a little credit

Midway through our dinner at an Upper West Side grill, I’d sustained about as much self-censorship as I could handle, and I let the fuck word fly. I quickly shoved another slice of avocado into my heinous potty mouth to prevent any further indiscretions, and looked up at my companion, expecting shock, dismay or a quick attempt at a dinner-time exorcism. Instead, he was laughing.

“You’ve been on your best behavior this whole time, haven’t you?”

I nodded and gnawed at a french-fry. “I tried.”

“You were the most real girl I ever knew, V. I’m glad that hasn’t changed.”

V. Short for the name given to the goddess of love and a fly eating plant, it was the nickname he’d given me when I was 19 and we’d just met. Seven years later, he sat across from me, zenned out, spikey haired and sporting a yoga-trimmed physique, completely changed and exactly the same.

I dropped the thin guise of propriety on the spot. We spent the rest of the evening walking the streets of Manhattan, eating ice cream and reminiscing.

“Remember those shoes you had?”
“What shoes?” I munched on a piece of waffle cone. “I had lots of shoes.”
“The black ones that made you six feet tall? Every time I see someone wearing a pair, I think, ‘Look! Heather Shoes.’”
“You do? You… think about me?”
“All the time.”

When even the allure of a full moon over the river couldn’t overpower the night’s humidity, we went back to my air conditioned apartment. We talked and talked until I was doing more yawning than talking. We decided it time to call it a night; I had brunch in the morning and he had a plane to catch.

Except for one blasphemy slip on my part, the night went off without a hitch. So much laughing. I remembered all the reasons I cared and I wondered why the idea of seeing him again had made me so nervous. I really should have given him a little more credit — he’d changed as much as I had. Maybe not in the same direction, but he’d changed.

Cheers to getting better with age.