Relic of the Past

Slumped in a corner booth, scrolling through her phone, Elizabeth sighed as she realized that another minute had passed. If there was one thing she disliked, it was tardiness, and her date was already five minutes late. Though she was dressed casually, in a pale blue pair of skinny jeans and a white, long-sleeved blouse, those were her nice jeans and blouse, and she had spent hours agonizing over her makeup and her hair.

Now done mourning the time she had wasted, Elizabeth shuddered as she imagined having to face the friendly waitress again, after telling her that she was waiting for another person. Elizabeth would have to order soup for one like a loser who had been stood up on a blind date-which she would become in approximately five more minutes.

This was why Elizabeth didn't go out on dates. There were other reasons, too, but this was definitely one of them.

In her head, Elizabeth cursed out Katie, who had sounded very confident, and a bit smug, when she had reassured Elizabeth over the phone that the man she had picked out was the 'perfect guy for her.'

Elizabeth couldn't help but snort at the idea. Perfect, she thought bitterly, echoing Katie's words while ripping one of the complimentary bread rolls in half.

The door to the cafe swung open, releasing a faint chime. It was a cool August afternoon, and a gust of wind blew into the building, disrupting the warmth emitting from the bread ovens behind the counter. The noise startled Elizabeth into dropping the bread roll from her hands and adopting an expression similar to that of a raccoon being caught stealing from a trash can.

'Startled raccoon' was not exactly the confident and sexy image Elizabeth was aiming to project, particularly not when she realized who her blind date was.

"Oh, God," she muttered under her breath, quickly lowering her head. Though she had just turned twenty-two a few months ago, she suddenly felt as if she was in high school again. Not in the fun and nostalgic way of reminiscing one's youth, but rather in the slightly queasy, slightly embarrassed, and perpetually insecure way of a teenager.

Elizabeth had almost forgotten about Dale. Which was not easy, especially since in their small town growing up, he had been one of her closest friends. It also didn't help that teenage Elizabeth had a large and (in her opinion) obvious crush on Dale. However, her crush never progressed into anything more than maintaining the friendship between them, despite her friends constantly egging her on to ask him out. Dale, who was smart and ended up as the salutatorian in their graduating class, was seemingly oblivious to her subtle attempts at dropping hints.

This charade of Elizabeth hiding her true feelings and attempting to conceal her jealousy in front of Dale's several girlfriends throughout the years continued until he eventually left town for college. With the encouragement of several friends who were, at this point, fed up of hearing about Dale, Elizabeth remembered blocking Dale's number, and on all social media, figuring that no contact at all with him for the rest of her life was the best way to resolve her feelings.

Looking back, Elizabeth thought, that was a completely unnecessary and overly dramatic reaction on her part. Leave it up to teenage Elizabeth to attempt to make life as difficult as possible.

Elizabeth, now hiding behind an open menu, quickly peeked towards the entrance. That was Dale, alright. He was a little taller now and had on a little stubble around his chin, but it was still him. She hated how her heart immediately started to pound again, hated how he could still do this to her after all these years, hated how her body automatically responded just to his presence. For a moment, Elizabeth contemplated sneaking through the back door or climbing out the window in the bathroom and then hightailing it to her Honda in the parking lot.

Then she snapped back to reality and realized that she was an adult, not a teenager and that she had to do the polite, adult thing.

Boo.

Elizabeth set the menu down. "Hi!" she said, waving at Dale, her voice a few octaves higher than normal. She cleared her throat. "Hi," she repeated again.

Following the sound of her voice, he spun around. Spotting Elizabeth, she noticed an odd look pass over his face. Confusion? Surprise? Betrayal? Constipation? She couldn't tell. She could tell, however, that her palms were starting to get sweaty with each step that he took towards her booth until he was finally standing in front of her.

Dale coughed, then tilted his head slightly. "So...you're here for the blind date? That Katie set up?"

"Uh, yeah," Elizabeth responded meekly, unsure what to say. She forced a fake laugh. "Hey, Dale! Huh, what a coincidence, us ending up together-I mean, here. It's nice meeting you after all these years!"

She was rambling now.

Dale, however, didn't seem to mind the verbal diarrhea spouting from her mouth. He slid into the booth, sitting on the side across from her. A smile graced his face.

"Wow, I can't believe it."

___________________________________________

Dale couldn't believe his luck. He'd actually thought that he had run out of it, considering the events of the past week. First, he'd found out that his girlfriend had been cheating on him. Then, the electricity went out for a few days, and the technician never showed up, forcing him to attempt to fix it himself, with no prior experience in doing so. And then, as he had left his apartment on his way to this blind date, he discovered that his tires had been punctured. Ten minutes later, Dale found himself in the backseat of an Uber in order to get a ride to the cafe.

It wasn't like he had high hopes for this blind date, either. Going into it, the mindset Dale had entered was that of a distraction or a rebound. Dale had faith in Katie and her matchmaking skills, but he had never been a fan of blind dates themselves. They never seemed to work out for Dale. Half the time, he would wind up eating dinner in awkward silence with his date, having run out of the standard conversation topics (the weather, the family, the job) and realizing that they just didn't have a connection.

However, Katie had insisted that he go on the blind date, especially after she had witnessed first-hand the condition he was in after the breakup. Sweatpants, a blanket wrapped around him, and nursing a cold beer on a Saturday morning while somberly watching children's cartoons, Dale vividly remembered the facial expression Katie had pulled when she saw him in his pathetic state.

"Okay, okay, pity party's over," she announced, clapping her hands. "I'm going to set you up on a date with one of my other single friends. Get you out of this rut. So, make yourself presentable and don't embarrass me. Chop, chop."

Indeed, the bar for this date had been so low that, when he spotted Elizabeth, sitting in the corner booth, he had been genuinely taken aback. Elizabeth looked different than the last time Dale had seen her as a teenager. She was sporting a different haircut, her face had elongated and lost some of the baby fat that had once hugged her jawline, and she was no longer sporting the band t-shirts that were once practically an extension of herself. Nonetheless, Dale concluded, it was quite obviously her.

In the small town where they had grown up together, Elizabeth, he would often joke, helped him stay sane. They were good friends but he had never thought of her as anything more. There were girlfriends in his life as a teenager, and they came and went, but Elizabeth was different. She was always there for him.

It wasn't until one of his friends, driving home with Dale after a long afternoon of soccer practice, teased him by saying that Dale spent so much time with Elizabeth, she was like another girlfriend, that Dale made an important realization.

"No, she's not my girlfriend," he had protested. "She's my...uh...she's a friend."

Hearing how lame that sentence sounded out loud was the wake-up call Dale needed to realize that he no longer wanted to be friends with Elizabeth. Of course, being an awkward teenager who could barely understand his own feelings and was even less fond of sharing them, Dale kept his mouth shut. He figured that it was better for him-for both of them, really. After all, Elizabeth didn't seem to show any signs of affection toward him, not like how his previous girlfriends had. Also, she was cool. Probably too cool for teenage Dale.

As time went by, they lost touch when he moved away from the town to attend college. Dale wasn't entirely sure how that had happened. Maybe he had stopped responding to her or she had stopped responding to him. Either way, as time passed, Elizabeth became more of a relic of the past to Dale, someone who was buried with the rest of his high school memories.

No longer simply a memory from the bygone past, Dale looked at Elizabeth, not his former good friend from school, but Elizabeth of the present.

Suddenly feeling a bit flustered and caught off guard, Dale tried to force a wide, friendly smile onto his face. At least, he hoped it appeared friendly and didn't make him look like a clown.

Looking into her eyes, his heart began to pound and he tried to control the emotions that were surfacing once more.

Realizing he had to break through the silence that was building between them, Dale made up his mind to speak up. He wanted to convey something beautiful, something poignant, something that would set the mood of the date towards reconnecting and creating new memories between them.

Instead, he settled on:

"Wow, I can't believe it."