This morning the kid couldn't figure out why she walked right past him on the bus pretending not to know him, doesn't get the concept of "enjoyed your company too much." Which I can't blame him for, it's an idiotic concept, not her fault, born of culture and upbringing and the overwhelming big lie that we have to choose between the ecstatic liberation of sexual-spiritual free love and the known future security of monogamous domesticity. He, being young, and I credit youth more than conscious thought, or maybe being unattached he was viewing her already as a potential mate, but all he saw on the way home was not a choice, but her, a beautiful co-commuting coworker at his first job out of college obviously sent by God, either laughing because he was turning her on, or turned on because he was making her laugh, I can't get far enough into her head to tell and ultimately it's probably not that important, though I hope to the same God it was in spite, and not because, of the techno-babble crap about flexible User Interfaces for CMR CMS in saturated verticals, and that it was more about his youth, and his eagerness, and his muscularity, and his broad easy-going kind of handsome face, and their similarity in height and skin tone, his from a little bit of African and hers from a lot of Mediterranean genes. Being normally completely self-unaware she didn't recognize how unrefined, uncivilized, unreserved she was being until she saw herself reflected in the bus window as the endless commute turned to night around us, and froze, not recognizing the giggling head-tossing flush-faced eager young creature she had suddenly become. He didn't see her after she got off the bus running insanely down the street in her decidedly-non-running high heels as though she had to be home now, home with her boyfriend in the safe comfortable apartment and the boring understood known. Not that the running did any good because there was no second bus immediately available so she whipped out her cell phone and called him as she stood waiting, assuring him she was on the way. But she was starting to look thoughtful when she got off the second bus, didn't run for home, but walked more slowly.

No, this morning when she walked right past him she was not coping with talking to him at all; but this evening, ah this evening, there they were together in the back of the bus again, him talking all earnest, leaning in, her laughing, and giggling and tossing her head, and when she got off the first bus and walked for the second it was very slowly, and when she reached the second bus stop she pulled the phone from her bag and looked at it, turning it over in her hand, again and again, looking at it, contemplating whether to call or maybe wondering what will happen if she doesn't, if the world will end, if her boyfriend even cares if she calls, if maybe some night she stayed on the back of the bus with her new coworker, got off at his stop, walked with him to his apartment, kissed him as she has been trying not to kiss him for two nights running, removed her clothes, removed his clothes, mounted him in the ecstatic liberation of sexual-spiritual free love, stares at the phone, and puts it slowly back into the bag because this is a choice, a complication in her life, that at some big-lie ingrained level she does not want to have to make. Not ever.