From my novel Seeing . . .
Relieved to get out of the cab once he’d fueled up and parked his rig in the expansive lot of the truck stop, he stretched his back muscles and twisted his neck back and forth. His stomach had started to growl the last couple of miles and breakfast sounded good. As he walked across the busy lot to the restaurant, his revolving gaze caught a couple a few steps off to the right of the entrance to the restaurant. He recognized the lanky driver, a hay hauler and loose cannon at times on the roadways. He was a good driver—or could be—when he wasn’t bearing down on his equipment and bragging over the CB about the various young women he’d been “romancin’”. In just the few seconds Micah spent observing the two, he saw the young man’s strong large hands with a firm grip on the skinny mostly bare arms of the shorter girl hanging straight at her sides with a cigarette wedged between the first two fingers of her right hand, she making just one short glance at his hold of her arms. They weren’t arguing, but the guy seemed to be making a point, and she seemed intent on listening to it.
Micah headed to the restroom to use the facilities and wash up before ordering. The memories often came like a surprise attack, assaulting his senses giving him no time for resistance. For just one tiny moment in the less than four second glimpse of the couple out front, the girl had reminded him of Jean. No resemblance in her appearance. Why then? The inevitable old grief threatened him with the choking sensation of holding back unwanted, and now seemingly unwarranted, tears. So many years ago. Why did it still hang around like a noose tightening its grip on the last breaths of his life, daring him to survive his loss?
He stared into the mirror above the sink, willing himself back to the present by focusing on his expression—clearing the evident sadness out of his eyes. It wasn’t that he wanted to forget any of it, even the grief. It’s that it was so long ago and he was just now desirous of moving on. To who knows where but somewhere else besides the gloom of sorrow’s place etched forever in his mind by the memory of his first and only too-short-lived love.
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