Chasing Maybe

Fluorescents buzzed overhead, while I squeezed another avocado and sighed. “How do you even know if you’re ripe?”

I set the rock masquerading as an avocado back down with its friends and looked for the next one that gave any sign of being softer than the last.

“Alex? Fighting with the avocados there?”

I froze. That voice lived in my head rent free. Even after all these years.

I turned around, suddenly face to face with Mischa West.

“Mischa? What are you doing here?” I looked around the produce section, looking for some kind of clue to what would have caused this collision to occur. Nothing explained her sudden appearance, so I focused on her appearance a little more, maybe there was a clue there. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, so she didn’t work here, which meant this wasn’t some weird stress dream.

“Hi, Alex,” she said, smiling. “I’m grocery shopping, same as you.”

I blinked several times. Shaking my head, I laughed quietly and said, “Sorry. Just…weird place to see you. How—how are you?”

“I’m good. How are you?” She was still smiling, and her eyes stayed on me. She looked…healthy. Tired, but healthy. She looked…good. Her jeans were skinny like it was still 2006, and her Chuck Taylors were well-loved, and her band T-shirt had some name I’d never heard of splattered across it. She looked coherent and she looked like my Mischa.

I swallowed, blinked back some abrupt tears that had snuck up on me. “I-I’m good. Doing my errand running for the week, you know.”

I laughed, itching to hold to this moment for even a few extra seconds. “Are-are you in town for a while or just…randomly grocery shopping in my neck of the woods?”

Laughing, she glanced at her basket. “Yeah, I’m here for a couple of weeks for a gig. Getting food to take to the hotel.”

“Oh, of course.” I nodded and cleared my throat. “Did—um.”

I fumbled for words, sidestepping the nerves swallowing me whole. I blinked a few times, smiling at her before I tried again.

“Did you want to shop and talk? Like we used to?” My voice tried to betray me, but I refused to let it crack.

“I’d love that.” She nodded, maintaining eye contact.

We wandered the aisles, an easy silence between us. A million questions ran through my head: was she clean? Was she on tour? Was she doing some other type of gig work? She looked so normal.

How long had it been since we’d talked last? Fifteen years? Twenty?

Twenty? No, that can’t be right. No. 2006. We were at our peak then. Our break up then in 2018? Eight years then.

Maybe one stray interaction here or there after that, between her disappearances into the drug world and those stupid, fake friends of hers who only hung around when she knew where to get drugs…her drug friends, as I used to call them. My blood boiled at the memories rising up.

I took a deep, shaky breath, trying to calm down. That wasn’t right now. That wasn’t the Mischa standing in front of me. She was so lucid, so healthy looking. There was no way she was using right now.

“So, what do you do these days?” I said, trying to focus on the present, to drink in the current woman next to me. In case she evaporated abruptly.

“I’m playing bass for this little indie band. We’ve booked several shows in the area, but typically, we’re on the road a bit more. Brad, the lead singer, just had a kid, and he wants to be able to do the tour in chunks this time around,” she said.

She stopped and stared at several salsas.

“That’s cool.” I watched her read the labels of two of the salsas and then put one in the basket. “Do you have a shopping list?”

“Yeah,” she said, puling out her phone. “Right here. You?”

“Same.” I grabbed my phone and checked what I still needed and then put it away.

“Sweet.” She smiled and eyed the other options in the aisle. “Need anything in this aisle?”

“Oh.” I shook my head. “No. We can keep going.” I still needed eggs, butter, yogurt, and potato chips.

She led us down the next aisle. “What about you? What have you been up to?”

“Oh, um, I’m working in finance.” I tried so hard to not feel embarrassed. Finance was definitely not where I’d meant to land. Not by a long shot. Making props for movies and finance were two very separate worlds.

“Wow, that’s neat. Is it stable?” Her question, while normal on the surface, pulled up a million old feelings, old arguments.

Stability. Something she couldn’t give me back then.

I swallowed the feelings; my eyes burned. I faked a yawn to cover the leaked tears. I wiped my eyes while she looked at the toaster pastries.

“Yeah. I guess. Really, nothing in corporate America is stable anymore. But, you know, stable as I guess as it can be right now.” I sighed and grabbed some of the same toaster pastries she dropped into her basket. I wanted to pretend later that maybe she would come over, and things could be the way they were, but better. If only for a moment.

“That’s…good? I think?” She looked at me, confusion and amusement played across her features.

I laughed and shrugged, glancing at the ground. “I don’t…know.”

She shook her head. “As long as you’re happy, Alex.”

Licking my lips, I nodded. “Yeah, I guess it’s something.”

Mischa looked at me more closely as we turned into the frozen aisle. We were closing in on the fresh food section two rows over. Where the dairy would be, and the eggs, and then chips would be near there. Our time together was so finite.

I swallowed the urge to scream at time for moving forward so fast.

“Are you happy?” She was quieter now, her playful, lighter tone replaced with a more serious, sincere one.

I exhaled. “I sure hope so. I try not to ask myself that too often.”

My voice shook. I took a slow breath in, trying to steady myself for the millionth time. Why was I falling apart at the grocery store simply because I ran into my ex-girlfriend? Maybe because she’d been the love of my life for maybe over a decade?

“Alex?” Her hand lightly brushed mine before she let it fall away.

I blinked a few times. “Sorry.”

“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…we’re grocery shopping, for god’s sake. I shouldn’t have asked that.” Her features distorted into a grimace. “Like what was I thinking?”

She shook her head and glanced into her basket.

I stared at her for a moment while we had buzzing doors holding ice creams of all kinds surrounding us. It was so domestic. It felt like glimpsing the future I’d yearned for when we were together.

I took another shaky inhale and exhale. Upon exhaling, I said, “It’s really okay. I could’ve answered like a normal person.”

I tried to laugh, but it was stiff, and the look she gave me told me she knew it was, too.

“We both know that wouldn’t be any fun.” She was looking at me like she could see me, like she was sober. Like she would remember this conversation.

I was launched back into 2006, when she used to look at me with clear eyes. I licked my lips and wondered how long she’d been sober this time. Instead of asking her, I looked away.

“Six years,” she said, quietly.

Blinking, my heart raced. “What?”

“Alex. I know you. I can see you dying to ask how long I’ve been sober. And I’m telling you since you aren’t asking but want to know. Six years.”

I quickly did the time math. We broke up 2018; two years later, 2020, god, what a hard year to decide to get sober.

“Two years after we broke up? When the world was falling apart?” I titled my head. “Why?”

She shrugged and led the way out of the frozen desserts aisles. “Losing you was the first step toward finding out what rock bottom looked like for me.”

We were in front of the eggs; I wanted to cry. We were close to saying goodbye. Again.

She grabbed some eggs.

“I’m happy for you. Six years is awesome.” I forced myself to refrain from asking why she never called, because I knew why.

One of my last conversations with her included “don’t call me when you figure your shit out, because I won’t be waiting around” when we were breaking up. No real mystery there.

Instead of asking why she didn’t call me, I said, “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” She watched me grab eggs, butter, and yogurt.

She grabbed yogurt, too.

She followed me to the chips aisle, where I grabbed the chips. She grabbed cheese puffs and dropped them into her basket.

We walked to the front of the store, and while the silence earlier was comfortable and easy, this one was torture. A million things ran through my head.

We went through the self check out; she finished first, but she waited for me.

“Where are you parked?” I asked, despite knowing that I’d walk out whichever set of doors she needed to.

“This side,” she said, pointing to the doors we were closest to. “What about you?”

“Me, too,” I said, relieved we were on the same end of the parking lot and I didn’t have to lie.

The sliding doors opened with a big whoosh. Panic bubbled up inside me as I followed her out on to the sidewalk.

“What’s your number? Do you want to do this again?” I stumbled over my words, trying to keep hold of her for even a minute more, hoping she’d exchange numbers with me.

“Sure, Alex, I’d love to grocery shop with you again.” She laughed and got out her phone.

We stood in front of the store, on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, while we swapped phones and saved our contact information for one another. It felt so normal. I hadn’t thought about her in so long, but suddenly, I felt drunk on hope and wanted to know if we could have normal.

After she gave me my phone back, I checked her information. Looked like we’d both gotten new numbers since our break up.

She sent me a text; my phone buzzed.

Mischa: Hi ;)

I looked up, and we shared a smile.

“Don’t be a stranger.” She slipped her phone into her pocket and headed to her car.

I watched her go for a moment before heading to my car, wondering if we’d really talk again or if this had been a fluke, a chance to get better closure than the turbulent break up or the sporadic short exchanges afterward.

I swallowed, and after a few more deep breaths, I started for my car, wishing that maybe we could start over, have a different ending than the one we’d had before. Just maybe.