Nic Narrates

Before he left last week, before that insufferable silence, we were in the car together as my phone rang, playing my SATC ring tone.

“Who’s that? Mr. Big?” he asked from the driver’s seat, peering at the screen.

“Ha ha…it’s my mom,” I humored him as I pushed her call to voicemail. “You’re my Mr. Big.”

“I want to be like that other guy,” he asserted, turning back toward the road.

“Huh?”

“The other one. What’s his name?”

“Aidan?”

“Yeah. I want to be like Aidan.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, quiet with excitement.

“I don’t know. He seemed like…a normal guy.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” I encouraged.

“And he was nice.”

“He was,” I pounced.

“Why’d they break up?”

“Well, I guess they were in two different places. He wanted to get married and she wasn’t ready,” I shrugged before realizing where my words would lead us.

“Hmm,” he mumbled as he ducked into his own thoughts.

“Yeah. And then, you know, she ended up with Big anyway, who wasn’t ready for marriage before,” I chirped a bit too loudly.

“Didn’t you want her to end up with him?” he questioned, turning toward me.

But I wasn’t looking at him then. I was looking out the window at the houses and trees as we passed them by. I watched kids riding their bikes, husbands on ladders cleaning out gutters, signs for garage sales and open houses. I watched other people’s lives being lived out on those suburban streets.

And all the while I was remembering what Carrie said to Aidan when she unwittingly bumped into him not too long after on the street, learning he’d moved on, had a son, and had married. I was remembering her breathlessly consequential, “Oh, Aidan,” as she tilted her head without adding, “this could have been- should have been??- us.” It was bittersweet. And it was definitive.

“I don’t know. I mean, I guess. Maybe,” I finally whispered without turning from my spectator’s view of suburban life.

It was true when I’d told him he’d always been my Mr. Big. But he was telling me now that he wanted to be Aidan. And I sorta, kinda wanted him to be Aidan too….

Filed under: crossroads, in transit, SATC by Nic