Recognizing What They Had, 20 Years Too Late<br />I would turn my head and kiss him on the cheek, his eyes would crinkle into a smile,<br />and then he would swing around on his crutches and head back to his friends.<br />At the end of the evening, he hopped up to me, put his arm around my waist and whispered into my ear, “Will you come with me?”<br />I saved my tip money so we could take a taxi to the restaurant.<br />I didn’t believe I had the right to grieve for someone who had not quite been<br />my friend, not quite my boyfriend, not quite anything I could put a label on.<br />I had been brought up to believe it was bad manners to ask questions, so it took a bit of eavesdropping before I learned<br />that his name was Mikey, he was a regular, and he hadn’t been in the pub when I started working because he was in the hospital having his lower leg amputated — apparently because of cancer.<br />If he was sitting on a bar stool and I walked past, he would put one arm out and catch me by the waist.
