Just Haven't Met You Yet

By Erin Oliver

She thought of him that entire year after, in moments both significant and mundane: just before it rained, when the arm she’d broken went stiff with the change in air pressure. At physical therapy and while washing the dishes. The first time she felt brave enough to get behind the wheel of a car again, her breath crashing in her ears, palms sliding slickly over the steering wheel as she blubbered through a slow left turn.

The memory of the crash itself never returned, just the cold press of the night air through her shattered windshield, glass glittering in the snowbank like a smear of stars. She was weightless, then smoothed gently onto her back, one hand warm on her nape, the other looped around her waist. A man spoke, his voice very close to her ear.

“You’re alright now.”

Teddy peered blearily up at him. She didn’t feel alright. In fact, she was pretty sure she was dead.

His features were pinched with focus as he velcroed a blood pressure cuff over her bicep, breath pluming in front of him in delicate shapes. He had a trustworthy face, with faint lines bracketing his mouth that suggested he smiled earnestly and often. A charming thumbprint of a dimple in his chin and that blondish-brownish hair towheaded children tended to grow into, curled up scruffily at the ends.

It figured she’d only meet this beautiful creature after she was dead. Angels were celibate, weren’t they? Or was she thinking of priests? Her bygone days of Sunday school never covered this. Or maybe they did, and she was just too busy pilfering communion wine in the supply closet. She’d hoped her vegetarianism and commitment to buying second hand would make up for that teenage transgression.

The man brought his hand up to her face, swept his thumb back and forth over her cheekbone in a tender, focusing gesture. “Hey, try to follow this light.” With his other hand he passed a tiny pinpoint of light back and forth over her eyes. It wobbled, multiplied like a mitotic cell.

Teddy screwed her eyes shut. “I really don’t want to puke on you, so I’m going to politely decline that request. Open to alternatives.”

“You’re doing really well,” he said warmly. “Thanks for the concern, though. I’ve already been puked on once tonight.” He rattled off a quick series of numbers to someone she couldn’t see, his tone assertive, harder than the soft, private one he used with her. Then he turned back to her. “Theodora. Do you go by Dora?”

“Teddy.” She popped one eye open, then, once she’d confirmed that the wretched light was gone, the other. “How do you know my name?”

He tilted his head. “Teddy,” he repeated, then nodded once, like this response made perfect sense to him. “We found your driver’s license in the front seat.”

“Oh.” There was the uncanny sensation of someone arranging her onto a gurney, their touches cold and economical. Ankle, calf, knee. It was like she was experiencing her own body through a grimy pane of glass. They flipped her palm up and a cool lick of night air swept up the inside of her wrist, thumb pressing around for a vein.

She swallowed thickly and turned back to her EMT. Funny, that she’d come to think of him that way in her head. He must have noticed something change in her expression, because he’d leaned in and affected the kind of tone you’d use when praising a puppy for not peeing on the carpet. “Is there anyone we should call, Teddy?” A friend, a partner?”

“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she blurted. “Not properly. I always thought I’d have a spontaneous meet-cute.”

A corner of his mouth tipped upward. “There’s time for that. You’re, what…” He squinted up at the sky, presumably trying to remember the birthday he’d glimpsed on her ID. “Twenty seven? Sorry, I suck at math.”

“Twenty six. And, you would think. Every first date I’ve been on has gone terribly.”

“Why?”

“The clothes, maybe. This outfit isn’t a good representation, but I usually dress like that dancing horror movie doll.”

He clinked around in his bag for a second, then withdrew a roll of gauze and wound it around his knuckles a few times, brisk and confident. Teddy realized, with a flutter in the pit of her stomach, that he was probably confident in his ability to perform a great many tasks, decent and indecent.

She was definitely not seeing heaven.

“Well,” he said, his voice calm and factual, “I happen to have an excellent feeling about your next date.”

“If I survive this—”

“When you do, you’ll get coffee with me. And, I like your clothes. I didn’t know they made shoes like that.”

He tore off a piece of gauze and smoothed it over her right eyebrow. This thing they were doing—this little role-play— was probably meant to distract her. Keep her calm while the others got her stable enough to load into the ambulance. But the warmth at its center felt real, a small, sunlit window out of this truly terrible day.

Tears stung the corners of her vision as she blinked down at her feet. Unexpected kindness always made her weepy. Her sneakers had bows on the tongues, a late-night impulse buy from an online Japanese boutique. “But that won’t count as a meet-cute,” she whispered. “We’ll have already met.”

“Then I’ll pretend I don’t know you.” He shifted a little to the left, blocking her view of the paramedic working on her arm. His voice was low and urgent. “Exactly one year from now, we’ll meet at the coffee shop on Westley and Third. The one with that fancy green stuff—”

“Matcha?”

“—and the pastries shaped like panda bears.”

“You don’t seem like a matcha guy.”

“No,” he agreed. “You do. I’ll bet you have a sweet tooth. And you like animal-shaped things. Cute keychain, by the way.”

Her kitschy little heart gave a delighted thud. “And you’ll pretend you don’t know me,” Teddy said.

“And I’ll pretend I don’t know you.” He leaned in, blue eyes intent on her face, and warming, too, like he was touching her there. “They’ve put a sedative in your IV, Teddy. Just try to relax.”

Her feet scrabbled in the soft sand beneath a rip current. A nonsensical thought bobbed to the surface. “You have to wear a rose in your lapel,” she mumbled. “On our date.”

“A rose?” Her eyelids had fallen shut, but she could hear the amusement in his voice.

“So I’ll know it’s you.”

—

She’d tried in vain to convince herself that she wouldn’t be disappointed if he didn’t actually show, but there he was, lounging insouciantly in her favorite table by the window, legs stretched out like a sun-warmed cat. Across from him, an untouched mug of matcha. A plate piled with pastries.

In his breast pocket, a single red rose.

Teddy swayed in place, lightheaded. Her heartbeat said, it’s you, it’s you, it’s you. A pair of familiar blue eyes drifted up to meet hers, alight with an untold joke.

“I’m sorry,” said the handsome stranger, “do I know you?”

🩷🩷🩷

Erin Oliver is a writer living in New York City, which is, in her humble opinion, the most romantic place on earth. Micromance is her first publication. She is working on her debut novel, a small-town contemporary romance.