We always met at the park. That day, the only difference was I showed up in my best clothes. I had on my Hollister polo that made my arms look bigger. My plaid shorts were fresh from the dryer. In my house, I cleaned my shoes with a wet paper towel. At the park, I made sure they weren’t brushing on the dirt under the swing. After she emerged from the tube slide, she wiped the woodchips off her TNA pants and sat next to me. We rocked back and fourth with our hands on the swing chains. My Motorolla Razer was between my thighs, playing our four favourite songs on repeat. We were surrounded by pine trees on every side except for the front, where there was a stretch of grass. In front of the grass was a quiet street. Occasionally, a car would crawl past the stop sign or a middle-aged woman would jog by or a squirrel would scurry away. But it was usually just us.
Safe amongst the pines, we talked about the future. Our favorite topic was love. What would love be like when we were independent? The girl and I agreed on almost everything. We’d rather live in a small apartment with someone we loved than in a big house with someone we didn’t love. And our friends had to be friends with our boyfriend or girlfriend. And it was good to have a dog before having a baby. As we talked it out, when I imagined myself in that small apartment or at that dinner table or walking that dog, I would picture the girl as my wife. I never said this to her, of course. I just said, “My future wife”. But, after so many agreements about our future, I started to believe she should and would be my wife. So that day, in my best outfit, I was ready for step one: ask her to be my girlfriend.
I had 20$ in my pocket that my mom gave me for school lunch. The week before, I packed sandwiches every night so that I’d have money for a mall date. On the swings, I looked over at the girl, and her earrings were swaying as she nodded to the music. I pressed pause on my phone and stood up when she turned to me.
“Do you want to go to the mall?” I asked.
“Sure”, she said. “I just need to be back in two hours.”
“Don’t worry. We have enough time,” I said.
She stood up as well. After she texted her parents, I reached out and grabbed her hand. We intertwined our fingers and walked over the pine needles until we reached the sidewalk. Even though people past us, we didn’t stop holding hands. I thought this was a preview to having a girlfriend: holding hands in front of people.
It seemed as if the city was on our team: “team love”. An old man smiled at us. All the traffic lights on the way to the main street turned green when we approached. We barely waited a minute before the city bus pulled up and opened its doors for us. And, after we paid the bus fare, a seat next to the front opened up. I held out my hand like a gentleman and let the girl sit. The bus lurched forward and I gripped the rubber support ring. While I swayed to the hydraulic breaks, I looked out the window, wondering about the perfect time to pop the question.
At the next stop, an old lady got on the bus. Her face was weathered, her back was bent, and she was carrying too many shopping bags. She shuffled her feet towards the fare box and laid her shopping bags down on the dirty bus floor. As she fished for fare in a small cloth pouch, the bus lurched forward and she nearly fell down. Luckily, she managed to grab a pole in time. Eventually, she paid then squinted around, looking for somewhere to drag her shopping bags and rest her old and tired bones. In my eyes, the whole scene seemed to last 10 minutes, and it filled me with pity. It seemed wrong that the city, the world, the universe was on “team love” and not “team old lady”. I looked to find the same pity in the girl’s eyes.
Instead, she asked me, in a whisper, how anyone could ever wear that all-purple track suit. Stunned, I looked and saw the old lady, with sweat on her forehead, in a purple sweater and purple sweatpants. “It’s so ugly,” the girl said under her breath. She stayed seated. She covered her mouth to stop anyone for seeing her laugh. The old woman beside us, kept her knees bent, and her vein coated hands gripped the pole. Then I stared straight ahead, wishing that we’d never left that park because, now, I couldn’t go back.
