Then, as I opened my mouth to speak again, another voice called out.
“Hey, Millie!”
Her head turned. Her curls whipped in the September wind. Pulling strands from her pink lipstick again, Millie smiled, and I noticed the tall man sauntering towards her. I’d seen him at events. I couldn’t recall his name, but I knew he worked in one of the sciences.
“Caleb, I didn’t know you were going to be here?” she asked while handing over her card.
“I’ve got a freshman seminar in that building,” he explained. “What about you?”
“I had to go ask some questions at the library,” she answered. “I was just getting lunch before heading back to the office. I think I’ve figured out some possible journals who might be most eager to publish your work.”
They were colleagues, then. Millie wasn’t a student, and as this so-called Caleb stopped beside her, he cracked the smile of an interested man. His lanky framed leaned over hers, forcing him to tilt his eyes down toward her rosy-cheeked face. There was no affection or even a passing touch, but I knew that feeling. I’d felt it once, twice, or three times, but it was never real.
It was never love.
“Do you want to tell me about it over lunch?” he asked as she stepped away, already walking in the wrong direction. “I’ve got the weekly department meeting this afternoon.”
“Sure, that’ll be fine,” she agreed in that melodic lilt. “Let’s crack on!”
Well, at least I got her name, even if she didn’t offer it to me herself.
The line stepped forward. I closed the gap, but my eyes stayed on her. I watched how her hips moved underneath that snug, black skirt, how she talked with her hands, and how Caleb kept his eyes glancing between her and the sidewalk.
Were they… together?
As it became my turn, I ordered my usual small coffee with milk and sugar while considering the notion. I had seen what it meant to be in love. I’d watched it in movies, read it in books, but never felt it for myself. There was always a reason that attraction and infatuation never became anything more.
We wanted different things.
I changed universities.
My parents didn’t approve.
Eager as they were to be Americans, my parents from St. Petersburg still carried the torch for the “good Russian homemaker”. They thought I needed a nice little wife who would make stroganoff and pyshki pastries. I would be fat and happy, and our five or fifteen children would keep this fictional woman occupied when I was off teaching.
I appreciated their hard work and sacrifice, but I wasn’t fulfilling that dream for my parents. Of all the attractive features on Millie, she was suspiciously absent the sour face and starched apron of a Russian housewife. Perhaps that was I found so… appealing.
The tap of a paper cup snapped me back to reality.
“That will be two-fifty,” the cashier read out for me.
“Here,” I said, handing over three dollars. “Keep the change.”
The guy actually cracked a smile. “Thanks, sir.”
Leaving the corner stand, I began following the same rut I always followed, going over to a park bench for lunch before afternoon classes in the Economics building. There could be beauty in simplicity and comfort in what I knew, but as my eyes turned toward the direction where Millie walked, I wondered if it was time for something a little different.