Details

I stood outside the bar, my heart beating shallow rapid pats beneath my sternum. The sky was gray and heavy, threatening rain. I was on the phone with my best friend's little sister, and I was very, very late. She had just been dumped, unceremoniously and casually, by her partner of five years only a week or so prior. So lately, we had been on the phone a lot, sometimes urgently as she cried, and sometimes in comfortable silence while we ate dinner and browsed the internet, separate but together even hundreds of miles apart. I say my best friend's little sister because it is factually accurate, but for all intents and purposes she is also my little sister and I love her fiercely. Given half an opportunity, I would unceremoniously and casually crush her ex's pinky fingers beneath my SUV before sitting him down for a good long chat. Unfortunately, time was not what I had to spare that night. She had called me when I was leaving my house, which meant I had thirty-three minutes to talk with her before arriving at my destination. At minute forty-four, my heart jogging along in my anxious chest, I tried to gently end the conversation.
"Sweets, I'm so sorry, but I have to go. I have a...thing I have to go to." (In my head, I chanted - don't say date, don't say date, don't say date. Nothing says "fuck you and your broken heart" quite like someone else going on a first date.) "How about I call you after, if you're still awake, okay?" She agreed, and I hung up.
I barreled into the bar. I was officially almost twenty minutes late. I was not fashionably late. I was inconsiderate-bitch late. The bar was crowded and yet I found his face in seconds. I remember thinking, Whoah, and then, Shit, I wish I hadn't ruined this by being late.

I apologized and flashed my most winning smile. He accepted, more graciously than I deserved, confidently ordered a water while I ordered a beer, and proceeded to enthrall me for the next two hours. In the car on my way home, I texted my best friend, Call your sister. I was supposed to call her back but I'm busy ;)

* * *

In the dark last night, I held our palms together, carefully lining up the fingers. I tell him how my brain is like a library card catalog, each drawer filled with hundreds of carefully printed white cards, all containing detailed information (much of it useless): here is one with all the lyrics to the Backstreet Boys song, "I Want It That Way;" here's one with a brownie recipe, here's one with the terrible things a nursing school preceptor said to me one dark Tuesday night in med-surg clinical in October 2012, etc, etc. I imagine either the vast swaths of more useful information I could hold, or the oasis of calm that might exist in there if I could stop remembering every little thing. He tells me his brain is like a 3-D web of ideas that connect to each other in complex ways, that the small clusters connect to bigger ones, and he can see how they all relate but when he zooms in close, it's like an impressionist painting that only makes sense from far away.

I don't remember details, he tells me. 

I can't remember anything but details, I reply. 

He drops his hand to my belly and I roll over, eyes heavy. I think, he says softly, that between the two of us, we'll figure it out.