I saw her at the gym in my yoga class. I should say that I saw her again, in my yoga class. We first met in high school. It took all I could muster to ask Meredith Basking to go out on a date. When I finally asked her out, she told me to basically ‘fuck off’. Actually, as I recall her exact words were “Fuck off, Asshole”.

I must have been giving her the evil-eye or the death-stare because after the first class she approached me.

“Do we know each other?” she asked cautiously.

“We went to the same high school at the same time.”

“We were in high school together?”

“No. I wouldn’t call it ‘together’ and actually I didn’t use those words. I said that we went to the same high school at the same time.”

She looked at me searching the memory that was housed under that thick mane of blond hair. After several minutes of intense thought, she shook her head and slowly spoke.

“Nope. I can’t recall you at all.”

“I’m not surprised. I wasn’t a jock or of the too cool for school kids you hung out with. I was a musician/actor/debate guy.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have known many of those kids. So now you’re a yoga instructor?”

“No. I was just helping out today. I’m a physical therapist. I work with injured athletes and semi-athletes. And a lot of non-athletes who are injured thinking they are still in high school.”

“Do you work with anyone famous?” Her eyes winkled at the thought that she might know someone who knew someone famous.

“I’ve worked with some of the pro hockey players and a few of the pro football players, but I don’t drop names. They’re mostly private people who play a game and really don’t enjoy the spotlight very much.”

“So, you can’t give me any names. Well then I think your story is bullshit,” and with that, she turned and walked away.

“Nice to see you too,” was directed at her back as I flipped her off, much to the surprise and shock of some of her classmates. Yet my actions were much to the amusement of several of my friends.

“Mick, that was classic,” one of my good friends, Jay, said. “Meredith hasn’t changed an iota since we all knew her in high school. Do you remember what we used to call the guys who dated her?”

“Yeah, The Stain Train!”

“Right. Her line when one of us uncool guys asked her out was, ‘First you have to lick my bloody pussy during my period’ and that usually made us drop like flies, but there was a group of guys who must have done it.”

“Right! Hence the name. Why is it that all the beautiful girls are so full of themselves? She didn’t have to be that way.”

“I don’t know, Mick. Hey! Me, Fran and a few others are going over to the Shedd for drinks, you should join us. There are lots of good looking women.”

“How do you know? If Fran catches you even thinking about a peek around the room, she’ll shave your nuts with a broken pint glass.”

“Yes! She will,” Jay replied with a strong, firm and confirming tone in his voice.

I chuckled and shook my head before I gave my answer to Jay’s invitation.

“You know what? I haven’t been out in a long time. I think I’ll join you.”

We all traded high-fives and left the yoga room to go back to our workouts before finishing in the showers. While standing under the hot water and washing off the funk, Jay leaned close to me.

“Mick, don’t freak out or anything, but how come you don’t have a wife or a girlfriend?” Jay asked carefully. “I mean, I ain’t gay or nothing, but with a dick that size you should have them crawling all over you.”

“Who says I don’t have a girlfriend?” I replied.

“Mick, come on, I have never seen you with a female that wasn’t a gym member or in one of the classes. And then it’s only to help them with a yoga pose or to get them to be safer on a machine. So, who is she and when can Fran and I meet her?”

“She is someone I met a long time ago. We grew apart during college and then came back together as friends last year. We started dating just a few months ago.”

“What’s her name?”

“Paula.”

“Did I know her in high school?”

“Not unless you knew the homeliest girl in our class.”

“Homely? In our class?” The gears were spinning and suddenly his eyes popped wide open and he blurted out, “Oh shit! Not Pizza Face!”

“Her name is Paula, Jay, and watch yourself.”

“Paula? Pizza Face Paula!?”

The look I gave Jay let him know that he had hit the nail on the head and managed to totally piss me off with one sentence.

“Oh shit! I’m sorry Mick. It just popped out.”

“Well if you pop it out again, I’ll kick your ass back to 8^th grade. Paula is the most wonderful woman I have ever known.”

“Well now I can guess why you don’t bring her around.”

“Why is that, my soon to be late friend?”

“Never mind. Sorry I said anything. I’m gonna get dressed. Please, Mick, still meet us at the Shedd. I meant no disrespect for you or her.”

I thought about it for a second. I understood why Jay had said what he did. When we were in high school Paula Hosted had the worst case of acne I had ever seen. Being the sort of guy I was, I just treated her like everyone else. She appreciated it a lot. Over the course of our three years of high school we were close but didn’t date.

I didn’t date anyone. My folks were divorced, and I lived with my mom. We didn’t have a lot of money so I never had a car and couldn’t afford to pay for a date anyway. Paula and I stayed close all during school and we would spend a lot of time together at dances though we came stag and went home separately.

The incident with Meredith kind of put a halt to me asking anyone out again during the rest of my high school years. As I found out later, Paula would have killed Meredith if she had the method. Meredith had treated Paula like shit since third grade. Paula hated her.

After graduation I joined the Army and Paula joined the Army. That’s right, unbeknownst to either of us we both enlisted in the Army. I found out that I had a knack for dealing with injuries and became a medic. Paula went to language school and found out she had a knack for speaking Farsi. Can you guess where we both were deployed?

We never saw each other in the Middle East and didn’t know anything about one another’s lives. I got home, generally unscathed, and took my certifications to work as an EMT. I’ve been told that I have great snap judgment skills and I was rising in the ranks and making great bank. I also came home in great shape, because of the heat and physicality of the job in ‘the Sandbox’. I joined a gym, found yoga, and became a novice assistant instructor.

Paula found herself in a situation where her skills saved a large number of Americans when she translated an intercept differently than an entire department of translators. She brought it to the attention of a high ranking officer, going over the head of her supervising officer. When the operational details of the intercept she translated began to fall into place, the Army laid a trap and stopped a huge suicide attack on Americans in Germany.

Many bad guys were caught, many lives were saved. Paula was drummed out for going over her commanding officer’s head. She came home with a step down in grade and a reputation of being insubordinate. Her new assignment was a put up and she was forced to leave the Army as a first lieutenant.

The only good thing that came out of the situation for her was that she was able to get very effective treatment for her acne. Today she has a few hardly noticeable scars on her face and a few heavier ones on her back and shoulders.

One day I went to a local burger shop that I used to go to back in high school. I was enjoying a double cheeseburger with extra raw onions, tater tots, and a chocolate malt, when Paula walked in. She got her order and was looking for a seat in the almost packed restaurant, when she saw me sitting alone at a four-person table.

“May I join you?”

“Sure Paula.”

“Do I know you?”

“I would have thought that you would remember the guy you ate lunch with almost every day in high school.”

“MICK!?” She almost dropped her tray on the floor.

I managed to steady it and get it on the table before she pulled me to my feet and gave me the kind of hug long lost friends would share.

“What? ... How? ... What?”

“Paula! Slow down. Sit. Eat. Talk.”

She took a seat straight across from me and after two hours of slowly eating and second chocolate malts, we had a date scheduled. After five of those dates, I was thinking of asking her to marry me. It was between that fifth date and the asking that the incident with Meredith and Jay happened.

I dressed after my shower and told Jay that I was going to pick up Paula and meet him at the Shedd. I walked into the apartment to find Paula sitting in the living room drinking a glass of iced tea, reading a book.

“Hi, Pauls,” Pauls was my nickname for her.

“Hi, Mick. How as the yoga class?”

“Long story. I’ll tell you over beer and burgers at the Shedd.”

“The Shedd? Now?”

“Yeah. We’re in a bit of a rush, so let me help you out of that t-shirt and that thong so you can get dressed.”

“Help me? Yeah, that’s not gonna happen if you want to get to the Shedd before this weekend.”

“How am I going to deal with a woman who can’t control her animal urges?”

“I don’t know. Who would be silly enough to date you? I want to meet this poor deluded woman.”

“Pauls, I’m I think that someday I’m going to marry you.”

“Really? I assume that you feel that I’m going to marry you because I can’t control my animal urges. I assure you that I can.” Then she swore at me in Farsi. I gotta learn some of those words.

“Seriously, lover, you are going to love this. Do you remember Jay Silver from high school?”

“Yeah,” she stood and headed towards the bedroom pulling her t-shirt over her head.

“He married Fran Commins. He and I work out together and he invited me to join him at the Shedd. He tried to get me to join them by telling me that the Shedd had lots of pretty women. He didn’t think I had a girlfriend. I told him about you.”

“Did he remember me?” She asked quietly.

“He did. And I got pissed. I guess that he still remembers the 18 year old you.”

“And my face.”

“Yeah. And I took him to task. He apologized, I accepted, and we are going to miss the beer if you don’t hurry.”

“I’m tempted to wear my thong backwards just to have your little male brain occupied with the idea of me sitting there with a string tickling my pussy.”

I closed my eyes and put a goofy smile on my face and did a really bad Homer Simpson voice.

“Mmmmm. Pusssssy.”

Paula shook her head and pulled on a clean emerald green thong and a matching bra. She topped her outfit off with a black polo shirt and a nice fitting pair of, not too tight, not too loose, jeans. We headed out the door and headed out to the Shedd.