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It was April before I saw her again.
My friend Tiara was visiting when I noticed with surprise, that she was pouring tea. Then I became aware that the strong, short-fingered hands that was holding the teapot were not Tiara's. I looked up to meet the brown eyes of my supermarket woman.
And then she looked back.
I felt the corners of my mouth lift in the beginnings of a smile as she handed me my cup, after stirring the one block of sugar I dropped.
And then she was gone.
I sat there slightly stunned, my fingers gripping the cup. Tiara was rambling about her new SLR camera. She hadn't noticed a thing.
Where the woman had been was an empty chair.
That night, I wasn't surprised to a dream.
I walk past the poles, out of the shadows of the trees and into the park. The trees are in bud: there's a feeling of a raw summer. I see her. She's sitting on a bench across the park. The wind whipping her hair across her face. She's bending down to a puppy. Laughing.
The worst thing about these dreams was the feeling of longing, yearning, that they left me with. It was starting to drive me crazy.
Maybe, I thought, she's a real person I've seen around somewhere and been subconsciously remembering, and I'm just staring to imagine her in places she isn't there.
But the next I mentioned it to Dina, she said, "forget it".
"What? Why?" I said, surprised.
"Maybe it'll happen again, maybe it won't. Maybe it's one of those weird and unexplicable things and you'll just never find out what it means. But I'm telling you, girl, forget about it, cause it's starting to make you a little obsessed. Just get out there and have some fun! Play tennis or something!"
She was probably right. And anyway, this is the kind of advice I can take. I studied for final exams through the rest of April and practiced for the Summer Open the whole May.
The dark haired woman gradually faded from my mind.
It was an unusually chilly night in June and I was curled up in bed with a Koran and a thick blanket. I was comfortable.
And then suddenly I felt the warmth of her body beside me, but like before, I wasn't feeling alarmed or anything.
She turned over and slid her arm around my neck, her other hand stroking my short hair. She looked at me as if she was looking at a newborn baby.
And then just as suddenly, she was gone.
I could see the indentation on the bed where her body had been.
I fell asleep, and as expected, dreamed again.
I'm walking across the park towards her. Then she looks up, hearing my steps on the path. I clear my throat to speak.
And the noise woke me.
It was my stupid alarm.
A few weeks later I confessed to Dina that I wasn't doing so well not thinking about the "supermarket woman". I told her how real it all was: the mango, the remote, the indentation on the pillow. I told her how those dreams were driving me insane.
"What happened to forgetting about it?", she said.
She didn't understand. She just couldn't. Easy for her to say!
On a particularly nasty day in July, after tennis practice with Eden, I sat on the bench, watching her taking her shoes off.
"Hey", she said. "Let's do something really stupid today!"
"Oh I already did, with my backhand serve!", I replied.
We talked and laughed for a while, and before I knew it I had agreed to walk a different route home.
We were walking along the road and talking when I spotted the gate. the gate.
"Wait", I stopped and turned to Eden. "Wait right here".
I walked numbly to the gate.
I placed my hands on that small, green, weathered gate I knew so really well. I pushed it back, the bottom scraping along the ground, and walked through it to the path.
It was strange to walk somewhere I'd never been before and know what I'd see. The path, the poles were exactly as I'd seen them in my dreams. The only difference was, when I laid my hands on the poles, I could actually feel the roughness against my palm.
And here are the trees in the bud. The bench. The puppy. The woman. The woman! I hear the sound of my feet on the gravel path I tread. I don't have to pinch myself to make sure this was real because the stinging of the sun feels as real as can be.
She looks up, hearing my steps on the path. Her fingers, the same fingers that were pressed into mine in the supermarket. The same ones that stirred my cup of tea. The same ones that handed me the remote.
And now those fingers are resting on the puppy's fur. She's been laughing and the laughter fades into a very mild smile as I approach. There is no recognition in her eyes.
She doesn't know me yet.
I clear my throat to speak.
THE END.
PS. I need help with the grammar so please let me know if I made any mistakes (which I'm sure I did).
