He's Moving to the Far East Now

Do you have those moments? The ones you look back on and think, "Yup. That was it. That was the second it all changed." The moment you wish you could live over again?

I've got a couple. Some old. Some new.

I regret the night that we came home from the bar in Tuzla. Four a.m. We have to be on a bus in three hours for a ten hour trip. Three of us in the elevator. I was on the third floor with a room to myself. He was on the fourth floor, with a room across from her. They were just friends. He and I...could have been something else. I got off the elevator. He started to follow me.

"Wait. This isn't your floor," she called to him as he walked down the hall after me. I could hear him stop, turn and walk back to the elevator. I so, so wish I'd simply taken him by the hand. Just like I wish that, the next night, I'd followed him out onto the street after leaving the horrible Star Rock Cafe in Split and kissed him. Just once.

I regret quitting swim team. I regret not running for student body president in college. I regret breaking up with the chef. The nice chef, not the one who sent me roses after breaking our date because he was shacking up with someone else. I regret calling the guy, the eventual Orca-fat guy, when I went home to visit my father in the hospital. I regret not breaking up with most of my boyfriends sooner. I regret not seeing my father more before he died. I regret ever putting peanut butter on a tortilla chip to see what it tasted like.

"Let's take a walk," he said.

"I can't. She's drunk. And I can't leave her," I replied.

"I just want to walk around out there with you." He looked at me and touched my face.

I regret not figuring out a way to take that walk. And I regret feeling bad about it now.