Years later, she finds her highschool yearbook and looks up his picture. Her fingers trace over the adolescent blue scrawl, If you ever need a man, I’m your hombre, and she wonders again about a boy who was so sure he could be man enough for her, in the future, in the hypothetical. If she needs a man: recognition that she didn’t, necessarily, that she may not choose a man; and then the strong verb, I am, confident, sure, but not cocky, since that tendency was tempered by the conditional clause that precedes it. She barely gives a thought to what he might look like now, whether his hair is long or short, whether he needs bifocals like she does. Her eyes never search the picture for clues about if he has matured into his looks. Her eyes, in fact, are often closed. Her fingers trace the words, If you ever need a man, I’m your hombre. Is it possible to trace a touch that wasn’t?, she wonders.
She tucks the yearbook into her purse and carries it around with her.
