Some of the stories I tell on this blog are true, but most involve some embellishment, added if only for the sake of the story. Most of the posts, though, are hardly stories at all; rather, they’re just the rants and ravings of one young, upper-middle class, white, Midwestern Liberal (cover that with mayonnaise and I’m pretty sure you’re well on your way to some sort of Minnesotan hotdish).

This one, this story, as abbreviated and anticlimactic as it is, is completely true. I’ve been thinking a lot lately as I grow my beard of contentment and supposed wisdom about my life, which of course has led me not slowly to the women who have been present, and my thoughts turn to her. She, who will remain in the third person for anonymity’s sake, was, wait, is something special, and, as much as I fear to say it, she’ll always be my big question, my what if, my “the-one-that-got-away.”

The first time we met, I was instantly enamored, reeling from a terrible breakup which exploded worse than any college sophomore could possibly imagine, but still enamored. She strutted stunningly into that Perkins like something out of a Springsteen song. Lighting and waving a cigarette, we talked music, she pushed her bangs out of her face, her glasses up higher on her head. Unfortunately, the present company included one of the most negative, overly pretentious people I’ve ever met, but alas, I wasn’t there for her. I was there for Her. So we sat, at eleven at night, sipping the endless coffee provided by the spiked-hair waiter, eagerly demanding our departure and his measly tip. We left, and that was the last I thought I’d see of her.

While I said this story is anticlimactic, it can’t be that bad. It wasn’t the last time we were to meet. In the months that followed, we met here and there throughout the coffee shops of Sioux Falls, talking Finn and Faith, literature and love. Everything. I was flattened by her, this girl who moved from her home to be with her friend, who had experienced spirituality in ways I skeptically had laughed off. We went to the worst movie I have ever seen, but on my way there I bought her Nutty Bars, which she had off-handedly disclosed as being her favorite snack when she was a young, albeit slightly cultish-another story-girl.

Then my chance came. They, She and the pretentious prioress, were going to Chicago, and at the last minute, an extra ticket, i.e. fate!, came beckoning. The cost of gas, split amongst the three of us, would easily be doable, but…

I didn’t. I punted. I chickened out. I climbed down the ladder of life’s great high dive, hiding my head in shameful late night phone calls and one, two, too many with a few friends celebrating the culmination of my summer’s worth of work.

And still, now, this very night, I play Van Morrison and think of her gypsy soul.

What if…