The Bread I Did Not Buy

I got dressed on Wednesday like I had somewhere to be. I did not have somewhere to be. I had a grocery list with four things on it, one of which was bread, and I spent twenty minutes deciding what to wear.

There's a guy. There has been a guy for approximately six weeks. I don't know his last name. I have never had a real conversation with him, just the kind where you're both waiting for the same thing and you say something to fill the silence and then it's over in forty-five seconds and you walk away wondering if that counted as talking. I saw him once at the store near my apartment in June and my brain has apparently filed that information under 'he is sometimes at that store' and started acting accordingly.

I went to the store. I walked down the bread aisle. I looked down the bread aisle. I looked down several other aisles for reasons that had nothing to do with bread. He was not there. I left without the bread. I don't know what I thought was going to happen, that I'd see him next to the sourdough and we'd just start talking like normal people, that something would click? I got home and sat at the kitchen table for a while and Gerald just sat there on the sill putting out leaves like none of this was his problem.

the bread aisle. the waiting. the leaving without the bread.

The bread situation has since been resolved. The guy situation remains exactly as unresolved as it was six weeks ago, which I think is actually fine. The having-a-crush part is doing something useful, even if I can't name what yet. It's making me pay attention. It's making me put on a decent shirt on a Wednesday. There are worse things.

came home. sat here. stared at Gerald for a while.