The T-Shirt

It wasn't the first time I asked out a bartender, but it will almost certainly be the last. I had had a "server crush" on her for a while -- the kind of crush you have for a waitress or bartender, but know it won't pan out because you're just another customer. But in this case she was a friend of a friend's girlfriend and we were all hanging out one night. It was obvious she was flirting with me, and I was just tipsy enough to ask for her phone number. She was tipsy enough to give it to me.

We saw each other for a few weeks, but nothing really clicked between us. I kept calling her because she was cute and I wasn't seeing anyone else. We didn't see each other for a week or so because she went out of town and then I went out of town, and by the time we were both back she was busy with school. "I'm kind of swamped right now, why don't I give you a call when things settle down?" she told me over the phone. A thinly veiled guise if I ever heard one.

At some point I had loaned her a t shirt of mine. It was too small to fit me anymore, shrunk from years of use and years of growing. It had the date 1984 on it, and I can remember it being so large on me I would trip on the hem. It didn't fit me at all but it fit her quite well, and when I tossed it to her to try on she remarked on how soft it was. "I just might have to steal this," she (half) joked. "You better not; I've had that shirt for over twenty years."

I waited a few days to call her back and see if she wanted to have dinner. I left a voice mail. I mentioned how I'd like to swap my shirt for a shirt my friend had promised her and I had gotten from him. Life went on. About a week later I sent her a text message. I hate text messages. "So I get that you're not interested in seeing me anymore and I'm cool with that, but I was serious about wanting to get my shirt back." No response. I stopped going to the bar where she worked, figuring that avoiding awkward situations was for the best.

The story of my t shirt became a running joke for my friends: "so did you get your shirt back yet?" became a common greeting. "If Tyler would just man up and get his shirt back we could go back to that bar." Except for the principle of the theft, I stopped being bothered by the loss of my shirt. After all, it was just a shirt and it didn't even fit me anyway. Having the story became more interesting to me than having the shirt. "I wish you would just get it back already so I would stop having to hear about it!" one of my coworkers exclaimed. She didn't see the humor it it that the rest of us did.

Weeks and weeks had gone by and I had sucessfully avoided her since the theft incident. My boss, because of some good results at work, said he was going to take several of us out for dinner and drinks. Of course we had to go to the bar I never went to anymore. I knew she had been planning on moving away sometime soon, and I was fairly confident that that sometime soon was in the past by that point. Alright, I thought to myself, there's very little chance that she'll be there. I showed up after everyone else and walked up to the table.

"Awesome." I said to my friends who were in on the story. She was there working.