

I thought back to the start of my fascination with green eyes, hoping that that train of thought would offer me some clue. I began to write again: I must have been about 17, she was a year behind me in school, and so she was probably 16. I was a junior in high school and thought I was hot shit on the debate team. I was on the varsity team and she was on the JV squad, but we spent a lot of time together (mostly in groups) doing research and hanging out at tournaments. Her name was Alicia and her eyes were exactly like the ones I described above. I had quite a crush on her but knew so little about the dating habits of creatures my age that I had blown any chance of dating her. To be honest, I hadn’t paid much thought about anything about her but stealing the description of her eyes for my own selfish gain in almost 15 years…

Like a bird bobbing up from a water fountain, my head came back up to take the sight in once more. This time she was sitting at a table right across the way, facing me. Taking the occasional slow sip of her hot coffee, she would stop long enough to draw in her oversized sketch-pad with a charcoal pencil.

The window behind me brought the late afternoon light into the room and cast a hard line against her and, as she looked up and took a sip of her coffee, it hit her eyes the same way I remember had once hit Alicia’s and that image had never left me.

No, it couldn’t be her.

When I knew Alicia, she was attractive, but this girl is… If it was her, the Alicia of my youth would have been a caterpillar, and this would be her as a butterfly. But the only thing that seems the same about her are the eyes… And it’s been so long that hearing her voice or laugh wouldn’t help… God I hate talking to people…

And without warning I found myself clearing my throat and asking from across the tables, “Ummm… Did you, uh, did you go to high school at Timpanogos?”

Her eyes—the eyes—lock with mine and she realizes I’m talking to her. “What?” she asks.

“Did you happen to go to Timpanogos High School?” I repeat with at least a little more confidence.

“Yeah…”

“And your older sister was Amy, and you were both on the debate team?”

“Who are you again?” My God, it was her.

“No one I suppose, I guess I’m pretty forgettable. Tim Jacobs…? I was a year ahead of you. I was in debate. I did policy with Dave Clarke? Ringing any bells?” Instead of giving her a chance to process things, I went on further, putting my foot in my mouth, “I had a huge crush on you, but I think I annoyed you. I think I annoyed your sister, too, but I think that's because she was a year ahead of me and I was an idiot.”

She laughed. “I totally remember you. We’d have to debate each other in class all the time.”

“That’s me.”

“I totally had a crush on you back then.”

“You did?” I couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah, but I didn’t say anything because you were a junior and I was a sophomore and what junior wanted to date a sophomore?”

“I was a total nerd. I wasn’t bent out of shape about the classes of girls I was interested in…”

“Do you mind if I come over there?” she asked.

“No, not at all.”

She stood, though I couldn’t describe her body, I was transfixed on her eyes. I had a sickness.

“How did you recognize me? I can’t remember the last time anyone from high school picked me out like that.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s been so long and I wasn’t exactly grabbing a lot of attention in high school.”

“It was your eyes.”

“The eyes?”

“I’d recognize those eyes today, tomorrow or a hundred years from now. This is going to sound silly, but I think you're the only girl I've ever been interested in in my entire life whose eye color I can still vividly remember.”

She cracked a smile and looked down, so I lost her eyes.

“That’s funny. I’ve always sort of hated my eye color. I’ve never thought it noteworthy.”

“Noteworthy? Are you serious? Do you remember how we’d have to go to the library at the college all the time to do research for files?”

She nodded her head and pushed a lock of dark hair back behind her ears.

“Well,” I continued, “there was this one time where you and I were waiting for a ride on the north side of campus. I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure it was in the lobby of that museum close to the library and there was a bench there that faced out the window to the parking lot. It was an oddly romantic view, with the parking lot and a sea of cars off into the horizon and the mountains sprouting up above it and the afternoon sun bouncing off the sea of cars and shining into our faces. And there we sat, side-by-side. What we were talking about I don’t recall and if you don’t either then it couldn’t have been too important. But I looked up at you, and the light hit your eyes a lot like it’s doing now and I looked right into them and it burned that image into my memory forever. That moment was the closest I’d come to telling a girl my feelings for her to that point in my life. This is probably the first time I’ve ever told anyone about that one indelible moment and, until now, I didn’t realize how meaningful a moment it was.”

She blushed and lowered her head. “That’s probably the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Well, maybe one of us should have said something way back then.”

Smirking, she says, “I’m the girl, I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Well, maybe I should have had a spine back then.”

“My most vivid memory of you isn’t as romantic as yours of me, but I think it’s a good one. Do you remember my debate partner, Eric?”

“Was that the kid with the glasses and the completely monotone voice?”

“Yeah.”

“I think he worshipped the ground Dave and I walked on…”

“He probably did, but before tournaments he would always totally berate me and yell about stupid stuff and it would just make me sick. He was probably the only reason I hated debate. Well, there was a tournament, it was at Jordan High, and I was on the stairs crying because he was a bastard. Well, you happened upon me and did your best to console me, and after I calmed down you, and I don’t remember why, kept offering me Doritos…”

“Doritos?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, that sounds so not like me now.”

“It was sweet. It meant a lot to me. That might have had a lot to do with the crush I had on you.”

“You know, I really wish I would have known about that.”

“That would have been nice.”

“So,” I asked trying to steal a glance at her left hand, hoping to not see a wedding ring, “what do you do these days?”

“I’m a nurse.”

“That sounds exciting.”

“It’s not, usually, but I like the feeling of taking care of people. It’s pretty stressful, though.”

She grabbed her coffee cup with her left hand and offered me a clear view of her unadorned ring finger. Not that the absence of a ring always meant good news, but it was a start. “Is that why you come here and draw? To unwind?”

“Sometimes. What about you, what do you do?”

“Me? Oh, this and that. I pretend to be a writer.”

“That sounds exciting.”

“It can be.”

As she laughed, the alarm on my phone howled. It was sitting on the table next to my notebook and the word “meeting” flashed on and off until I sheepishly silenced it.

In a way that seemed almost sad to me, she said, “It looks like you’ve got to get going…”

“Yeah. I don’t want to, but…”

“It’s okay. I’ll give you my number…” And with that, she turned my notebook around to face her, causing me to panic, hoping she wouldn’t see everything on the front page referring to her.

I let out a sigh of relief when she turned the page, uncapped my pen and wrote her name, email address and cell phone number slanted across three lines. Next to it, she drew a small, rough caricature of me behind a debate podium. “I feel like I’m signing a yearbook. Didn’t I put my number in yours?”

“I didn’t get a yearbook.”

Handing me back my notebook and popping the lid back on my pen, “Oh. Well, you can explain it to me next time we see each other.”

“Are you asking me out?”

“No. I’m involved.”

“Involved enough to give old crushes your phone number?”

“It’s…complex.”

“Well, I’d love to hear all about it,” I said as I stood, packing my belongings into my bag.

As soon as I slung it over my shoulder, I looked down at her and said, “Boy, am I sure glad I ran into you.”

And with those bright, beautiful green eyes glinting once more in the sun, she looked back up at me and said, “I am, too.”