The Wrong Girl

Creative Escape

The first sign of trouble was when I answered the door and read “DEAR GOD THIS IS A MISTAKE” scrolling across the retinas of his startled eyes like a news crawl across a TV screen.

We met months ago at a party, his friends and mine overlapping in a raucous blur, ending with a messy sidewalk kiss and a request for my phone number, but so much time had passed by the time I heard from him the memory was a whisper of a brown-haired specter.

“I’m so sorry, I wanted to call sooner” he implored, “I lost your number, but then today I was cleaning and found it, I swear it was lost though” he went on, earnestly. I didn’t recall a profound love connection between us, certainly nothing that would require such fevered pleas for forgiveness for this insult to our happily ever after. I checked my pasty, hungover image in the mirror and ran a tongue over my un-brushed teeth. Perhaps I had underestimated my charm and raw, sexual power.

The moment I saw him standing in the hallway outside my apartment door I knew that he had made a date with the love of his life and I was not her. And now his happy reunion had been reduced to an awkward death march we both had to endure because neither of us knew how to say it. I got my coat.

We walked the five blocks to the theater in the drizzly chill of New York City. The weather was unpleasant enough that we could really linger on it making the smallest of talk. He was detached, his mind undoubtedly scanning the corners of his apartment for the number of the girl he actually wanted to be with, and paid for both of our tickets despite my attempts to call shenanigans on the whole situation, pay for myself, and change the vibe to “two people going to the same movie.”  His eyes stared down at the ground as he handed me my ticket, resolutely committed to the farce and dashing my hopes that we could have a good laugh and digest our popcorn in tension-free stomachs.

Staring at the screen in the dark theater I wrote the story a hundred ways in my head. The version where he shrieks and runs away after I greet him at the door. The version where he confesses he thought I was a taller, hotter woman and runs away, but sadly. The version where he admits to the mistake, calls it a happy accident, takes me to the movies anyway and we bond over the shared mishap, eventually turning it into a critically acclaimed stage play with an impressive run off-broadway. 

These scenarios come quickly to me because I journal, and am therefore constantly stoking my imagination like a fire. I can switch from comedy to drama because my creativity is fluid, writing every day keeps my perspective nimble and word retrieval sharp, so I can entertain myself on awkward dates and then write a story about it. Because if you nurture it, your creative mind will keep you warm on the chilliest of New York days, and help you escape from spending time with the wrong girl because you couldn’t come up with a creative reason not to.