Differently Beautiful

For six months he had moped until even he was tired of himself and now these ten pounds were an integral part of his plan to get his mojo back. Finally exterminating the extra poundage had become synonymous getting up, getting out and getting rid of extra baggage.

Actually he hated jogging, it just wasn’t fun; but as long as he was putting one foot in front of the other on the park path he wasn’t thinking about his ex, and that was something he did like. It wasn’t her fault or his fault, fault actually didn’t enter into it; their interior spaces just hadn’t been compatible.

He was looking for what he called ‘the X-factor’, he wanted a strong-willed woman, an intense woman who wanted things intensely, a woman whose intense desire would cause him to fall forever in her gravity well. With a woman who’d love having him in orbit and enough fire and passion to fuel the launch into orbit, he knew he’d be content to never have his feet on earth again. Yet though his ex certainly was a strong woman who knew what she wanted, she simply didn’t have any x-factor gravity to give him, having someone in her orbit just wasn’t who she was.

What she was was beautiful; it was the first characteristic anyone who saw her agreed upon: she was heart-stoppingly, preternaturally and classically beautiful. Within a week of meeting her he realized there was always going to be some sort of modeling agency hanging round, vying to be the one to ‘discover’ her. Of course he quickly figured out she’d never do it: the second characteristic everyone unvaryingly agreed upon was she wasn’t the sort of person to ever ‘use’ her looks for anything. From an early age, her beauty had made her an unalterable, if admirable, egalitarian who would only ever settle for a binary solar system of equals. Just because her beauty looked distant and dominating didn’t mean she was, and after a limping few years together they both finally knew it, and finally ended it – together.

So it was that he stood alone at the end of his run, huffing and panting, walking in circles, cooling off, and finally eying the car that as it passed him suddenly veered across the oncoming lanes to reverse into a spot in front of him, on a street of empty spots. From behind heavily tinted windows stepped the smiling woman he’d bumped carts with at the local grocery store. As she walked over to him he laughed, hard, realizing he’d been holding his breath.

He briefly thought how he wanted the second sentence he addressed to her to be better than “Excuse me”, but gave up and went with the obvious: “I hate to sound cliché but what’s a warm, beautiful woman like you doing in a cold, deserted place like this?”

“Oh, why thank you, but surely you know to somebody somewhere this is an ideal place and perfectly beautiful day – it might even be me.”