Near Love Stories
by J. B. Hogan

When Maggie was thirteen, something unusual happened to her. It wasn't a particular incident, no special life-changing trauma, nor was it the first onset of her progress towards becoming a woman. No, she couldn't link it to any specific event, date, time, or place; but during her thirteenth year a feeling began to emerge within her, to spread from a small place deep inside, to eventually inform the very essence of who she was and who she was to be.

She couldn't put a name to this feeling, this sense, but she came to know its symptoms all too well. It manifested itself in an intellectual restlessness, an intermittent physical ennui, a feeling of dissatisfaction that tainted her daily life with an uncomfortable and unexplained feeling of unhappiness. She assumed it was what every teenager experienced, and she was right; but as time passed and this feeling didn't, she began to think that this gnawing, depressing sense of unfulfillment was more than just a natural phase that would pass, that in fact it was who she was, who she had become, and that it was permanent.

Simply growing up, aging, helped Maggie, to an extent. The sharpness of the pain diminished, even disappeared for days, weeks at a time. She would feel normal for awhile, find herself becoming involved with new friends, with community activities, and even with another in a limited series of young beaus who were attracted to her endearing shyness and undeniable good looks. But the boyfriends were like everything else in Maggie's life - temporary and unsatisfying. The guys were always too shallow, or too physically aggressive, or too unwilling to go that extra step towards serious involvement; and as a result they became like everything else seemed to be in Maggie's life: unable to live up to its billing.

When she first met Charles in college, it seemed that he might be what she had been looking for, that something that she had never been able to define but was sure she would know if it ever presented itself or happened to her. And for the better part of the next year Charles did fit the bill. He was fun, kind, solicitous of her needs, anxious to make her happy. They had a nice time together. For quite awhile.

But of late, over the last few months as he neared graduation and she summer school, the old dissatisfaction, the restlessness, the undefined need had begun to reappear, to reassert itself. She found that she was short with Charles, found and saw faults in him she had not noticed before, felt herself compelled, against her will it seemed, to withdraw from him, to go back into herself. By the end of the spring semester she felt their relationship had turned a corner, a corner she wasn't sure they could come back around.

*    *    *

"Smile," Charles said, reaching across the table and taking one of her long, slender hands in his. She looked at him and smiled but there was no joy in her deep brown eyes. "You have the saddest eyes I've ever seen. What's wrong?"

"I'm not sad," she said, looking at their hands. "I'm preoccupied."

"Well, preoccupied, then," Charles laughed. Maggie looked up at him.

"It's not funny," she said, not smiling. Charles's countenance fell.

"No," he said, "I guess not. I just …."

"Not now," Maggie cut him off as their waitress arrived with menus. Maggie chose a salad, Charles a large bean burrito. When the waitress left, the couple sat quietly for several moments, each looking around the uncrowded restaurant. Finally, Charles broke the silence.

"You just gonna clam up on me?" he asked.

"Clam up on you?" she laughed at his phrasing.