I bet that everyone has one thing about their past that they would change if they could. I bet everyone has at least one thing that they would have done differently. Most people can look back at these things in a casual and healthy manner, but sometimes second guessing turns into regret. A regret is a very powerful thing, and it can haunt a person for a long time. What if I had done this? What if I had done that? It can cripple you if you let it. Fortunately, I do not have many regrets, but one is more than enough, and I do have one that has kept me looking in the rear view mirror for a long time. Her name is Sabrina. She’s a girl I used to know. It’s kind of funny. I have found that when the memory of someone from your past will not fade, everything about them becomes larger than life and it’s almost like they become some immortal mural that remains painted on the walls of your soul. I mean, for me, just hearing the name Sabrina still tugs at me on some level. That being said, this isn’t a story about pining over an old flame and wishing you could still be with the person. I don’t regret that things didn’t work out between us. People come and go in our lives all of the time. I mean, that’s just a part of life. No, my regret has more to do with myself. The fact is I live inside of my head most of the time, and I expect everyone to know exactly how I feel without me saying a word. That means, a lot of times I leave words left unspoken that people deserve to hear. In this case, there were some things I definitely should have said, but I didn’t.

During the spring and summer of 1994, I was still working at a pizza place in Quincy Market in Boston. Quincy Market is a marketplace next to Faneuil Hall. It is pretty much a long corridor with overpriced food stalls on either side. It is really old and it looks it. In the center, there is a rotunda with tables and chairs where you can sit and eat. The walls of the rotunda have signs on them from like a hundred years ago and the bricks are probably the same ones that were there in the 1800’s. Outside, there are carts that sell souvenirs and other useless shit. It is basically a tourist trap and anyone who works there is usually miserable as hell. I mean, in the summer there are thousands of people in there all packed like sardines and there is no air conditioning.  Somehow, I managed to work there for years. I have never been goal oriented. I suppose it is what happens when one either is catastrophically lacking in ambition or has a pathological fear of change. Unfortunately, I suffer from both. Anyway, I was on break one day and as I was making my way through the market, I saw this guy I knew. He had worked at one of the coffee stalls. He was talking to some girl, who had her back to me, and as I passed him, he nodded his head at me as to say, “What’s up?” She turned to see who he was looking at, and when she saw me, she stopped me and asked, “Can you believe he doesn’t like Pearl Jam?” Now to most people, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but if you knew me in 1994, then you would have known that Pearl Jam was pretty much my religion at that stage in my life. I thought their song “Black” was one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good song, but my obsession with it and the band was pretty much insane. I stood there staring at this girl for a few seconds as her query registered into my head. I then mumbled something that equated the lead singer Eddie Vedder to God or something ridiculous like that and shuffled quickly away. After that, I spent my entire break wondering who the girl was and how she could have known I liked Pearl Jam. I was also kicking myself in the ass for my inability to communicate like a human being.
When I got back to work, I told my friend Will about what had happened. Will is one of my best friends and one of my roommates now. He and I are polar opposites though. He is really outgoing and friendly. He either personally knew almost every girl working in Quincy Market, or at least knew who they were. He is the reason I met most of the people in the market who would eventually become my friends. I tend to be very quiet at first. I don’t really talk to people unless they initiate a conversation. I have always been very cautious and almost standoffish until I get to know someone. Needless to say, they are not my best qualities. So anyway, as I was in the middle of telling him about this girl, I looked across the hall and there she was. She was working at the frozen drink place directly in front of the pizza place where I worked. They sold non-alcoholic Pina Coladas, fruit smoothies, and shit like that. Even when the market was packed and loud as fuck, you could hear the blenders half way down the hall. It’s funny. I don’t know how I could have missed her, but I never saw her there before. I pointed her out and asked if he knew who she was. Of course, he knew her. He liked her friend Brooke, who also worked over there. She didn’t like him back in that way, but that never stopped Will from trying. I had never noticed Brooke before either until he pointed her out. I guess when you walk around with your head down all of the time you tend to miss things that are right in front of you. I turned my attention back to the girl who had asked me about Pearl Jam, and at that moment, I decided I would meet her if it killed me. I kept peering over at her for the rest of the day, but every time she looked up I would turn away as not to be caught. When my shift was over, I went over to speak to her. I felt so awkward and stupid, and I was so fucking nervous. I had never been particularly good with girls when I was younger. I walked over to the counter where they made the drinks as if I were making my way to the gas chamber. My slow and deliberate steps echoed the trepidation of my damaged esteem and everything inside begged me to turn around while I still had the chance. Basically, that means I was a pussy. The whiz of the blenders chopping ice paled in comparison to the whiz of the butterflies in my stomach. Longing for a last minute stay of execution, I waved to get her attention as if she were the governor hearing my appeal. For all intents and purposes, she was just that. She was standing behind the counter. The floor was covered with bar mats, but it looked like they were almost submerged in a mixture of melted ice and whatever they put in those drinks. I could see her apron, jeans, and sneakers were absolutely covered in frozen fruit mix, but she wore it as well as she wore her smile. She came right over to me and began talking to me as if we had known each other for years. It was quite disarming. She said her name was Sabrina. She looked like a Sabrina. I tried so hard not to stumble over my words as I spoke. I managed to ask her how she could have known that I liked Pearl jam. It was really weird. She said that she didn’t even know why she had stopped me to ask me that question. She also said that she was normally quiet around people she didn’t know very well. I never would have guessed that. She had such a glow about her when she talked. Something about the way she spoke just made me want to listen to her speak forever. I couldn’t help but stare at her. She was the tiniest thing, but God, she was beautiful. She had shoulder length brown hair and huge brown eyes. She had the most perfect eye shape too. I think they call it “almond”, but I’m not sure. Everything about her face seemed serene and angelic. She had an everyday beauty. What I mean is that when you really take a big step back and look up at a starlit sky, you realize how breathtaking it is. Most of the time you don’t even notice it, but when you do, you want to hang on to the moment forever. That is what she encompassed. I began to feel more at ease as we talked, and we talked for quite a while. It was like we had this instant connection, and for the moment, my stay of execution was granted.
That night, I went home and made her a tape of rare Pearl Jam songs. I couldn’t get her face out of my head. Back then, I was such a hopeless sentimental pussy. I started thinking fate and kindred spirits. I had already started building her up. I had already started mixing the paints for the mural. The next day, I saw her at work and I had Will ask her to come and see me before she left for the day. She came over right away and I gave her the tape. I tried to play the whole thing down. I didn’t want to make an ass out of myself if she didn’t like me. I mean, everyone knows the significance of a mix tape. She thanked me and said that it was the nicest thing anyone had ever given her. I was kind of embarrassed and kept saying, “It’s no big deal, really.” Anyway, we left the market to walk to the subway together that night. It is a five minute walk, but it took us two hours. We just talked about Pearl Jam the entire time.
As spring rolled into summer, we saw a lot more of each other. We would either hang out at the beach near my house in Revere and drink, or go to the waterfront in Boston behind the Long Wharf Marriot and drink. We would hang out with my friend Will and Sabrina’s friend Brooke most of the time. Sabrina and I would always pair off and I would be nervous every time I was within two feet of the girl. Then she would smile at me and I would melt. I felt like it was okay to be myself around her. We were only friends, but the more we saw of each other, the more I realized I was falling in love with her. I just knew I would never be able to make a move. Suffering in silence has always been more of my style. At that point in my life, I had hooked up with a few people, but it was either out of convenience or circumstance.  I had never had a crush on anyone before and then actually got to be with that person. As far as I was concerned, that was the stuff they made movies about. That never really happened to people in real life.
Then, one night in July, July 8th actually, Brooke, Sabrina, Will, and I were at Will’s house drinking. It was so damn hot over there. There was a ceiling fan in the living room, but it didn’t help much. Eventually, we were all too drunk to care anyway. We drank a lot of beer and listened to a lot of music. Sabrina brought over the Lisa Loeb single “Stay” and played it about a million times that night. Brooke crashed pretty early, and pretty soon after that Will went to pass out as well. Sabrina and I were alone in the living room, sitting face to face on the sofa. We were talking about everything under the sun, and our hands inadvertently touched. Our fingers immediately locked together. At that moment, I had never wanted to be with anyone more in my entire life, and the world had never made so much sense. We made eye contact and I could have sworn we were staring right through one another. I remember being in a state of utter disbelief when I realized that a kiss was inevitably going to happen. I kept thinking, “this is really happening”. We moved toward each other as if there was some kind of gravitational pull slowly bringing us together, and when we finally kissed, I felt alive for the first time in my life.
After that night, things were kind of awkward between us for a while. I wasn’t sure what she wanted. I had convinced myself that she was just drunk and couldn’t possibly like me. She wasn’t sure what I wanted from her either. It took a couple of weeks for us to confess our true feelings for one another. For once in my life, I felt the warm embrace of fate instead of its cold shoulder. I really couldn’t believe this girl wanted to be with me. She was so breathtakingly beautiful. I, on the other hand, was so insecure and had such little confidence, that I never thought I had a chance.
Our relationship, if you could call it that, actually started in August. I mean, once we were actually dating, we only saw each other about three times a month, as she had already quit working in Quincy Market by then. The way we communicated most of the time was equally as odd. We all had pagers at the time. So the way we communicated was with beeper messages. I don’t mean voice mail or 143. I mean morse code, fucking beeper messages. Will, Brooke, Sabrina, and myself all had our own individual codes.  Sabrina’s code was 222 and mine was 888. Will’s code was 666, and Brooke’s was 000. We would put it at the end of each message. That is how we knew who the message was from. As for the messages themselves, we basically spelled out the words using the numbers on the telephone with dashes to separate each word. For instance, “I love you” is 4-5683-968. Because each number on the phone has three letters, it was difficult at first. So we had to write out all three letters in column form and pick out the letters that made sense. That’s how I did it at least. I actually still have all of the notebooks I used. Also, we had to be careful because words like “hate” and “have” are the same numbers. After a while, it became pretty easy, and we would be able to look at most pages and figure them out in our heads. Sabrina and I would have entire conversations this way, and I really can’t explain how happy it made me to see the little off-yellow display light come on as the beeper vibrated or chirped.  Seeing the 2’s at the end of her messages always made me feel warm inside. Sabrina would page me the most beautiful things sometimes. One night, she sent me a page that read, “You gave my world a sun with your gentle face and hands”. At that point, no one had ever said anything as beautiful to me in my entire life.
As I said before, we didn’t see each other that often. So I missed her more often than I saw her. When we did see each other, I would drive out to her house. She lived in Brookline and I lived in Revere. It is only about 15 minutes away without traffic. Every time I took the left hand turn onto Babcock Street, I would feel as though my heart was climbing into my throat to catch a glimpse of her. As soon as I got out of the car, she would run over to me, and we would hug for what seemed like ten minutes before we even looked at each other. I really felt like we belonged together. We would walk through her town and talk about fate and how we were meant to find each other, and sometimes she would just grab me and kiss me. Once, we were walking down her street and I couldn’t help but notice all of the stars in the sky. It was such a perfect night. Anyway, Sabrina looped her arm through mine and squeezed really tightly. I looked over at her, and she peered up at me with those eyes and smiled. It was one of the few times in my life that I really felt loved, and I loved her more than life itself.  I thought we were true love. I thought we had won. I thought fate had led me to happiness. Unfortunately, fate can be a real mother fucker sometimes.
As the warm summer nights gave way to the cool nights of September, the warmth of our love began to follow suit. My biggest problem was that I questioned everything. Sabrina’s love for me was no exception. The fact that we rarely saw each other, and the fact that we primarily communicated through beeper messages began to bother me a lot. When we did see each other, rather than just enjoy the time that I had with her, I was miserable because I knew it would be such a long time before I would be able to see her again. We would get into fights about it, and we started getting into the break-up and make-up shit. She had such a hard time showing emotion, and I was extremely insecure. The two aren’t exactly the best combination. Then again, maybe that isn’t really a fair assessment. In actuality, I expected her to have her emotions tattooed across her forehead, but I expected her to read my mind. It wasn’t fair to her at all, but sadly, it was who I was. Back then, I never had much in the way of self-esteem. Actually, I never really saw myself as much of anything, and if you can’t love yourself, how can you let anyone else love you? You can’t. The truth is Sabrina never had a chance in hell with me. I always accused her of pushing me away, but looking back, I know I was the one pushing.

By October of 1994, our love was dying more quickly than the falling leaves. I had broken up with her again over Columbus Day weekend. Early the next week she paged me with her phone number. She rarely did that. She wanted to talk. My brother was on the phone, and wouldn’t get off. It was pouring outside, but I ran down the street to a pay phone in front of the convenience store on Beachmont corner. I stood in the rain like an idiot putting quarters into the phone. When I called her, she asked me to come to her house. She was alone babysitting her nephew Devin. I reluctantly agreed. At that point, I hadn’t seen her for two weeks and it felt like an eternity. I tried to kid myself, but I really did want to see her. I drove as fast as I could to her house and parked on the side street next to her building. The name of it was Devotion St, no shit. Ironically enough, it was a dead end. I got out of my car and made my way up the stairs to her apartment. I remember thinking that those stairs were in worse shape than we were, if that were possible. When I saw her, I thought I was going to die. I loved her so much. We stood there holding each other for so long. We kissed and talked for like an hour. I wanted to be with her so badly, but I always felt like she was giving up or didn’t care. I thought that if she really cared we would see each other more or at least talk on the phone like normal people. I guess what I wanted was a normal relationship, but it was becoming obvious that we were not normal material. In hindsight, I obviously made zero effort to change things either, but I knew in my heart we needed to stop hurting each other and just end it, but we ultimately decided we were going to give it another try. My heart had managed to cloud the voices of reason and got one more stay of execution. As I was leaving, she stopped me in the doorway and asked, “Are you happy?” I nodded and uttered, “Yeah, are you?” She opened her eyes really wide, and then she smiled and nodded her head. She said, “I love you, Paul.” I replied, “I love you too, Sabrina.”
Here’s the thing with relationships. They’re kind of like motor boats. Anyone can maintain them when the engine is working properly. However, you never really know what you have until the engine breaks down. That’s when both people have to grab an oar and row. If one person stops rowing, the boat goes around in circles. If both people stop rowing, the boat goes nowhere. Unfortunately, our boat was going nowhere fast.
As I made my way down the stairs, I knew that was the last time I would ever hold her. I’m not really sure how I knew that, but I did. We had just made up and all. I guess I figured we couldn’t keep trying to put a bandage on cancer. It just doesn’t work. After that night, I made a decision that I wasn’t going to call her until she called me. I wanted to see if she cared, and I simply refused to swallow my pride. I would bring my beeper to work, but I would leave it in my backpack because I couldn’t bear knowing that she didn’t page me. I would check it every couple of hours, and my heart would break every time. I was such a stubborn asshole to let my pride get in the way.
I didn’t hear from her for two weeks. So I figured it was finally over. Then, one night at work, I came back from break and pulled out my pager, and instead of seeing the time display, the little screen read, “4 pages”. I almost puked right there. I couldn’t read them fast enough.
“Do you love me now?”
“I’m sorry, I thought you loved me.”
“I was wrong”
“But I still love you.”
I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, but I couldn’t call her back. I mean, I owed that girl a fucking phone call. Even if it was just to say that I couldn’t do it anymore. I owed that girl a call. She earned a call. We had been through too much in our short time together for me to just blow her off, but I didn’t call her. I had somehow managed to rationalize in my mind that she never really cared about me. I made a decision to be pro-active for once. I figured if I was going to feel like shit all of the time because of a girl, I may as well feel like shit while trying to get over her. Then, at least I could feel like I was doing something about it. I had begun to write off all of the things I once thought were fate and destiny to dumb luck and coincidence. In reality, I was just being a selfish asshole, but I had always been that way in relationships. I used to put so much pressure on them. It had to be all or nothing, and I lost so much of myself when I was in a relationship. I guess it’s because I had always hated my own identity so much, that I tried to forge a new one through the relationship. I could never just enjoy the time I spent with my girlfriends, and that in turn eventually cost me a lot of good times with a lot of good people.
Anyway, a few weeks passed and I got a page that I initially thought was a phone number. It was 4663293. I tried calling it a few times. I actually called Brooke and asked if she recognized the number. She didn’t. After we hung up,  I realized it was a message from Sabrina, and it said, “Good-bye.” I mourned the loss of that girl everyday. When I broke up with her, everyone tried to make me feel better. I know they meant well, but they didn’t understand that there was nothing they could possibly say to make me feel better. I was completely heartbroken, and I had no one to blame but myself.  At that point in my life, Sabrina was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me, and I totally fucked it up. Eight months later, I realized the enormity of my mistake.
I was walking in downtown Boston, and Sabrina came into my mind out of nowhere. I remembered that we had been talking on the phone once and she told me that she had taped a song for me. She told me that the song said everything that she could never find the words to say to me herself. She never said the name of the song, but she told me The Breeders sang it. They were an alternative band at the time. We had actually gone to Lollapalooza in August of 94, and saw them play. Kim Deal from The Pixies was a member. Anyway, we broke up before Sabrina could ever give me the tape. I had forgotten all about it. I’m not sure why the memory of it came into my head that day, but once it did, I ran to the record store to buy the cd. I only looked at the front of the cd because I wanted to wait until I got home to try and figure out which song it was. The cd had a bleeding heart on the cover, which I thought was rather fitting. I went straight to my room when I got home and sat on my bed. I slowly took the cd out of the paper Newbury Comics bag and my heart pounded with nervous anticipation. I turned the case over to see the track list. I methodically read the song titles one by one until I reached track six. As I read each word of its title, my heart broke a thousand times, just as it did months before when Sabrina paged me those exact same words: “Do you love me now?” As I listened to the song, it hurt so badly. The song said every word I could have ever wanted to hear from her. However, now eight months had passed, and it was too late to call her, too late for “I’m sorry”, too late for anything. There would be no more appeals and no more stays of execution.
To this day, she has no idea, and I suppose she probably wouldn’t really give a shit anyway. I mean, why would she? As much as my stupidity and stubbornness haunts me, I am sure that it is an insignificant thing to her, and I am sure that memories of me are few and far between, if they haven’t sunk to the bottom of her mind altogether. We always tend to forget the people we think didn’t want us. I know I do.
Anyway, about a year ago I was in Tower Records on Newbury St, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sabrina. I wanted to die. When she saw me, she came over to me and we began talking. You know, the ” What’s been going on with you for the past five years?” type of conversation. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her that I knew about the song. I wanted to tell her that even though it probably didn’t matter to her anymore, I was sorry. I wanted to tell her that I knew we would not have lasted another month, let alone forever, but I just wish I didn’t let it end that way. I wanted to tell her I was stupid, insecure, and selfish. I wanted to tell her that she was beautiful inside and out and that she changed the lives of everyone she touched for the better. I wanted to tell her that her ghost had haunted me for the past five years, and not everyone had that kind of effect on people. I wanted to tell her that I still had all of her letters and all of the notebooks with her messages in them. I wanted to tell her that I always seemed to look at the clock at 2:22, and it always made me think of her because of her pager code. I wanted to tell her that she deserved nothing but happiness, that I was so lucky for being able to know her. I wanted to tell her all of these things, but I couldn’t. I froze. I had prepared this speech for five years in hopes that I might bump into her, and when the opportunity finally presented itself, everything just sank back down into my heart. I was such a fucking coward.  Anyway, as the conversation carried on, some guy walked up to her, touched her hand, smiled,  and walked away into one of the aisles. She started smiling and said, “That’s my boyfriend. His name’s Paul too. Isn’t that funny?”  At this point, I wanted to pull the keys out of my pocket and stab myself in the fucking throat right there, but instead I kind of half smiled and said, “Yeah”. God bless irony, huh? A few moments later, our conversation was over and she was gone. I never saw her again.