Feeling: Ridiculous
Listening to: Nine Days - So Happily Unsatisfied
Reading/Watching: Giussani - The Religious Sense

There are ways in which a heart takes a snapshot. Someone's image might brown and curl up with age, but the only way to substantially change your perception of a person is if something happens, either to or by them, dramatically and irreversibly.

In that way, once a person is imprinted on me, either for good or bad, it would take a massive act of nature or humanity for me to re-fill that imprint, whether or not I intend to start another.

Today, over pancakes and bacon in Denny's, I glanced casually toward the door. A large party had come in, several of them chattering familiarly with the manager and a waitress.

I saw that jaw, the black eyes behind glasses, the shaggy brown hair, even the shirt he wore. I felt all heat congeal and drain from my blood, and I swear my pulse punched sharp and thickly into my stomach. I think I forgot how to breathe.

I'm not sure how long I froze, but Briana stopped talking, glanced over her shoulder. "What?"

My lungs grew insistent, expanded. Get me out of here. Maybe if I went to the bathroom... maybe if I just walked out... but he's in the doorway, oh God, and he's going to see me, and if he comes by to say that awkward hello... Weird little ticklish worms of light squiggled around the periphery of my vision, and when his face turned away from me, I asked, "Bri, can you look... is that...?"

She looked again, long and hard. Turned back, saying firmly, "It's not."

"But-"

She straightened, to break my line of sight with her own body. "Harry's in Florida. You said yourself, he left this weekend."

"But what if he didn't? He said there was a chance he'd have to stay." As hard as I wanted to run, I couldn't command my legs to move. His face was like a horrific freeway accident- I didn't want to see, but I could not blink. Any moment he could look back at me and see my white face, and I'd be trapped.

"No. It's not him. I thought so for a second, too, but it's not. He's too young."

Then the waitress led the party back to a large booth just a few feet away from us, and I realized. His neck and shoulders, just that little bit too thin, his face that of a boy six or seven years younger. And I suddenly felt very, very stupid for having such a panic attack.

But my heart never had time to take a new picture. Even when I shook myself calm, turned my attention back to reading Chapter 2 in Giussani, I was assaulted with his hair damp from the shower, the curve of his shoulder, the exact smell and honey-gold of his skin and the casual sprawl of his legs. His voice on the telephone, his eyes closed over a guitar, the ridges of ravaged scars on his wrists, how his breath enveloped me, the way his kiss seemed to pull me out of my own body and into his through our parted lips. He would always be that, always. I'd not spent any time with him when he was just a friend; I'd been too afraid.

Now I wish I had, just so I could have kept that ghost-fear from my face the first three or four times we walked back into that Denny's. Just so I could drive the stretch of 410 from DeZavala to San Pedro without remembering how he would distract me from driving, a hand on my thigh, lips on the concavity behind my ear.

It feels so stupid sometimes. After all, he was a blip on my diary. A month of my life. I've been "with" Quincy for twice as long, and he has yet to create such an indentation on my memories. Not even close. It's ridiculous.

Harry was 1/248 of my life. It wasn't until last night, watching Chicago at the Quarry with Lynn (old highschool friend), that I remembered Harry had wanted to see it with me. Realized this was the exact weekend when he was moving 2000 miles away. It was such an odd release, though I suppose not as complete of one as I'd imagined.

I'll end this now before I embarrass myself any further. I can't flatter myself that he's anywhere out there thinking similarly of me, the virgin prude he never conquered. And so he doesn't deserve my memory.

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