The 365 Monologue 2019

I ran into him again in January at a Starbucks by the airport.  He looked like he was two miles from healthy, but almost there. I tried to hide my ring, but he saw it anyway.  He said ‘Congratulations’ and I shook my head. I wanted to tell him that it should have been his ring on my finger, but why be hurtful?  He told me there was a plane ticket in his pocket. I didn’t ask where he was going because I was scared I might ask to go with him. He still had the best smile you’ve ever seen and the worst way of using it.  There was no way he was ever going to change, and the only way to love him was to love what was frozen about him. I never knew if I could do that when we were both younger. Now I wasn’t sure there was any other way to love a person.  We talked for a few minutes. Then I drove straight into a blizzard. The snow felt like it was telling me to go back. The plane would have been delayed. He would still be at the airport waiting for me. Nobody would ever forgive me, but I guess first you have to forgive yourself.  The snow made the road look like blank paper you could drive a new story on. Maybe I was just looking too hard for a metaphor. I turned the car around and that’s when the truck hit me. Sent me two lanes over into a ditch. When I woke up in the hospital the first thing my fiance asked me was ‘What were you doing near the airport?’  I didn’t tell him I had a ticket in my pocket. That running into the one that got away made me run back home. I just said I had no idea. Memory loss. He bought it. What else could he do? The wedding was a month away. When I left the hospital, I arrived home to find a gift sitting on my porch. It was a box with a ring inside it and a note that said “Wear this one instead.”