Dear Scarlet
Who can say we’ll ever meet again?
Dear Scarlet,
You might laugh if you ever see this letter. Scarlet. That’s not your name. I actually never had the chance to ask what your real name was. We were two ships passing in the night that way. Scarlet — that was the moniker I gave you because of your long red hair. Even with that first fleeting glimpse of you in the terminal, I mused about what it would have been like to bury my hands in those flowing locks of yours.
But I never had that option. There was no wedding band on your finger — unless you just made it a habit not to wear it — but it was all about timing with me. How could I ever hope to give you the attention you needed when I was on a plane every other week? A relationship wouldn’t have even survived with the kind of work schedule I had.
Even so, I couldn’t stop sneaking glances at you as I tried to relax in the uncomfortable airport seat. You had a tablet in one hand while you swiped right with the other. I wondered if you were on some dating app, doomed to try and connect with some man who would never appreciate you. And I noticed your fingernails were neatly trimmed, the polish on them as red as blood.
I could have taken out my flimsy paperback of short stories from my carry-on, but instead I found myself fascinated by the idea of you. I peeked over at you far too many times as we both sat waiting for our boarding times. I took in your long eyelashes casting shadows on your cheeks as you looked down, and I found myself lingering on your lips — soft and sweet, I imagined — before I could stop myself.
In another life, I would have walked up to you and started a conversation about something inane. Maybe the weather? Or an icebreaker-type question? Who knew? But did anyone even do that kind of thing anymore? What had happened to the days where conversation didn’t just take place primarily on a screen? The last woman I dated — someone I met at a bar the old-fashioned way — talked to me more via text than she did when we actually went out to have dinner. It was mind-boggling to me. When I finally broke things off, I simply told her I wasn’t ready for something serious. It was a cop-out, but how could I tell her that she was more interesting as words on a screen rather than an actual living, breathing…
