The retelling of them, not so much.  A detail here and there is added or removed.  Not out of deliberate editing, but for the simple reason that each retelling is different.

And so, there are a lot of “maybes.”  This is a story then, about a girl who broke my heart.  Maybe.

One day, when I was younger, a beautiful girl broke my heart.  One of my friends, taking pity on my situation, and no doubt sick of my moping, asked me to help him DJ at a party near his house.  This was when DJs actually needed people to carry discs.  It was a paying gig, so I said yes.

On the way there, I rolled down the passenger side window on a lonely stretch of road alongside a valley.  I took a deep breath and shouted about how she was the only one for me and that I still loved her.

I remembered the cool breeze across my face, his laughter at my defiant act, the brush whipping past us and the the smell of the desert air.

At the party, while bringing in the third milk crate of vinyl, I met a different beautiful girl that night.  She wrote down her number on a post it note and gave it to me.

Later, after the party was over, along that same lonely stretch of road alongside that same valley, my friend stopped the car and looked at me expectantly.

I rolled down the window, took a deep breath, and shouted that perhaps, well, maybe, possibly. . . she wasn’t the only one for me.

Perchance.

It’s a colder spring day in 1996 and I’m shivering in my long wool coat.  Despite living in the District for three winters, I still haven’t learned to layer.

I look over to my girlfriend, and she’s occupied with driving.  She shifts matter of factly in the stop and go traffic on Rockville Pike.  It’s a slightly misty rainy sort of day and the intermittent wipe of the blades punctuates our conversation.  It’s about everything and nothing at all, the kind of conversation that two lovers have when they’re not entangled in each other.

We should be in class but we’re not.  We do this more often than we should.  Even though our grades don’t suffer, I know that every time we skip class, a part of us rips away.  A little bit more, every time, we step further and further away from being the perfect son or daughter that our parents want us to be.  But we don’t care.

It’s a long trip in the rush hour traffic, longer still because we ache to get to our destination.  We know what awaits us there.  We long to hold it in our hands, to be complete.

We arrive and we get out of the car.  I wait, in the rain, feeling small droplets through my too short hair.  She locks up the car, takes my hand and we walk through the doors together.

We walk slowly, window shopping at first, stopping at every counter to look at the tiny, expensive objects under glass.  Every now and again, I ask a salesperson to bring an item up from behind the counter.  She nods her approval or disapproval and we move on, taking great care to thank the salesperson each time.

Finally we stop at what feels like the last counter.  The final one for us.  The reason we came all the way out here, in the rain and through the traffic, together.

I’m buying a Pilot 5000 from US Robotics.

She looks at me and I smile.

Because she understands.

I guess that’s the allure and the danger of ten year reunions.  You never know who’s going to show up.  I guess ex lovers who were in the same graduating class as you are a given, but they really should put that down as one of the events.

I can see the pamphlet now.

Attendance would sky rocket, I’m sure.We parted in a complicated manner then, but I say hello anyway.  It’s not as how I imagined it to be.  I see the ring on your finger, the swell of your belly and I look around for him.

And me, well, I can’t tell you about what’s happened to me, because I don’t know.  You’re with child, and me, I’m still in the same place that I’ve been for the last ten years.

Oh, I may have lost weight and cut my hair, but I’m still me.

And is that a measure of how much I’ve stagnated?  During the idle times, between girlfriends, between lovers, I wondered “What if?”  What if things were different, but they weren’t and perhaps it’s best that way.

We were both too stubborn for our own good then.

I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe that we were good for each other once, and we can always have those good times in our memories.

Then your husband shows up and you introduce me as a friend from college.  Things certainly are different, and he couldn’t be more different from me.

Tall, ruggedly handsome, facial hair.

White.

There are just some ways I can’t compete.  We introduce each other but I forget his name quickly, more out of my nature than malice.  I have to keep looking for the name tag every time I want to ask him a question.  He’s a legal professional of some sort, and I assume you’re both doing well.

After appetizers and too expensive drinks the night ends quickly, with me flitting about from person to person.  Acquaintances quickly remade then just as quickly forgotten.  Old dorm neighbors and resident assistants and classmates of a life lived a decade ago.

And there you are, with him, like a rock throughout.  You leave early, but not before saying goodbye and kissing me on the cheek.  You turn quickly, before I can respond.  You remove your name tag and throw it away, not noticing as I watch you step back into your new life.

Then you’re gone.

The drinks and the rented space don’t last forever, and I start making my way outside.  On the way, I make promises with everyone to keep in touch, although I know I won’t.  Business cards fill my pockets, and images of people I once knew fill my camera.  Both to be filed away into folders both material and digital, never to be seen again.  I say my goodbyes and slip unnoticed down the stairwell towards the main doors.

I struggle through heavy wooden doors, out of air heavy with alcohol and old dreams, and step into the city night.  I feel the rain on my face as I walk towards the metro, waking me, step by step, drop by drop from the false weariness of too much beer and too little food.

Step by step, I walk back into my life.

Step by step, away from you and the might have been.

Even then I only found the place after eight pages of results.

It takes me a few more minutes to get the right client and get some settings the way I want them. I’m acting on physical memory now. My fingers just seem to know the way, I’m just along for the ride.

I connect and my password and userid grant me access.

The sea of black text flooded the screen, the usual disclaimers and warnings too dense to comprehend and suddenly I was back in my alchemical laboratory. I looked around to read the description. How I agonized over the wordings and spellings. I trimmed the descriptions in order to fit them on one page for visitors.

There were a few loose items scattered in the room, a guest key that I had coded a while back that allowed people to teleport here if they used it, but the second it left their inventory, they would get booted back to the main lobby.

I could summon it into my inventory at anytime. Handy when an anonymous guest got unwieldy.

A rose appeared in front of me, hanging in mid air. Attached to it was a small note.

“Lim! I haven’t seen you in ages! Come talk to me, I’m in the Aerie if you feel chatty.”

The rose was from Angel. She owned the place, gave me enough permissions to start building once she got to know me better. Next thing you know, I had my own little world, a whole slew of powers, and Aenone had moved in.

I did want to see Angel, but I wasn’t quite ready, not quite yet. I was going to ask her for a big favor, the kind that only she could grant. I wanted to make sure that I asked for it correctly.

I moved to the bedroom and looked over the code that Aenone and I wrote together. It was a tricky bit, locked to the both of us and required the two of us to execute simultaneously. I didn’t recognize about half of it, she was really the coder out of the two of us. I always handled the content, the descriptors, the ideas. As I looked over it I realized that it was a pointless exercise. She’d never be here again and the code was just lines of text without her to activate it.

I walked through the rest of the laboratory with the gears and the steam engines, through the library with the living books, through the grounds to the gazebo surrounded by azaleas locked in eternal spring.

I picked up things here and there, the odd trinket that made people speak backwards, the widget that would change people’s appearances, the various games and incomprehensible Escher vehicles that made so much sense so many years ago.

When I got to the gazebo, my familiar was waiting for me there.

A pool of shimmering ink reacted to my presence, transformed itself into a snake, and slithered up my leg to my shoulder before taking on the form of a raven.

I wondered how long it had waited in the gazebo, waiting for my presence to trigger this action.

I sat down, and the raven changed into a purring kitten and coalesced in my lap. I whispered to it and it bounded across the grass twice. On the third bound, it dissipated into a fine mist. It wouldn’t be long before Angel received my message and made her way to the gazebo.

I looked at my inventory and started doing what I came here to do. Everything I picked up, I recycled. I imagined them slowly turning opaque before flowing away like so much dust. Ones and zeroes sent back for the rest of the community to use.

I was going to miss this place.