Patrick spun his black fedora in his hands, his fingers brushing over the Reel Big Fish patch he had sown onto one side of it and the white rabbit patch he had sown onto the other. He sat on a bus bench at Shaw and Blackstone and waited, as he had done on every Thursday for the past two years. The cars driving by blew exhaust-laden air into his plain-looking face and gave him a bad taste in his mouth. He would have spat to get rid of it, but he didn’t, just in case she walked by at that precise moment. He wiggled his cell phone out of his fitted pants to check the time. It read 3:28 pm. He picked up the colored sketch he had been working on of a woman with orange-red hair that spilled down like liquid warmth and happiness to the midpoint of her perfect hourglass figure. He looked at it, sighed, and put it into his satchel.

Todd and Oliver sat two benches away from him, watching Patrick as he waited, as they had come to do from time to time when they wanted to check up on him. Patrick had scolded them about sitting too close to him, because they might ruin the moment if she walked by.

“This is stupid,” Oliver spat in disgust.

“What? That he’s still waiting or that we’re watching him wait?” Todd asked.

“Both. We shouldn’t be here because he shouldn’t be here. I’ve had crazy dreams before, but I’ve never taken them this seriously.”

“But this is true love we’re talking about. It’s sort of a serious thing.”

“Sort of a stupid thing. True love can only ever exist in fairy tales. It’s an outdated concept from an age of naïveté.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. True love is theoretically possible.”

“Don’t give me any theories, Todd. True love isn’t good enough to be a theory. It might be a hypothesis, which would make it hypothetical, but it’s not even that, so it’s just an idea or a concept, and a bad one I might add.”

“If you feel that way, I can’t persuade you,” Todd said, “but you should at least think about the dream itself.”

“What about it?”

“Well, dreams are generally pretty vague, sort of like a fortune cookie or a horoscope. They’re subject to interpretation, with all these layers of hidden meaning, which is all dependent on the dreamer, of course; but Patrick’s dream was clear, precise, direct, with no room for error or misinterpretation.”

“Except for the part about which Thursday it would be on.”

“Well, there is that little hiccup, but you can’t expect perfection, especially not from dreams.”

“So what’s your point, Todd?”

“Well, what if there’s something to this one? What if there’s some truth to this dream?”

“Look, we’ve talked about this before, ok? Dreams are just stuff your subconscious coughs up at night. If you want to find meaning in them, you can go and pay a thousand-something dollars to a shrink and sit on his couch for an hour or two every week for a few months and he’ll tell you something terrible about yourself that you can’t change because you’re thirty-two years old and pretty much set in stone.”

“Sounds like that comes from personal experience.”

“Shut up!”

From his seat two benches away, Patrick chuckled. He pulled out his phone again to check the time. It read 3:29 pm.

“Hey, look,” Oliver began, “even if the dream was for real and he does meet the best-looking babe in all of California, the true love thing still isn’t going to happen. It’s impossible.”

“I know, you’ve already said that,” Todd replied.

“Oh, I’m not talking about the concept of true love; I’m talking about the logistics of it. In the twenty-eight years Patrick’s been alive, he has accumulated zero experience with the opposite sex.”

“Not entirely his fault. He had to focus on school and work. He’s going to be the CEO of a big company someday.”

“No, it is his fault. Remember when I introduced him to Julie?”

“He was waiting for the dream girl. He didn’t want to be the guy that breaks up with a girl just to be with another girl.”

“But it would be true love! That would make it all ok!”

“Dude, don’t be like that.”

“All right, all right, I’m sorry. I was just trying to help him.”

“He didn’t want your help.”

“But he needed it. He doesn’t know how to read women’s cues, or how to talk to them or act with them, or do the things that foster a relationship. How is he going to talk to her if she shows up in the next -” he paused to look at his phone “- thirty-something seconds?”

“I’m sure he’s thought about it. He’s had two years to think about it.”

“All right, so say he does meet the girl and that she’s single and that she’s interested, the odds are still against him. He’s going to have the idea that she’s his true love and he’s been alone for twenty-eight years. I know you don’t know what loneliness feels like, but let me tell you, it hurts, so much that it can make a man desperate.”

“Hey, it isn’t my fault Donna and I are high-school sweethearts. I just got really, really, really lucky.”

“Well, all the luck in the universe won’t save Patrick from himself. He’ll want to rush the relationship, and if she doesn’t like that, he could lose control and become overpowering. I’ve known some nice guys who fell in love and turned into monsters. If it doesn’t work out the way he expects, bad things could happen.”

“I can hear you guys,” Patrick said aloud, purposefully not looking at them.

“What if she discovers all of the pictures he’s drawn of her?” Oliver continued. “Nothing says ‘stalker’ like a bunch of drawings that were made before they introduced themselves.”

“I can hear you, Oliver,” Patrick said.

“I don’t want to see you crash and burn, dude,” Oliver spoke directly to Patrick. “You’re a good guy and I can’t see that happen to you.”

“I thought you guys had accepted this already. Apparently not,” Patrick said as he put on his fedora, got up and began to walk away.

“Patrick, he means the best. Don’t leave,” Todd pleaded, but Patrick was already crossing the street.

He strode angrily over the blacktop; his head was down, his fedora shading his face. He wrestled with the things that Oliver had said, afraid that the two years he had spent waiting were in vain, or worse, that they would cumulate in disaster.

It was a pity that he didn’t turn around just then. It was a pity that she walked just behind him as they crossed the street, her orange-red hair trailing behind her, her hand resting on the Reel Big Fish patch that had been sown onto her art satchel. She looked at him, her eyes drawn to his fedora, and it was a pity he did not see her smile.

But Todd and Oliver saw her.

“PATRICK!!!” they shouted to him, jumping off of the bench and charging to the crosswalk. Then the lights changed, and cars barreled across the intersection, dividing them from their friend. They shouted and waved, but Patrick did not turn around. He continued down Shaw, but she went left and walked down Blackstone.

Then Patrick checked his phone again. It read 3:31 pm. He sighed and turned around to look over the traffic and assure himself that she wasn’t there.

And she wasn’t.

Oh well, he thought, next Thursday...