Almost, Once

At the intersection, I could go right and head home—the way I always did after errands or a late solo lunch. But turning left would take me directly to the highway, and down 90 miles of familiar road. The one I used to travel when heading back to my old apartment in the city. My old life. My old self.

And once down those 90 miles, my tires would want to pull off at a familiar exit. They'd remember the turns, the stoplights, the back entrance to a street I looked up just yesterday on Google Maps. That street ended at a small, craftsman-style house with a red door and a cracked stone walkway. A house that belonged to one man. A man who wasn’t my husband.

A man ten years younger than me.

A man with a live-in fiancée.

A man with a three-year-old son who, in a recent photo posted by a mutual colleague, smiled a crooked smile so familiar it punched me in the chest. Because I saw that same smile every day for nearly ten years, when I was his assistant, his colleague, his friend.

I wasn't looking for an affair.

I wasn't even looking for a kiss.

Okay. Maybe one.

What I wanted—or maybe what I needed—was to explore the silence that still lingered between us from the day I left the city. That moment, years ago, when he gave me a railroad spike from his childhood collection, because he’d always been obsessed with trains. That moment when he said, “I feel lucky to have worked with you,” and asked if he could give me a hug goodbye. A moment I welcomed—hesitantly, but fully—and still remember in flickers: his hand on my back, his aftershave sharp and soft all at once, his breath as he said, “Take care of yourself.”

Did I really pick up on something unspoken? Or was I romanticizing a memory that was nothing more than a blip of kindness? Did nothing percolate between us because there was no water in the kettle to begin with—or because we were both too professional to light the burner?

There was that time, though.

It was the era of Zoom calls and soft pants. The COVID days. He was on my team then, newly promoted. We were adjusting to remote work, reshuffling our structure. I had taken a long weekend to go to Niagara with the man who would become my husband, and his two daughters. At the time, we were just dating, but serious. I'd asked for a half day that Friday, but still had to attend our 10:00 a.m. department meeting.

Lisa, our director, was overtly chipper—annoyingly so--as always. She started the call with her usual icebreaker—this time something she called "My Favorite Thing." We were supposed to hold up something meaningful. Something we admired. I had forgotten.

Panicking, I switched off my camera. I ran into the other room, where my boyfriend was wrangling the girls after breakfast. I dragged him into the office, gave him a crash course on names and roles, and when it came to my turn, I clicked the camera back on.

"This," I said, squeezing his hand, “is my favorite thing.”

People smiled. Lisa clapped. Someone in HR dropped a heart emoji. But my eyes flicked across the screen, scanning the grid of tiny faces. It was his face that stopped me.

It had changed.

Not overtly. Not obviously. But something subtle shifted. Like a picture slightly tilted on the wall. A flicker of surprise. Maybe disappointment. Or maybe he just thought it was unprofessional. Radical. Even brazen.

And who was I to bring my romantic life into the professional space like that? He was always so measured, so composed. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe he was distracted. Maybe his internet glitched.

But the moment branded itself into my memory. Just like the railroad spike still tucked away in my bottom desk drawer.

Back at the intersection, the turn signal clicked louder than usual. I could feel the weight of decision pressing down on my shoulders.

Left or right.

Nine years of city life had been stripped from me in under two, replaced by a new town, a husband with children who weren’t mine, and a quiet sort of domesticity that felt more like watching a play than being part of one. I was still learning the lines. Still forgetting when to enter the scene.

I hadn’t even realized how much of myself I’d shelved until I saw his face again. Not in person. Just a thumbnail on LinkedIn. A work update. Promotion to Executive Director. New baby photos. An engagement announcement.

He had moved on. Of course he had. As he should. And I had too. Sort of.

I turned right.

Home. The version of home that held wet scrunchies in the bathtub, stepdaughter drama, and a man who kissed my forehead every morning before work, and who tried—really tried—to make room for the parts of me he didn’t fully understand.

But for the next few days, that fork in the road lived in the back of my throat.

I brought up the railroad spike during dinner one night. Casually.

“Did I ever show you that weird gift I got from a coworker? A railroad spike. He used to collect them.”

My husband looked up from his plate. “That’s kind of cool. Where is it?”

“Drawer in my desk.”

He shrugged, took another bite. No alarm. No jealousy. Just... trust.

It should have made me feel better. But somehow, it made me feel lonelier.

A few nights later, after the girls had gone to bed and he was watching a new episode of a science fiction series on HBO, I poured a glass of Moscato and dug out the spike.

It was heavier than I remembered. Rusted at the edges. Still smelled vaguely of metal and dust.

I set it on the kitchen table and stared at it.

What did I want from all this?

Validation? Proof that I wasn’t crazy? That he had felt something too? That if I had made a different choice, taken a different turn, there might have been something else waiting for me?

I picked up the spike. Considered tossing it. Considered mailing it back. Considered Googling his address again.

Instead, I walked it outside to the garden bed. Dug a shallow hole with my hand. Planted the spike like a seed.

Then I went back inside.

I didn’t sleep well that night, but I didn’t dream about him either.

In the morning, I slid his coffee out from under the Keurig and placed it by him as he sat at the dining table. He was scrolling through email on his phone but looked up and gave me a tired, quiet grin. The kind that didn’t ask anything of me, but offered everything just the same.

And I realized something.

Not every unspoken moment needs to be explored. Some can live only in memory, shaped by the person we were, not the person we are now.

Some stories aren’t about what we did.

They’re about what we almost did.

And then chose not to.