Lost Journals

Driving around Denver with the sunroof open and cell phone at her ear, Peri remembered what it felt like to be a city girl. Then she remembered the car was rented and the phone on loan.

She’d given up city life to pursue an education in the mountains of Colorado. She quit banging her head against the glass ceiling, gave up a car payment and picked up textbooks and reading glasses.

Peri was able to grieve for the husband she’d lost nine years ago and began dating with a renewed hope in love. She was able to forgive a step-father’s sexual transgressions. Today, on a break from academic halls she shared a blanket with Drew in his parent’s front lawn. While he read a book she reflected on these past few months; moreover, she reflected upon the man beside her.

This friendship had grown exponentially over the past month and she was loathe to leave him in a few days. He would be spending the summer in the city and she was to return to Gunnison for a job at the college.

In small ways he reminded her of Jonas, like how he watched her from afar while at parties, knew how she ordered her steak, he even understood her fear of moths.

Peri wanted Drew to enter her life in a more complex way. But friendship was all either of them was capable.

Laying here on the groomed lawn amongst the tennis court, twinkling pool and foreign cars, Peri wondered if she would ever be viewed above the level of servant by him or his family – Drew hadn’t done anything to cause her this anxiety. The fear of hierarchical social order was part of the Irish Catholic coalminer breeding. Peri tried to step away from the family tree, away from the need to feel persecution, but trees don’t throw apples. Apples can only fall and possibly roll down hill.

They would be the perfect pairing or so their friends thought. She a writer, he a reader. She a dreamer, he a realist. Yet they found solitude in the silence surrounding them: Peri writing in a journal, Drew imagining the far away places in his fantasy novel. They enjoyed each other apart from the rowdy crowd they both hung out with and they always found each other in that crowd.

Peri wanted to quit obsessing about a situation she was never going to change on her own. Lightning would have to strike before she would make the first move.