I’ve been chasing her for years, but she’s always got some other guy in the palm of her hand. She picks him up for two seconds, studies him and finds him lacking in some way or another. He’s too bald. He laughs too loudly. His pants are too short. It could be anything.

I know she’s undateable, but what I wouldn’t give for those two seconds. I’m sure I’d be just another casualty, but I refuse to call off the quest. Is it the challenge I can’t let go or the girl? It’s gotta be the girl.

She’s funny. Not like funny ha-ha, but funny strange. She snorts when she laughs and she never fails to laugh at things that aren’t very funny. You’d think she was high all the time, but she’s never smoked in her life.

She works at a homeless shelter. She took the job because she wanted to help people who didn’t have other options. She had high hopes and high expectations. Then she discovered they were too needy, too ungrateful, too unaware of their pungent body odor. She’s looking for a new job now, and she thinks she’d like to try a retirement home.

She’s a sucker for Wild Cherry Lifesavers. She buys a big bag, which only lasts her two days. Do you know how many Lifesavers are in one of those bags? Three bags could have saved the Titanic. She would laugh at that.

I study her while she orders Chinese food to go. Broccoli and Beef or Sesame Chicken? She can’t decide. She’ll take them both, one in the palm of each hand.

Her red lace bra peeks out of her tank top and winks at me. It teases me almost as much as her Wild Cherry mouth.

My eyes move from her bra to the fine hair curling at the nape of her neck. Its not quite long enough to reach the ponytail tied up with a red band.

A glob of freckles melds on the round slope of her shoulder. They form a Rorshach. It’s a butterfly, a bat, and two people kissing. It’s all of them and none of them. What does it mean? It means I’m too far gone.

She grabs a fortune cookie while we wait, never to be denied her just dessert.

“Here, you read it,” she says, thrusting the fortune at me. She eats the cookie in anticipation.

“You are in love with the man standing next to you,” I read.

Instead of considering me, she turns to the guy standing on the other side of her.

“His eyes are too close together,” she says with a snort. A golden piece of fortune cookie flies from those lips to glow on my black shirt. She captures it with a fingernail before sucking it back into her mouth.

What I wouldn’t give for my too seconds.