I stand here like a total moron staring bewilderingly into her big green eyes trying to make words come out, but I can’t, I don’t know how to. I worked myself up so much for this that I really don’t know what to say or what to do, now that I’m here. Well, that’s a lie, I knew what I was going to say, what I was going to do, well sort of anyway, but when she uttered those words everything fell apart.

I guess you need to know what the hell is going on, I guess the best place to start is at the start, not right at the start, not that far back, I’ll just concentrate on today, I think that’s the best place to start.

I knew when the phone rang I shouldn’t have answered it, especially when I saw her name come up on the screen. Eight years and not a single call, text or letter, not once, and now suddenly a call out of the blue was unnerving. Anyway, she said she was in town and wanted to catch up for coffee, as we needed to talk, eight years and now she needed to talk? I mean I said yes, of course I did, she was the one that got away, the one that I let slip through my fingers. You see, she wanted to explore the world and I was happy doing the same thing every day, still am in fact, I just don’t have that bug, so one day she just up and left. No Dear John letter, no explanation, she just booked a ticket out of here and was gone from my life. It took me years to get over it, and I mean years, I still remember playing with the idea of chasing her around the world when she first took off, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and I had no idea where she was. Fuck, honestly, I still have that hole in my stomach and now that I was walking down the street to sit and have coffee with her it’s getting worse, what was I going to say? What was she going to say? Should I have just said no, I really wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this, not today, actually any day would have been the same. It’s then that I started to think that maybe she had finally done all she wanted to in the world outside our small town and now wanted to come back home, to me. That made me even more nervous, I mean, I hadn’t changed at all in the last eight years, and she’s been out there experiencing the world. God she even had a weird sort of accent, then my stomach churned and I almost turned around when the coffee shop came into view, but I swallowed whatever it was stuck in my throat and I walked through the door, and there she was, as beautiful as she had ever been, and our eyes met, and she smiled, I smiled back and walked over and we hugged, it was amazing, I mean I almost cried, I just was suddenly an emotional wreck.

“You look great,” I said nervously.

“So do you,” she said, it’s then that I noticed someone else at the table, and my heart skipped a beat, “Jerry, I’d like you to meet our daughter, Annie.” She said, and my mouth dropped open as I stared into her big green eyes and stood there like a moron.

END

The song was Drops of Jupiter, I think somewhere in it all, I captured the song.