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Last night I fell in love with the girl wearing amber drop earrings and a wrinkled men’s undershirt.  I always wonder what people mean when they say “she had sad eyes” but I don’t wonder anymore, not after I saw her.

Her jeans fit her well but her t-shirt didn’t.  It pooled at her belt and slumped around her shoulders.  She wore it they way people wear borrowed clothing, but something made me think she’d had this shirt for a long time—it had just never lost the shade of its former owner.

There was a song playing quietly above the talk of the diner, I remember not liking it, I don’t think she liked it either, I remember wishing it were different, for her, for my memory of her.

She sat low in her booth, hugging the brown mug of coffee close to her.  She wasn’t alone, I’m glad she wasn’t, even though she was with a man that I wished was me.  I wished he were me, even though I could tell he wasn’t the one she wanted.  The one she wanted, the one making her eyes sad, he wasn’t the one who was there, and she probably wasn’t even thinking about him, but I was.  I wished I were him, too.  I wished I were anyone in her life, and not just a stranger who had a moment in it.  I wanted to know her, to know about the amber earrings she wore so casually that were like chunks of earth across her face.  I wanted to know about the man who made her eyes sad.  I wanted to tell him to do whatever she wanted, whatever it would take to ease the sadness from her eyes.  I would do whatever she wanted.

She talked, not a lot, not often, to the man with her, and I watched her talk, I watched her lips.  They were without hurry, as slow as the night was right then, late, but in no rush to lose itself in dawn.

She looked like she wanted to lose herself, though.  She looked like she was alone, even with the man across from her, but she had been more alone before, when it was just her and the silence of her own thoughts.  She felt better with him, in the diner, drinking the hot coffee that she held close.  But he couldn’t touch her, even though his companionship was genuine.  She thought she felt better, but I’m not sure she did.  Their time in the diner would end, it would be as if it had never happened because she would go back and it would be the same as it was before.  Our time would end too, mine with her.  She wouldn’t know it but I would.  It would be as if it had never happened, because I would go back and it would be the same as it was, too.  It made me love her.  Because we’ll both go back, it will be the same as it was for both of us, I will never see her again, and nothing will have changed.