She always smelled like pumpkin seeds. Not like pumpkin perfume or some other sort of manufactured odor, but real, honest to goodness, raw pumpkin, as if she had been out in the fields with a spoon and a goal, and she had set her mind to the task. She probably had. I didn’t bother to ask.
She was tall, taller than me, taller than a lot of people. She wore hats and she wore caps. That was just who she was. That was who she wanted to be. Unashamed, unabashed, unconcerned. If she was a frog she would have jumped from lily-pad to lily-pad in a very reckless way.
I had been seeing her for a few months before I asked her out.
“Mags,” I used to say, after we had started dating, while on one of our walks through the farmland that surrounded our community.
“Mm?” she’d always reply.
“Let’s buy a tent and run away from here. Let’s cash out our 401k’s and learn how to start a fire with a bow drill. Let’s learn what kind of mushrooms we can eat and what kind of berries we can’t.”
The soft words fell upon her ears like children sliding down a hand rail. She wasn’t going to answer me, but smiled at the prospect. She probably already knew all that stuff, and she was never one for saving for retirement.
The sun was setting and it had a nice yellow hue that night, like a dandelion on fire. Already missing the impending lack of sun, I shivered.
“Here, you want my coat?” she generously offered, handing me her worn out brown jacket, held together by a thin series of colored threads that had no right to be on that jacket.
I shook my head and looked back at the sunset. She put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s nice, isn’t it.”
“You know what I was thinking the other day? I was thinking I’m really glad the Allies won World War Two.”
“Me too, Mags,” I said with tears in my eyes, coming out of nowhere, but so pure and real that I was shocked at my own body’s ability to erupt such an emotion. “I was thinking the other day how great it is that we have each other as best friends.”
She grinned, bringing me closer and tossing her jacket over all four of our shoulders. The sun had finally set. I was set. She was set. The setting was there.
“What are we doing next?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing.”
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