Pipeline

A summer of rebellion, and youthful energy.

Looking at her silhouette against the sunset, I asked: “What’s something you’ve never told me?”

She turned just enough to show the bridge of her nose, the lock of hair that waved before her eye. “I like making little widgets, the more useless and decorative the better. There is something a little perverted to me of being too practical with a craft.”

“I’ve never seen these crafts of yours,” I said.

“You never asked.” Direct as always. “And I never needed you to know.”

So many questions, if one were to pursue. “What else is there that I don’t know?”

Without an answer, that query hung in the air between us, even as we grew older, and grew apart. The last minutes by the shore shall always be dear to me, even as I reminisce with our other friends who were there. But with the one I wished to know most, who I imagined as my hero, I would never broach the topic again, nor would I tell her that if she had answered, I surely would have had the courage to tell her that I loved her.