R U the One?

A One-Sentence Story

Attractive, petite, 30-something SWF seeks 30-something, nonsmoking SM, any race, to meet me over cafe au lait served in white French coffee bowls so we can sit under a grape arbor and discuss books, films, our childhoods, and our previous relationships, and feel that sudden, surprising connection that seems to come only once in a lifetime, where the talk flows between us like we have known each other since birth and what we share in common is so much more important than our differences, which will lead to further dates (walking on the sand at Stinson Beach, lunch in the wine country, gazing out at the view of the bay and Mt. Tamalpais from the Rose Garden) and long conversations at night in bed, until my feelings for u grow so intense that I will begin to feel scared and, over falafel at a Mediterranean restaurant, I will confess that fear to u—I don’t know whether or not I can trust u, I will say—and u will take my hand and make promises to me (love, trust, believe me, I won’t, really, yes, absolutely?); but only a few days later, u will phone and say that u have changed your mind, that u want to call it off, that after all u aren’t yet ready for a committed LTR, and even though I am heartbroken and confused (why will u have said all that if u didn’t really mean it?), and think of u first thing upon waking every morning, I will make a point of going again to all the places we will have gone together—the restaurants, the parks, the viewpoints where we will have looked out and had long talks—because I will be determined not to let my painful memories of u deprive me of anything, although there will be one place I will not be able to summon up enough courage to even enter for years—the Mediterranean restaurant—since the last time we will have been there will be when u made all those promises to me, promises the exact words of which I will not be able to remember as time passes, though I will remember well enough that the very thought of falafel, something I will have once loved, makes me feel sick to my stomach, until one day, I will finally enter the place with a friend from work, will order falafel, peel back the silver wrapping, and begin to eat, slowly and carefully, and it will be fine.