Crossed Path
Part 1
Andrea walked into the clinic, smiled to the secretary, and was led to a door which had two sets of the words Dr. Gregory – Ophthalmologist spelled out on it. Or at least, that’s what she saw before her brain managed to fuse the images together. It was about time she got this appointment, she thought to herself as she opened the door to the office.
“Welcome, uh… ah yes, Ms. Duke,” the young doctor said, adjusting his glasses and flipping through the pages of his clipboard. He seemed a little nervous as well as a little absent-minded.
“Hello, Dr. Gregory?” she asked him as she extended a hand to greet him. “Pleased to meet you, you can call me Andrea.”
They exchanged small talk as she took a seat in the testing chair. She was a pretty brunette with a petite build and nice features, yet what really stood out were the dark red frames she had on. They looked bold and relatively large on her face, and the lenses had a striking edge thickness to them, with innumerable white concentric rings forming at the edges. Their obvious refractive power and boldness turned heads wherever she went, but thick though they were, she needed new ones, which is what brought her here.
“So are you new in town, Andrea? I ah… haven’t seen you around here,” said the doctor.
“Yeah. Well, sort of, I guess. I used to live here before college, but I just moved back here to be closer to my family. Plus it’s just nice being out of the big city.”
“Great, yeah, I know exactly what you mean, the cars, the traffic, the noise. It’s much nicer just staying here,” their small-talk soon petered off, and Dr. Gregory started the appointment: “So if you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you a few background questions to begin with. How old are you?”
“I’m 29.”
“Hey, cool, same as me. Ok, so when did you get your first pair of glasses?”
“In 1998. I was 11 years old,” she said, without having to give it much thought. She was familiar with this date, because it evoked a strong memory in her, which she began to reminisce about.
The whole trip in the car she had been crying, sometimes sobbing loudly but most of the time just weeping. She stared at the glasses she was holding in her hands. They had white tape around the left arm from being haphazardly repaired, and they held a pair of thick lenses. She had often been told that it would hurt her eyes to wear them, that she would become blind, so she only sometimes looked at things through the window, holding them a few inches from her eyes but not putting them on. It made her happy to do this, and she spent most of the trip fascinated by the strange way that the moving landscape was reflected in the lenses.
After a while, her curiosity and her grief were too much. She put them on and continued staring out of the window, but now with the intense distortion of the lenses causing her to see blurry, double shapes. She didn’t mind this at all – in fact, it made the world somehow more magical and fun for her.
She lost all urge to cry.
Sitting next to her, her younger sister noticed first that she was wearing them and told her parents. But no matter what they did, she refused to take them off. It was no use, she had made up her mind to wear them, and her parents had no choice but to let her, thinking it was just a phase.
Leaving her memories and back in the ophthalmologist’s office, she was being subjected to a variety of eye tests for measuring all sorts of vision problems. She realized that the doctor had been waiting for her to answer a question, but in a pensive mood she had not been paying attention, and apologized. “I’m sorry, I just started thinking back on my first pair of glasses. What did you ask me?”
“Oh that’s OK, I get it,” he replied, a little embarrassed. “I guess it must have been hard for a kid with strabismus like you to fit in with the other kids. I know how mean kids can be for things like that, believe me. Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks, I’m OK now.” His words evoked another memory in her, and she drifted off once again.
It was recess and all the other girls were outside playing jump-rope, patty-cake and hopscotch, but all she wanted was to find a place to read. She liked reading fantasy, and she wanted to find a quiet place to read her “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel. She went up the stairs and saw a door she had never tried to open before. Pushing it open, she saw that it led to the rooftop of the school. She was excited – this was the perfect place to read. But she wasn’t alone. There was a boy there, playing cards there by himself, in the only spot with shade. It was Gene, the bespectacled class nerd, who was always so quiet that she didn’t even know what he sounded like. She went up to him and said hi and asked if she could read here, but the boy just looked terrified and didn’t answer her. She shrugged, sat down and started reading quietly, anyway.
She couldn’t quite concentrate on reading though, because the boy was obviously nervous and the whole atmosphere was tense. He seemed to have been playing by himself, the cards spread out across the floor. So she decided to break the silence by picking one of them up and reading it. “Fallen Angel” it said, with a cool illustration on it and some other text and symbols she couldn’t understand. She asked him what it was about, and stuttered an answer back at her. It was a game called Magic: The Gathering. Placing the card back where it was, she went back to trying to read.
“D-D-Don’t forget to pick up th-th-the D-d-dragon Blade,” he told her suddenly, a few minutes later. He had read that book, and told her that it was important to get the best ending. She thanked him and she talked about the book excitedly for a while. She had never met another kid who liked reading them, too.
“Do you… do you want to play M-m-magic with me?” the boy asked, avoiding eye-contact with her.
They were finishing up the appointment, and Dr. Gregory told her: “Well, you’re going to need a little increase in your prism correction. And I think you would benefit from a reading add. It seems you’re having a little trouble focusing close-up.”
“Yeah, it’s true. My last pair were bifocals, and they really helped a lot.”
“Your last pair? I thought this was your current pair.”
“Actually, no. I broke my last one. I’ve been wearing these old ones for a while, but I’ve been getting headaches a lot. That’s why I’m here.”
“Oh I see. Nothing worse than breaking your glasses. I hope it wasn’t too bad for you. Luckily you had a spare pair. Well, these new ones ought to do the trick.”
Broken glasses. This made her think of another story.
They were on the rooftop, playing Magic away from all the other kids like they always did. She had gotten pretty good after all this time, and she even managed to beat him a few times. This was the best part of the day for her, and she really looked forward to recess every day, sneaking up here to play with Gene.
But then, suddenly, they heard some voices coming from the stairs and the door flung open. It was three boys from their class, the boys who bullied and made fun of Gene. When they found out that this is where he came to hide every day, and with a girl no less, they teased him viciously. They pushed him around and grabbed his cards, all while laughing. Andrea tried to stop them, telling the biggest boy to leave Gene alone and put the cards down. They wouldn’t listen, so she tried to grab the cards from his hands, but this just made him angry. He pushed her away forcefully, and she was knocked back, landing directly on Gene and flinging his glasses to the ground. When they got back up, they were both bruised and Gene was helplessly blind without his glasses. The bullies had a laugh, threw a handful of cards to the wind and left. The two of them were left crying on the rooftop, and that was the first time she saw Gene’s unfocused eyes noticeably crossed in towards his nose without his glasses.
She remembered feeling closer to him than ever before at that moment, and never forgot the way his boyish eyes stared at her in that vulnerable, vacant way.
“Well, here you go. Just go downstairs to the optical store and you can get your brand new prescription filled,” the doctor told her as they reached the end of their appointment.
“Thanks a lot. I can’t wait to be able to see properly again.”
“No problem. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you. Good-bye, Andrea.”
“Good-bye, Dr. Gregory,” she said, as she left his office.
Good-byes were always hard, but this was the hardest good-bye she had ever had to endure. It was the last day of class, and the two friends were playing Magic in Gene’s treehouse for a bit before leaving each other for the summer. Gene was going to go to camp soon, and this was the last time they’d see each other for some time. But Andrea had a secret she had been keeping from him: her family was going to move to another state, and this would be the last time they could play together. In the middle of their game, Andrea burst into tears and explained the situation to him.
“It’ll be OK, don’t be so sad. We’ll see each other again for sure,” he tried to console her. In the couple of years since they had met, he had all but lost his stutter. “I… I like you Andy. I like you a lot. You’re the only friend I’ve ever had. Thanks for playing Magic with me.”
The two friends hugged, and soon they both enjoyed the first nervous kiss of their young lives.
But she had to go. Her mother was expecting her at home, and they didn’t really have so much time left together. She took out a book from her bag. It was the old “Choose your own adventure” story which she was reading the first time they met. “Keep this and remember me, OK, Gene? I’ll always remember you.”
With that, she turned and started to leave abruptly. “Wait!” the boy cried. “Here. Take these with you to remember me.” He took off his glasses, which wouldn’t fold due to the tape holding one of the arms, and handed them to the girl. His eyes fell into that cute, deeply unfocused look which she had only seen once before, and she couldn’t help but kiss him one last time on the eyes before descending from the treehouse.
She never saw him again.
She remembered this all on the drive home, and she once again felt the extreme sadness and beauty of that moment. She had been in many relationships since then, but somehow never forgot the nerdy, cross-eyed boy from her youth. The very glasses on her head right now were a testament to how much she had cared for him and wanted to be close to him. Yet she could never bring herself to try and find him. What if he had forgotten her? What would she even say to him if she met him again? It was just a stupid pre-pubescent love story, after all.
As soon as she got home, she flung her bag on the table and rushed to her drawers. There, in an old glasses case, were the pair she had kept for these last 18 years. She held them softly to her chest and lay on her bed, thinking of what might have been.
Meanwhile, on the table, jutting out from the still open purse, was the doctor’s prescription slip. The header read: Dr. Eugene Gregory, M.D.
Part 2
“So when I got home from my appointment, I thought about it and - you won’t believe who the doctor is, Sally,” Andrea told her sister, with a sort of excited tone subdued by embarrassment.
“What? Who was it? One of your exes?” Sally guessed. She was dressed in a stylish power suit with her brown hair neatly tied in a pony-tail. She looked a lot like her sister, except that Andrea was dressed much more casually. And of course, the younger sister didn’t have any sort of corrective eyewear on. She did have sunglasses on her head, but it was too late in the evening to use them, even though they were sitting outside a café.
“No, worse. It was Gene, remember my friend Gene?”
“No way. Gene?! Of course I remember that geeky little kid. I mean, mom and dad really hated him after we moved cause of the whole…” she didn’t need to finish the thought. They both understood what she meant. “So what’s he look like now? Is he handsome? Did you guys play that nerdy little game of yours again?”
“Shut up, Sally,” she replied dryly. “I guess he’s pretty good looking, but I didn’t really pay much attention to him,” she continued uncertainly. “I didn’t know it was him and… well… he didn’t recognize me either.”
She seemed sad, so her sister softened her tone. “Well, that doesn’t mean anything, Andy. Look, you didn’t recognize him either, right? It’s not a big deal.” The words didn’t really seem be having an effect, but she continued nonetheless: “How are you even sure it was him, anyway?”
“I just went back to his office the next day and I pretended I was looking for my cell phone. I had a little chat with him,” she said with obvious embarrassment. “It’s him. I can tell. He has the same little nervous ticks as he did back then. And his eyes…” She paused for a sip of her coffee. “I just feel so stupid. He didn’t recognize me at all. Of course he wouldn’t, we were friends 20 years ago! He must have completely forgotten me by now. Why did I even go back?”
“What do mean? What happened? Did you ask him if he remembered you?”
“No. No, I didn’t. But he should recognize me, right? I mean if still remembers me, that is. But of course he doesn’t, why would he. Stupid.” she said to herself reproachfully.
“Come on, Andy. That’s nonsense. You practically didn’t even recognize him either. Maybe he just can’t recognize you because of the glasses, you know? Why don’t you try telling him directly?”
“No! No. He forgot about me, OK? This is just stupid. It was just a meaningless little childhood friendship that he hasn’t thought about in forever. He never ONCE tried to contact me since we moved, and he couldn’t even remember me when I was literally staring at him in the face!” she noticed she was raising her voice a little too inappropriately for the quiet café they were in, so she calmed herself down. “So I decided I’m just going to forget about it too, OK? Let’s talk about something else…”
Sally conceded and didn’t mention it again throughout their conversation. She knew how much Gene had meant for her sister though, and she really wanted to do something to help her. Maybe if there was another way they could meet?
**
“Sorry we couldn’t find your phone, Ms. Duke. You must have left it somewhere else,” the doctor told his bespectacled patient from the day before. “We’ll let you know if it turns up.”
“That’s ok. Thanks for your help anyway. Bye, Dr. Gregory,” she said to him with a strange look in her eyes that gave him the urge to look away. It was a stare that was all too penetrating for a regular conversation with a patient.
He couldn’t stop thinking her eyes and the way they had looked at her for the next few hours while he was at work. What was it that had left such an impression on him? Maybe it was the fact that it reminded him of his own esotropia which he had had to deal with for most of his life? Luckily, he was now an eye-care specialist and had had access to the most cutting-edge treatment for his condition. With a combination of vision training and surgery, the last of his esotropia had disappeared more than two years ago, and his confidence had soared in its wake.
Not quite knowing what he was looking for, he opened up yesterday’s female patient’s file and browsed it in a sort of off-hand way:
Name: Andrea Duke Gender: F Age: 29 Birth date: December 3rd, 1987 Occupation: Writer O.D. -6.50 sph, 11 prism, base out, +1.00 add O.S. -6.75 sph, 11 prism, base out, +1.00 add
He knew all the other information, but somehow the birth date reminded him of something. Who else did he know with that same birth day?
“Happy Birthday dear Andy. Happy Birthday to you.” The song winded down as the little girl blew out the 11 multi-colored candles that were burning on her cake. It wasn’t a big party, actually it was just the girl’s parents, her little sister and a few friends of her sister’s. And him, of course. He didn’t go to too many birthday parties – actually this might have even been the first he could remember, come to think of it. But he was happy, and he could see that she was too.
After the cake, it was time for the presents, and soon it was his present she was opening. It was his favourite novel, The Little Prince, and he knew that she would love it too.
A little while later, after the adults left them to let the kids play, Andy reminded him of a promise he had made to her. She had asked him repeatedly to try his glasses on since they had started being friends, but he had always refused. He was nervous about taking them off in public in general, and besides, he told her countless times that she wouldn’t see anything and it would hurt her eyes to wear them. Even for a minute or two! But she had insisted, and one day he caved, telling her he would let her wear them on her birthday. Now, the adults were gone and she forced him to make good on his promise. What choice did he have?
The glasses looked big on her small face, and both of them could basically not see anything at all in this state. Nonetheless, Andy seemed to be having loads of fun walking around and trying not to trip on stuff. After a little bit he asked for the glasses back, but she said it was her birthday and she wanted to keep them for a little while longer. He had no choice but to agree.
Some time later, her parents walked in and were furious to see her wearing the glasses. They forced her to give them back to Gene, who truth be told, was really glad to finally be able to see again.
Half a year later, it was those same glasses he gave her, the last time they saw each other.
Andy’s birthday was on December 3rd, he remembered that date clearly enough. He still thought of that little girl sometimes. The times they played together and the laughs they had. And of course, his first kiss. He thought about her so often even now that he was embarrassed by it. But he never got the courage to go out and look for her. Such a cute little girl would definitely have grown into a beautiful woman, and no such girl would even give him the time of day, probably. Sometimes he doubted whether she had actually liked him at all. After all, what could she possibly like in a nerdy little cross-eyed kid like him?
He looked back at the file. Andrea Duke. Could this be the same Andrea? They did have the same birthday, and the same age, and… “Oh my god,” he gasped under his breath as it finally clicked for him. It must be her. But why was she wearing glasses, and for esotropia no less? Could she have…?
He calmed himself down and finished his day of work. He thought about calling her long and hard. In the end, he decided against it, and Andrea’s phone never rang.
**
The day of the charity book fair had arrived. Sally had made all the preparations, and not only was she going to have organized a super successful charity drive, but she will also have mended her poor sister’s broken heart. She worked for the mayor’s office, and after he talk with her sister, she had a wonderful idea: as part of their next charity event, she would invite her sister to sign copies of her bestselling fantasy novel, and at the same time, she’d make sure to invite Gene to the event. This would be the perfect opportunity for them to meet again, and hopefully it would bring Andrea out of this rut she was in.
Her sister had been signing books for an hour already, and Sally herself was going around mingling with the guests. That’s when she finally spotted him, Dr. Eugene Gregory, making his way through the crowd. She excused herself from the conversation she was in and follow him.
“Gene? Doctor Gene Gregory? Is that you?” He turned around as she called his name and hugged him after he acknowledged her. “Oh my god, Gene, it’s me, Sally. Sally Duke. Remember? You were really good friends with my sister in elementary school.”
A cold sweat came over him, but he smiled and answered appropriately, if a little dismissively.
“Actually, Gene, you won’t believe your luck. Andy is right here today, come on, let me show you,” she said, grabbing his arm and gracefully leading him to her target.
“Uh, that’s ok Sally, maybe I shouldn’t meet her,” he blurted out nervously.
“Oh come on, don’t be so shy. She talks about you all the time, you know? There’s nothing to worry about.” Cutting in line to get to the front of Andrea’s desk, she spoke excitedly: “Andy, you won’t believe who I found. Ta-da! Look, it’s Gene, your old friend from when we were kids. Small world, right?”
She looked up from the book she was signing and pushed her new glasses back up quickly to look at who was there. She was wearing the new glasses that were in a similar but newer looking style. An astute observer would have been able to notice the weak bifocal segments at the bottom of the hefty lenses, but they were actually quite seamless. “Oh… Dr. Gregory? I mean, Gene? I didn’t know you were, uh…” She stopped her poorly executed lie in its tracks, and just looked at him, not knowing really what to say.
“Yeah, it’s me. Is that really you? Wow…” he matched her inept attempt at pretending he didn’t already know. “How have you been? I mean, how are the new glasses?” This new attempt to try to keep it professional somehow fell even flatter than his earlier strategy of faking surprise.
But she followed it nonetheless. “Yeah, good, good, really good. I can see really clearly now.”
Awkward silence filled the air as both of them looked in vain for words that could fill in the 18 years they had spent away from each other. It was clear to Andrea that he was just the same old boy that she used to play with. Even though his body had matured, his eyes were the same. They filled her with the same warm feeling she had on their last evening together, in the treehouse. And they made her remember all the laughs that they shared, the things they taught each other, and things they had shared. Suddenly, she remembered the famous quote from The Little Prince, and said it without thinking:
“But you know, ‘one sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eye.’”
There was a brief pause. Then both of them erupted in laughter. Somehow, just like that, by evoking a quote from that novel they had shared and bonded over so many years ago, it seemed as though the gap was bridged. They were laughing like the two children they had once been, best friends once again.
But as their laugh was tapering off, a woman came next to Gene and grabbed his arm. “Oh hey there sweetie, I’ve been looking all over for you. Sorry I’m late,” the woman said, dropping a little kiss on his cheek. “You seem to be having fun, who’s this?” she asked innocently.
He was tongue-tied and had trouble giving a straight answer to his wife – it seemed for a moment that his speech impediment was back. But before dumbstruck Gene could formulate his reply, Andrea handed him a copy of her book and said: “Here’s your signed copy. Thanks for dropping by.”
He took the book from her hands and left, muttering an imperceptible “Thanks” while avoiding eye-contact. His wife, filling in for what she saw as her husband’s rudeness, thanked her properly before turning away and disappearing into the crowd.
“Well… that didn’t go so well,” said Sally in an understated way. “Could be worse right? I mean, he could have been gay.”
They both chuckled, but Andrea’s was not very convincing.
“I’m not feeling so good, Sally,” the older sister said. “Is it OK if I…?”
“Yeah, sure, no problem, I’ll cover for you.”
Andrea did not return to the kiosk that night. She could barely even get out of bed the next morning. She had lost him again, before ever even getting him back.
Part 3
For many years after that night, Andrea remained single, in much the same way as before any of this business with Gene happened. Like before, of course she went on a few dates here and there, but it never led anywhere – there was never any spark. The men she dated weren’t even so bad, it’s just that she was never so good at dating in the first place, and never found that she could deeply connect with any of them.
Gene, as she found out that night of the book fair, had been happily married for two years, and Andrea had no intention whatsoever of messing with a married man. They met only once since that night, and she had been disgusted by what she saw as his romantic advances. He had even told her he loved her! She, however, wasn’t about to just be an accessory to his unfaithfulness, and stormed off immediately. Whatever feelings she might have had for him, she buried deep beneath her revulsion at the very thought that he might also have feelings for her while being married. She never contacted him again after that, and he respected her wishes and did the same.
After that dreadful incident and her innumerable failures with other men, she did like any sane person would and simply stopped caring about it, choosing instead to throw herself into her writing completely. It was a successful strategy, for the most part.
But tonight, her meddling younger sister had organized a blind date for her. She hated the idea, but couldn’t find a reason not to go. After all, it was a date at one of the fanciest restaurants in town, and Sally had insisted that she’d absolutely love this guy.
Sally… she seemed to have it all. While Andrea was stuck being a “forever alone” mid-30s woman, her sister had easily found a man, gotten married, and already had one baby boy with another child due in seven months. She seemed to just fall into happiness, as if great things just fell onto her lap one after the other.
Andrea was sitting on her sofa reading a novel that night when the doorbell rang. It was Sally. She was wearing clothes which were, even to Andrea’s untrained eye, obviously fashionable. And bringing her whole outfit together was a pair of stylish, slightly cat-eye shaped glasses. She walked into the house with an enthusiastic hug and a long drown out “hi.”
“Great to see you Sally, but, uh… I wasn’t expecting you. What’s up?” Andrea asked, perplexed.
“I’m helping you prepare, silly. You’ve got a really important date tonight,” Sally said, pushing her glasses up.
“Um, OK? I didn’t know it was that important. Who am I meeting, a prince?” Andrea replied sarcastically.
“Oh come on, we can catch up while I help you do your makeup. I know you need my help, if it were up to you, I’m sure you wouldn’t even bother with eyeliner,” Sally said dismissively. Andrea shrugged at this; her sister had a point, she had no intentions of trying hard at all with makeup.
They soon went to Andrea’s bedroom, where Sally sat her older sister down in a chair in front of the mirror and started to “work her magic,” as she called it. Andrea couldn’t help but notice that her sister was wearing new glasses, seemingly completely full-time. This surprised her still, because a few years ago - no, even a few months ago - Sally wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing glasses out of the house. When they were children, she had always made off-hand judgmental remarks about Andrea's self-imposed need for glasses. But now she herself was wearing lenses full-time, which seemed to carry a not-insignificant nearsighted prescription in them.
“You got new glasses, I see?” Andrea asked as her sister rummaged through a case trying to find some specific piece of makeup.
“Yeah, I like them a lot, what do you think?" the younger sister said as she turned her head towards Andrea to show them off properly.
“They’re great, I love the cat-eye style,” Andrea praised, “So you’re wearing them full-time now? That’s new.”
“Yeah. I figured ‘why not?’ I’m blind without them anyways, just gotta accept it, you know? I guess nearsightedness runs in the family.”
“I guess so," Andrea replied, pausing slightly and with a smile on her face. "It’s funny cause I thought the first ones you got were so weak, I thought you were just wearing fake glasses for style or whatever.”
“Yeah…” Sally thought, absent-mindedly. Her sister wasn’t that far from the truth, as she recalled.
“Come here you naughty boy, I have some extra-curricular activities you might be interested in if you want to get bonus marks,” Sally said, wearing an unrealistically short skirt, high socks, prop glasses, and a tight, buttoned-down shirt exposing her cleavage. “You don’t want to repeat the grade, do you?”
She and her husband, Jeff, often did some roleplays like this to spice things up in bed. But that night was particularly successful. It seemed Jeff loved the teacher costume. More often than not after that, he would request the teacher costume. She was more than happy to oblige because he seemed really into it. One night, she didn’t feel like dressing up, so Jeff told her to just wear the prop glasses alone. After that, whenever she wanted to seduce him she would put on the glasses and he would be instantly ready to go. They were handy to have around.
A few months later, Jeff booked an eye exam for both of them, as a routine checkup, he said. They went, and although the doctor didn’t find anything wrong with his eyes, he diagnosed very mild nearsightedness in Sally, and gave her a prescription she should use for driving and night vision, as necessary. Although she didn’t see much difference with them on, she was overall quite happy, because she picked out a pair of really expensive designer frames which she thought suited her. She would just use these in bed with Jeff instead of the props, as part of her "teacher" outfit.
“OK, here you go, you already look better than you have in years, Andrea, and I’ve only just finished the foundation,” Sally said with an obvious smugness.
“Whatever you say,” the older sister replied nonchalantly. Changing the subject, she said: “So who’s this guy I’m meeting tonight? I hope he’s better than the guys I met online. Man, you really never know what you’re gonna get online. I think I’m scarred for life from those some of those terrible dates.”
Sally laughed. “I know what you mean. Online… what a joke.”
More than a year after her first glasses were prescribed to her, Sally still didn’t really wear them outside of the bedroom. They didn’t give her better *or* worse vision, wearing them was just more or less exactly the same as her regular vision. But as is likely to happen to something which is used as a sex prop, the glasses got progressively more crooked and bent, and it seemed high time to get a new pair. Plus, the frames she got were no longer in fashion, and she was due for a change.
They ordered some glasses online this time, because there was a popular and trendy brand that was available exclusively online and she wanted to get in on it. She selected the frames, ordered them, and they arrived shortly thereafter. She was excited to see what she looked like with them, but she was disappointed when she found that they were a bit too big for her face. Then, out of sheer luck, she saw that there was another glasses case in her package, even though she had just ordered one. She saw a flier with “2-for-1” written on it and shrugged, opening the case excitedly and putting the glasses on. They were perfect and beautiful – definitely Instagram-worthy - and her disappointment at the old frames vanished like that. The only problem though was that the lenses were definitely not her prescription. The glasses, it seems, must have been shipped to her by accident. She decided not to call the company to complain, because she was happy with these ones, even if they were a bit stronger. What did it matter anyway: they were just supposed to be a prop for bed, right?
An hour later, Andrea’s makeup was done, and she was about to head off to her date.
“How do I look?” Andrea asked.
“Gorgeous,” her sister replied. “All you would need is a new pair of glasses. You’ve been wearing the same ones for so long. Switch it up a little, girl!”
“I guess,” Andrea replied sheepishly. “What, you want me to get some cat-eye frames just like you? I know they’re in style right now, but I don’t know if I could pull them off like you do.”
“Thanks. I do pull them off a bit really well, don't I? They took a bit of getting used to, but I really like them.” A bit of getting used to in more ways than one, she reflected.
Two years and one pregnancy later, Sally and Jeff were celebrating their second Christmas together with their baby boy. It was clear to her that Jeff really liked to see her wearing her glasses, so very gradually and almost without noticing it, she started to wear them almost all the time at home. She sometimes even forgot to take them off when she left, because it just became a habit to wear them. She didn’t much care either way, but she knew how much they turned Jeff on, and besides, she couldn’t deny that the 2-for-1 pair looked incredible on her.
That night, in addition to the regular Christmas present she got, there was an extra gift box waiting for her on her nightstand as she entered the bedroom. “To Sally, From Jeff”, the inscription read. She curiously opened it and found a glasses case with a beautiful pair of cat-eye designer frames in it. Putting them on, she noticed that they were slightly stronger than her old ones. But she could still see everything clearly, including her reflection in the mirror which she found just absolutely amazing.
“I see you’ve opened your gift already,” said Jeff as he entered the bedroom. “How do you like them? Are they good?”
She said yes and didn't mention the mistake at all. That night, the sex was more amazing than it had ever been before, and the glasses scarcely came off after that.
“OK, I guess I should be going, then,” Andrea told her sister as the time of her blind date drew nearer and nearer. “Thanks a lot for the makeup and the company. And, Sally? You look really good with your glasses. I’m glad you finally got around to wearing them full-time.”
Sally smiled. “Thanks, I think I look good with them too.”
“Remember how you used to tease me and make fun of me all the time for wearing my own glasses? You said I ruined my eyes. Look at us now, two four-eyed girls. I bet that if I hadn’t done what I did, I’d probably still end up needing glasses, just like you. Funny how things happen.”
“Yeah,” Sally said, slightly coldly. “Funny.”
Andrea arrived to the restaurant and, upon hanging her coat at the coat-check and giving her name to the hostess, was led to a table with a familiar man sitting at it.
“Gene?! You’re my blind date? I’m gonna kill Sally,” Andrea said after she sat down and realized who the man was.
“Please, Andy, don’t make a scene. I can explain,” he said, his eyes staring at hers through both of their strong pairs of glasses.
After a few moments, Andrea resigned to sit down and said “Fine, you have a minute to explain yourself.”
“OK, thank you,” he said, pausing to compose himself and taking a deep breath before saying: “What I said last time was true, Andy. I love you, and I’ve always only loved you, ever since we were 11. I got a divorce five years ago today, a few months after we saw each other again for the first time. All I’ve wanted to do since then is to see you again, but I knew our relationship couldn’t be based on the destruction of my marriage. So here I am, five years later, and I love you no less than I did five years ago. No less than I did when we kissed all those years ago. Will you have supper with me?”
Emotion welling up inside of her and threatening to burst out in weeps, she answered: “I will. And I love you too, Gene. You little geeky boy.”
They both laughed, and with some effort, fought the tears away.