Karma

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I am alone, utterly single, and decidedly regretting my life choices. The bar is overflowing with the giggles of drunken bachelors, drinking away their Valentine’s Day. No couple can be found within a five mile radius of this place. I’m probably the only sober person here, wedged in a corner booth by a TV blaring a soap opera that some older women appear to be very fixated on. I stare at my salad, as if all the answers in the universe can be found mixed in with my lettuce and tomatoes. I push my plate away. I’m not hungry. A jittery waitress wanders over to my table, playing with her hair as she asks how I’m doing, and if she can get me anything. It takes me a minute to realize that she’s talking about food. She doesn’t want to hear how terrible I’m doing, living off ramen in my dorm room, while my annoying roommate is home for the long weekend. She’s asking if I want a drink, not if I want a hug or a nice hot bath.

I must have been staring because she looks at me strangely as I shake my head. Unless she has “a new heart” on the menu, there’s nothing she can get me. I glance at the soap opera, watching as a muscular Latino guy proposes to “Charlotta”. “Charlotta, mi amor, will you marry me? I cannot bear to live another day without you by my side, to breathe another breath that is not shared with your own. I have loved you all my life, and I will never stop loving you.” 

“Oh Javier,” Charlotta says with a dreamy sigh. I snort into my croutons, earning me a strange look from an elderly woman with mascara streaked down her face. Guess she isn’t taking the break-up well, either. I’m just about to ditch the pub for the comfort of my dorm bed, and a Master Chef marathon when someone new walks up to the host stand. I suck in a sharp breath, as I try not to stare at the figure being seated at the table next to mine. Is it him? Is it really him, after all this time? 

✶✶✶

It was a summer full of the laughter and innocence that can only come with being young, with not knowing any better, with thinking that nothing bad would happen because you were good. A summer of believing in karma. We met at the amusement park. It was an interesting way to meet someone. I was heaving my guts out after going on The Hurricane for the first time. He came over to see if I was okay. We spent the rest of that day together. I ditched my sister to shoot water at rubber ducks and share overpriced cotton candy with him. It was worth it. 

The next day he came to the library with me. I got lost in the romance section, while he went to go find Harry Potter. He was the kind of geek who reread Harry Potter over and over again. Except, as soon as we sat down next to each other, he kept sneaking peeks over my shoulder. I was reading some popular romantic comedy with scenes that made my middle school self blush. Pretty soon we were reading the book together, waiting for one another to finish before turning the page. Blushing together. Laughing at the cheesiness, and cringing at the extremely socially awkward main character who couldn’t take a hint. And, it was in that moment that I knew he was something special. That maybe my good grades and kindness had paid off. That maybe this was some kind of reward from the universe. Karma. 

✶✶✶

I’m suddenly really interested in my napkin. Like I’m Sherlock Holmes and there’s some important clue hidden between the layers of cheap paper that rips when you wipe your face with it. But I can’t help sneaking glances. No one followed him in. He’s alone at his table nursing a beer, as the antsy waitress attempts to flirt with him, telling him some joke that he laughed politely at, but I can tell isn’t really funny. She doesn’t even card him, probably because she’s lonely and needs to at least tell herself that she’s trying. I want to rescue him. But I can’t do much of anything as I’m flooded with the memories. With the feelings of an angsty teen that creep back into my psyche, forcing my heart to pound and my palms to start sweating profusely. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. He doesn’t notice me. 

✶✶✶

It was a couple of weeks later, and we were in my room. He was admonishing my lack of Harry Potter memorabilia, and I was humoring him with excuses as I pretended to read. He walked over to my bed, and climbed up to lay beside me. He didn’t even realize what he’d done. What it meant. He was the kind of guy that didn’t get embarrassed. The kind of awkward-yet-cute nerd who wrote Harry Potter fan-fiction and preferred fiction to reality. But right then, as he ranted to me about his fan-fiction nemesis who wrote Drarry fan-fic with a frustrating lack of punctuation, that I became aware of one startling fact. I liked him. I liked him liked him. It was not my first crush, not by a long shot. But for some reason, it was the first crush that felt plausible. Like it could happen. Like we could happen. Like the universe was guiding us together, like fate was responsible for our friendship. Like an author who wrote one of my cheesy romances was writing our story. Like karma was on our side. 

✶✶✶

I splash water in my face, and inhale slowly as I take in my appearance in a cracked mirror defaced with creatively-worded graffiti. My eyes are swollen and bloodshot, and I look like I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown, which frankly, I am. No wonder that old lady gave me some side eye. I look like a deranged psychopath. I’m not. But I am a depressed, broken hearted loner who had their heart ripped out of their body and run over by a tractor exactly four days ago by some frat boy jerk. What’s the difference? 

I give myself a mental pep talk, as I dry my face with a stiff paper towel. It will be okay. You will be okay. Let’s just get out of here and go back to Top Ramen and Gordon Ramsay. With my face dry and my heart still shattered I come to learn one simple truth. Pep talks don’t work. No matter how many times you tell yourself that it will be okay, it won’t. But then another thought hits me. How can it get worse? How can it possibly get any worse? This cheers me up. It literally can’t get any worse, which means it has to get better, right? And then an insane thought pops into my head, and fills me up like a balloon till I’m soaring high into the sky. I dispose of my soggy paper towels, and open the bathroom door. It slams shut behind me with a bang. 

✶✶✶

It was a day in late August that had been the day. The day I was finally going to confess my feelings for him. We had been hanging out steadily all summer. I read his fan-fiction online. He watched cooking shows with me, and we trashed the kitchen together as we tried to recreate one of Julia Child’s masterpieces. We were best friends. Or at least, he was my best friend. To my naive middle school self, that was the same thing. Because I believed that affection was reciprocated, at least most of the time. The fact that I could be his best friend, and he not mine didn’t occur to me. That was too impossible. So far-fetched that it seemed like a fantasy. 

That day, I went to meet him at the amusement park. The same one where we first met. In my hopelessly romantic, childish mind, that was perfectly full circle. It didn’t occur to me that maybe he didn’t care about full circles or the norm in rom-coms. Once we found each other, we went on a bunch of rides, including the one that started it all, The Hurricane. I made sure not to puke this time. I was slowly working up my courage throughout the day, but every time I tried to get the words out, it felt like something was clogging up my throat. Like I had become mute. It was only when we were sharing a funnel cone on a bench, shaded from the day’s scorching heat, that I was finally able to say it. “I have a crush on you.” I said, because it didn’t occur to my inexperienced brain, that there were other, more chill ways to say it. He turned to look at me, stared for the briefest second, and then kept on talking about Daniel Radcliffe. Like Daniel Radcliffe was cooler than me. I guess he was. 

After that day I never saw him again. He didn’t answer my phone calls or texts, he didn’t purposely run into me at the grocery store, that way he sometimes did that summer. He didn’t read romances over my shoulder, or help me figure out how to make creme brulee. He didn’t go to my school, or any one that was close enough to my house for me to scope out. He ghosted me, in the worst way possible. It was sometime around then that I stopped reading romances. That I stopped believing in karma. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but the universe had just decided to crush my heart. That was why they called it a crush after all, because it crushed you. 

✶✶✶

I approach his table, and he looks up from his phone as soon as I get close enough for him to tell that I’m not just passing by, that I’m here to talk. So what if this makes me a lame rebounder. I’m doing this. “Hi,” I say, and shove my hands awkwardly in my pockets, because my memory fails me on what rom-coms tell you to do with your hands in situations like this. “Hi.” he says, and my stomach flip-flops at the little smile he gives me, the one that used to make me want to kiss him. He’s changed, though. Traded his nerdy Harry Potter-esque spectacles for clear contacts. Cut his unruly brown hair short, so that he doesn’t have to deal with it. Traded his graphic tees and wholly jeans for a crisp blue polo shirt and khakis. I don’t care. I start talking before he can get anything else in. “So, I know it’s been forever, and that you probably didn’t like me very much as a kid and stuff, but I was wondering, would you—uh—maybe want to hang out sometime?” 

“Have we met?” He asks, confusion dancing in his warm hazel eyes. 

I was wrong. It can always get worse. How did I ever believe in karma?