Regret

     It sure didn’t seem like 50 years, but it was; it really really was that long since high school graduation. Lillian couldn’t believe that she was actually toying with the idea of attending the reunion.  After all, Henry had been gone for almost ten years now and …”Oh, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t … or could I?” she mused.  “I wonder how many of us are still around today,” she pondered aloud while pulling up the attached list of surviving graduates.  Lillian gasped, and there he was … his name practically leapt off the computer screen at her:  Frank Winston, retired, residing in Maryland, widowed, four children, six grandchildren.  Lillian read it over and over.  “He is still here!” and “Oh my!” slipped involuntarily from Lillian’s lips.

     A flood of memories overtook her in an instant.  Senior year and oh how she wanted to go to the homecoming dance!  The problem was that Lillian didn’t have a “main squeeze” at the time, making her chances of going to the homecoming dance look pretty bleak. Her best friend, Helen, told her that Frank Winston had a crush on Lillian and wanted to ask her to the dance.  He had asked Helen to approach Lillian on the subject, to see if she would accept his invitation.  Now, Frank was a nice enough guy; actually a really great guy.  So what was the problem?  Lillian told Helen she needed to think about Frank’s request.  Boy, not going to the homecoming dance the last year in high school was almost degrading in Lillian’s opinion.  Helen kept pressuring Lillian to accept but, as great a guy as Frank was, Lillian just wasn’t feeling any kind of “spark”.  There just wasn’t any “chemistry” where Frank was concerned; but the dance …  So, Lillian decided that Frank was her ticket to the coveted homecoming dance.  The few weeks before the dance were uncomfortable for Lillian, to say the least.  Frank doted on her, walked her to classes, carried her books, and was the perfect gentleman; but to Lillian, he was just her ticket to the dance.  The big night came and when Frank brought her home after the dance, she confessed that she just couldn’t go out with him again; she just didn’t feel the same way about him as he did about her. He kissed her hard, and walked away.  She hated herself for using Frank like that.  She knew she had broken his heart.

  Over the years, Lillian learned that Frank had married another classmate of theirs about the same time that Lillian had married Henry.  She felt a sense of “closure” upon finding this out, believing that Frank had found his “soulmate” and was happy, just as Lillian had found her own “soulmate” in Henry, her college sweetheart.  There were a few times when Lillian wondered how things would have played out had she dated Frank later in life. Lillian knew that she had been too childish for him back in high school and was not ready for the kind of relationship she believed Frank was seeking then. 

     Well, that was then, and this is now, so?