"But what I've never done is tell you how I felt. Tell you how my 18 year old heart beat a little louder when you were around. How I stood a little taller when you entered the room and listened more closely whenever you spoke. Yes, I corrected your six minutes post but what I really want to do is correct the record."
I type all of that, read it twice, and then reach for the backspace bar to erase everything. But a weird thing happens on my way to the backspace. I accidentally hit send.
I think it was an accident. I don't know. But I hit send and I wait.

It is an eternity before those three dots began to blink again.
"... Why are you saying this now? Tonight?"
"Who knows if there will be another tonight Candy. I've not said things for too long. I've missed out on promotions because I didn't speak up. My ex-wife and I were both miserable roommates just passing each other on the stairs for about five years before we could give it voice. The time for saying things is now... and so tonight it is. Tonight it's 1989 and I'm finally speaking my mind."
I hit send and wait a full five minutes. Nothing. I stand and begin to circle again, again. Just as I am about to clarify myself, let her know that I have no expectations, that I just wanted to say the things I've wanted to say since I was fourteen, she replies,
"I married Greg. After he divorced Rhonda Kenton. We got married."
The color drains from of my face. I feel light headed. Pretty M#therf#cker! Fuck him and the Shemar Moore he rode in on! Where is Nino Brown when you need him! Probably somewhere looking for the pimples on the booty. I never even told her I liked her and still, there he was. I might as well have told her how I felt. Showed her how I felt. I spent all that time being bullied into silence by, myself! I was my own Gooch. I should have ...
"We're divorced now," her next message reads. "We were married for five and have been divorced for almost eight years."
I take a deep breath and only then realize that I'd been holding it. Typing f#ck Greg, texturizers, Rick Fox and Boris Kodjoe seems, inappropriate, so instead I go with,
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"You're sorry to hear that we were married for five or have been divorced for eight?
"Both," I reply.
"Yeah... well."
"Yeah well enough with the sad present. D-Nice has built us a time machine and it may only exist for one night. I've got a Cabbage Patch and a Roger Rabbit that I've been saving for 30 years. May I have this dance?"
Another long pause.
"Under one condition. The Strawberry Hill Boone's Farm is on you!?"
"Bet!"
I laugh and crank up the music in my apartment. D-Nice is playing Everything She Wants by Wham. I receive a video in my IG inbox. It's Candy doing the Prep. I laugh and send her one with me doing the Smurf. We exchange videos and emojis for the next fews hours. Laughing, reminiscing. Time traveling.
Around 1 a.m. my knees call it quits and Candy says she's calling it a night too. I get my last message of the evening from her,
"I needed this," it begins.
"I needed this and didn't know it. Here's what I haven't said, I liked you all those years ago too Ed, but thought that because you didn't talk to me and seemed to be actively ignoring me that you not only didn't like me but disliked me. Neither of us knew how to use our words back them but we're grown now. So when this quarantine is over, and if your mama will let you come out and play, let's get a cup of coffee. Okay? See you in the Club Quarantine tomorrow night? I hear ?uestlove is spinning the late set."
I stare at her message, admiring the fact that she spelled Questlove with the question mark.
Earlier I remarked on how life can be like the mighty Mississippi flowing forward with great strength and certainty. It may split into tributaries or fork off like branches but, always, always forward.
Well, as it would so happen, in 1812 The Mississippi River, due to an earthquake, for several hours ran backward. The Mississippi, ran backward.
Sometimes something can come along that shakes everything up. Something that allows time, and the driftwood caught in its current, to flow back so that we might find things we lost along the way.