Memory - And a Girl Named Jenny
You see someone somewhere and all it takes is a little gesture, a certain way of speaking to remind you of someone you used to love and share both life and bed with. You try to shake off this longing with a glass of wine and an empty plate. But like a stubborn germ, the ache clings to you, lodging somewhere between your chest and your throat.
Her name is Jenny - an all-too-common and ordinary name for a girl who was everything but. We worked together for six months. She was engaged to her high school sweetheart. But one night, while I was doing overtime, I found her upstairs doing the inventory. She was bent over with her back to me. I'll never know what came over me at that point but I grabbed her roughly and rubbed my then painfully erect crotch against her backside. She moaned, whipped around to face me, and unzipped my pants. "You're hard," she whispered, pointing out the obvious. And so it was that I took her that way, with both of us still fully dressed except in the places where it mattered. For a few second, I worried about the possibility of people walking in on us. But that worry was soon forgotten as I moved in and out of her, lost in that high-speed, slippery, viscous moment.
From that day on, Jenny made love whenever and wherever we could - in my cubicle, in hers, in my apartment, in my car, in motels everywhere. She was all I could think of at work, all I ever thought of morning, afternoon, and night. And then, one day, she disappeared. I never even knew she had turned in her resignation two weeks before. All I remember was walking into an empty cube which had once been hers and gaping - because only last night, I had made love to her well onto the wee hours of the morning.
Yesterday, I saw Jenny at the grocery. She was with a man and she pretended she didn't know me. I went along not because I wanted to but because I somehow felt I owed it to her play along. I wonder if she knows just how often I think of her even to this day. I try to bury her name and her scent in my memory, of course, but on some days, they sneak up to me, catch me off guard, and remind me that once upon a time, a girl named Jenny disappeared before I could ask her to marry me instead.