I was standing at an intersection contemplating whether to turn left or to cross to the other side of the street. Five seconds into my indecision, I looked up and there he was standing at the opposite side of the road. He looks at me and waves.
“Stay where you are, I’m going to cross the road,” I tell him as I wait for the light on the little red man to turn green.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” he tells me as I stood in front of him.
Hard same, my person, hard same. I utter to myself.
You see, I’ve been walking these streets for months waiting for this fortuitous moment to happen. I had been waiting twelve months, to be exact. If I had immediately turned left, which was what I would normally do, I would’ve missed him. Five extra seconds of indecision was all it took.
The timing could not have been more perfect.
He tells me he was on his way back home from his early Saturday walk. I tell him I was just about to start mine — he offers to join me. And just like that our brief encounter turned into hours as we decide to sit for beers and fill each other in on both mundane and exciting things that have happened in each one’s life.
It has been a whole year, but it was incredible how it was like no time passed. It was endearing how he could remember the tiniest things I told him when we were still dating — things even I couldn’t remember telling him. Why we stopped seeing each other in the first place remains the elephant in the room. Perhaps the timing just wasn’t right.
However, that didn’t matter anymore because there we were a year later — having beers in the same street of the same old neighbourhood like we used to. For once in my life I wasn’t waiting for anything and at that moment, I sincerely wished time would just stop.
“We should do this again sometime,” he tells me as he kissed my forehead goodbye.
So, there will be more of these. I say to myself. More long walks on Saturday mornings. More beers in our barrio bars. More copas in our neighborhood’s famed terrazas. We had all the time in the world now, or so I thought.
We immediately made plans to see each other again during the week. However, as the days progressed, so did the threat of our beautiful city succumbing to a pandemic. Soon, a country-wide lockdown was announced which would keep us inside our homes for weeks.
So once again, I wait. I wait as if I had not waited long enough and had not been a slave to time the last year.
The timing could not have been worse.
