Strange Amalgam

I used to watch A Little Princess a lot when I was a little kid. I liked that Sarah had this whole alternate universe that she invented, and that she would share with the other girls. I always thought that if I was in solitary confinement, I'd do okay. I'd just sleep and get good songs stuck in my head. But if I didn't have a pen, I think I'd talk out loud a whole lot. Maybe that's how people go crazy... they're just trying to keep themselves entertained. I have a whole host of characters that I make up to keep myself entertained. Mostly, I think I just like dialogue better when I get to write both sides of it, so I'll take bits of things that have already happened and explore a different route. This is a recent amalgam of stories I’ve either been told, overheard, or thought about doing myself.

Elizabeth had been engaged for two months, but still the ring had not become a comfortable addition to her hand. In the third grade she had a claddagh ring that she bought at Cape Cod for two dollars. She wore it on her ring finger everyday until she was 17, when it fell down the hotel drain after the Junior Prom. She'd felt at the time that it was a physical sign of her own betrayal. Something precious was taken away from her because she'd broken the rules. She didn't have sex again until after she'd dropped out of college.
When Henry had proposed to her, she felt redeemed. He wasn't like the guys she dated in high school, or slept with after college. He was a nice boy, at least that's what her mother said, when she'd called to tell her the good news. She'd hoped that the ring would fill that void on her hand, meld right into place and be that thing that she'd been missing. She was waiting for something to complete her, as people are often bound to do, and expected to know right away that this was it. Elizabeth was never given a rulebook, but she knew that what she was doing was against the rules. Sitting in the rundown diner near the last exit to the Pike, she twisted her ring on her finger, waiting for the familiar roar of the 1987 Elefant. She wasn't going to sleep with Jeremy... at least she wasn't planning on it. But when her ex-boyfriend had called her to say he was in town and needed to see her, her catlike curiosity got the better of her.
He was already 20 minutes late, but that was to be expected. He was always late. Except for the one time that he'd made her late, and that was the last time she'd seen him. She turned out not to be pregnant, and he said that the job out of town had nothing to do with her, and that he wanted her to come with him. This was days later, when he called from Minnesota to see how she was doing, and to make sure that she wasn't pregnant. They'd been 22 and 23 at the time, and two years had passed since then.
She'd barely heard the engine in the parking lot, when the door to the diner breezed open and in walked Jeremy. He hadn't changed at all in the two years that he'd been away. His hair seemed lighter, and his hands aged beyond twenty-four by manual labor. But his eyes still held the gentle expression that had always tricked Elizabeth into believing that his intentions were honest and good. She found herself on her feet and in his arms before she was aware of herself. He pulled away when he felt the cold metal of her ring on his neck.
"Wow, Lizzie...congratulations," he stammered, staring at the modest stone on her left hand. "How long?"
"Almost a year," she lied, knowing that the truth would be easier for him to ignore.
“Wow… You look great.”
He looked great. He always did. Even as she was at the free clinic, silently cursing his existence, she wanted to be on the back of that bike, blazing down the highway. She sat across from him in that rundown diner, that had, when she first came to this city been aglow with possibility and romantic notion of late night coffee that had now faded into its shabby actuality. She had come to terms in two years with the fact that ripped jeans and quarters for coffee was not always worth its novel appeal, and had even stopped carrying the copy of Howl in her back pocket that she kept with her in the first couple of years following her abrupt exit from college life. He seemed to be riding that same take each day as it comes wave that is so easy when the blinders of adolescence haven’t yet been removed. She missed those days.
After they’d ordered, he paused for a moment and studied her face, almost as though taking a picture of her in his mind. She wondered what he saw, having always wanted to be “the girl” in a song or book or poem of some lasting quality. Without thinking, she touched her own face, only realizing what she’d done when he reached out to pull her hand away, resting his own atop it on the Formica table-top. It took her too long to pull away, straightening her self upright in her seat.
“So what have you been up to? It’s been ages.”
“Odd jobs. Construction, worked on some bikes for a while in Minneapolis.”
“Where are you living now?”
“On the road… I’m heading down to West Virginia right now. A friend of mine just started a shop and he needs a mechanic. He thought I might like to give the south a shot for a while.”
“Settle down on a plantation?”
“We’ll see.” He paused again, thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed you.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. So she didn’t. Eventually they moved on to more small talk. In the two hours they spent chewing on overcooked hamburgers, sipping fountain soda, the conversation never stopped being awkward. It was a strange kind of awkward that comes from knowing someone too well. The problem, of course, was that they knew a two-year-old version of each other and neither had expected the other to have changed at all, despite their own growth.
As the summer sun began its long descent, they exited the tiny diner to the parking lot. Elizabeth walked with him to his bike, pausing just a few feet from it. He pulled her close to him, and it was the kind of hug that you savor at the beginning of a relationship: just too long and just too close, breathing in one another’s scent. She clenched her left fist, fingering the inside of the ring, and forced hersef to pull away.
“Elizabeth… Lizzie… I’m going now. I’m not staying here tonight. I’m not staying at Garret’s tonight. Garret doesn’t even know I’m here. I just came to see you.”
“I…” She didn’t even know what the next word was supposed to be.
“If I asked you to get on the back of this bike and come with me… what would you say?”
She hesitated, but not long. When she spoke, she was surprised by her own words.
“I… I have to work tomorrow.”
His look wasn’t disappointed or startled, but more amused. He chuckled, despite himself, shaking his head.
“You need this.” He looked around him, taking in his surroundings. “You grew up, Lizzie. You left me behind. Isn’t that funny? I left. But you left me behind.”
She couldn’t even muster a response before he saddled his bike, and literally rode off into the sunset.