The Girl of my Daydreams

I had known from the moment our eyes met on the bus that I would marry her, and maybe that sounds cliché to you. Maybe that sounds like something out of a movie, the only place where a statement like that can contain any truth. But truth has always been stranger than fiction, hasn’t it? Authors and poets didn’t just pull such a concept out of thin air. They must have seen it for themselves; happening to others and feeling it in their own hearts.

I would certainly be feeling it that morning, while waiting on the bus as it carried me one stop closer to work. The air was cold enough to suspend my breath as a small cloud right before my eyes, and I walked through it as the brakes on the bus brought it to a whining stop in front of me. Eager to get out of the cold I didn’t even wait for the doors to open fully, squeezing my way between them and heading up the steps.

 The driver frowned at me as I scanned my bus pass, likely displeased that I had risked damaging his doors. I didn’t care. Once his bus heater got going, he didn’t have to worry about the cold but would be warm and comfy enough to frown at passengers rushing to escape the winter air. I was in my seat by the time his frown faded, and the doors closed.

She climbed aboard three stops later. Between my stop and hers the bus driver drowned at each boarding passenger except for her. For the first time in his life, I’s sure, he smiled even as she bumped against the slow opening doors in her own rush to get out of the cold.

 “Sorry about that,” she said sweetly.

 “Oh, that’s alright,” the bus driver answered as if he were the most understanding driver in the world. Who could blame him though?

 It was her pleasant voice, how it dripped from her lips like nectar from a flower, that grabbed my attention, and her eyes that held it. By the time I had looked up she was standing near me. Our eyes met then, and shy as her beauty made me, I could not look away. If her voice was like nectar then her eyes, caught in the light of a slow rising sun, were two pools of warm refined honey. Her face was painted with the same strokes of brilliant orange that shaded the armada of clouds in the sky, the heavens themselves applying its brush to her features. Curling dark locks of hair framed the divine artwork, making her eyes seem all the brighter.

 I could have sat there looking up at her for hours, and it seemed as if hours had passed before the bus lurched forward. She rocked back and forth slightly with the change in momentum but managed to keep her balance even without reaching up to grab at a handrail.

 Being so enraptured by her striking beauty and grace, I barely heard when she asked,

  “Is this seat taken?” Her voice was kind, and her nectar glossed lips curved up in a small polite smile. She extended a slender finger out to direct my attention to the empty seat beside me. 

 Admiring such beauty and grace was one thing. Having to speak was another, and I suddenly realized how nervous I should be in her presence.

  “Yes,” I said stammering and cracking my voice as I forced out my answer. Defeated by my own words, I moved over to give her some extra room. I was sure that years from then she would explain how amusing, even endearing, she found my nervousness to our sons and daughters. An additional few years and she would do so again to our grandchildren.

 A soft laugh fell without effort from her lips as she took a seat beside me. The butterflies in my stomach stirred, awoken by her laugh and excited by the floral scent of her perfume.

I knew that I would have to act quickly if I was going to act at all. I had grown accustomed to the few faces that rode the early bird route with me and could predict with great accuracy who would get off at which stop. This was my first time seeing her on this route however, and I could not begin to guess when she would get off. For all I knew she could be leaving at the very next stop, and I would have lost my chance to utter more than a single word.

 The bus slowed and we all swayed slightly as the brakes took their full effect. Another familiar face climbed aboard and she, more importantly, did not climb off. That hardly mattered though, and with every passing mile it mattered less and less. Even if she stayed on the bus longer than I did, my stop was already drawing close. The bus lurched back into forward motion, and our shoulders bumped together as the driver gave it more gas than he needed to. We both exchanged shy apologetic glances with one another but remained silent. I could hear faint music coming from the wired ear buds she had connecting her phone’s audio to her ear.

Eventually I would strike up a conversation with her and find that she was the easiest person in the world to talk with despite how nervous her beauty made me. The wings of the butterflies in my stomach would stir up a wit and charm that I had no idea was in my possession. We would take turns laughing at one another’s jokes and blushing at each teasing compliment we sent the other’s way. I would learn her name and she would learn mine, the both of us amazed by the respective beauty and strength that their meanings conveyed. Our time together on that bus would be an eternity that would not seem as if it had lasted long enough once it came to an end.

 I expected that by then we’d have exchanged not only jokes and names, but each other’s numbers too. Either she, or I would hurry off the bus with sincere promises of staying in touch. Romantic dates would follow one after the other, growing our interest in one another. Slowly but surely, we would fall in love, I would propose, and we’d be married.

 Our union would never falter. It would produce sons and daughters, each with a name as beautiful and strong as our own. Maybe we would adopt a dog or two, and they would run and play with our children in a large front yard bordered by a pure white picket fence.

Maybe the bus driver had suddenly started having a bad day, and he was taking it out on his bus and passengers. Maybe an animal darted out across the road. Maybe he nearly passed the stop. For whatever reason he slammed on the breaks, and many of us fought to stay in our seats.

 Our shoulders collided again, and it rattled me out of my daydreams of a future together. The sun had by then climbed higher into the sky, its light no longer caught in her dark brown eyes. She mouthed a silent apology while removing an ear bud. I shrugged my shoulders as if unbothered by it, or by the sudden reality check. I remember opening my mouth to speak, to squeeze in at least one hail Mary.

 Before I could the bus driver announced, “Vine and Division,” naming the current stop.

 Her brown eyes lit up. Not with any heavenly light, but with recognition of the name, and with a bit of panic.

 “This is my stop,” she muttered to herself, while ripping her ear buds off from her ears and her phone, shoveling them haphazardly into her purse. The headphone jack hung over the side.

 “If you, uh, don’t hurry it might run off,” I managed with a voice that shook as if the bus was inching over a rope bridge and not sitting still. 

 “Right,” she said with a polite laugh.

 “Division and Vine!” The driver shouted a final warning before he pulled off.

 “Thanks for giving me a little extra room,” she said briskly and turned away before I could say she was welcome. The headphone jack, still dangling from her purse, swayed with each step she took towards the bus doors.

 “Enjoy the rest of your day ma’am,” the bus driver said with as much pleasantness in his voice as she had shown him that morning, flashing a second rare smile as she exited.

 The doors closed slowly behind her, and I watched from behind the window as the girl of my daydreams shrank away into the horizon.