I was on the ferry, leaving for my Grandmother’s funeral, distanced from my feelings entirely, on a tightrope I didn’t know I was walking.
“What kind of green would you say that is?”
“I’m Sorry?”
“That shade of green. What color is it?”
“Oh, my glasses?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d call it retro mint.”
“Ah ok.” And he lifts up his shirt and shows me a pair of sunglasses, tattooed on his left middle, next to a ‘retro mint’ radio and a bathing beauty from the 50s.
We talked about how his glasses were a similar shade of green, not mint, and that my phone case was more of a blue than a green, but still similar to my glasses.
Pause in conversation.
“So are you just visiting?”
“No I work here for the summer.”
“Oh okay. When did you get here?”
“April.”
“Oh okay.”
Pause.
Me: “Where are you from?”
“Oh I live up in Sitka.”
“Oh okay.”
“Yeah my girlfriend yada yada”
Honestly all I hear is the world girlfriend and I tense up and relax simultaneously. I tense up because I don’t want him to think I was attracted to him, or that I thought HE was attracted to me. I relax because, well, he has a girlfriend. He’s not OTP (on the prowl, not Outside the Perimeter ATLiens).
But how random? We both walked off the ferry, wearing different shades of green sunglasses and he with a tattooed version of my sunglasses above his left hip.
Random.
