Bridget | Kissmatures

Bridget arrived twenty minutes early. She’d worn her good cashmere sweater – not the one she’d mended twice, but the soft dove-gray one. Her hands were trembling. Ridiculous, she thought. I am not a girl at her first dance.

And then she saw him. He wasn’t tall or movie-star handsome. He had a kind face, a little crumpled, and he was holding a small brown paper bag.

Bridget laughed. It was a real laugh, the kind that had been hiding in her chest for years. kissmatures bridget

Instead, she got a message from “TomFitz63.”

She was sixty-two. A retired librarian with a tidy garden, two indifferent cats, and a late husband whose sweaters she still couldn't bear to throw away. The word “matures” made her wrinkle her nose – it sounded like overripe cheese. But it was a rainy Tuesday, and loneliness had a particular weight that afternoon. Bridget arrived twenty minutes early

They moved from the site’s clunky messaging system to email, then to long phone calls while she pruned her roses and he walked his rescue greyhound. Tom was a retired carpenter. He had a slow, warm laugh and a habit of saying “I see” when he was really listening. He lived two towns over.

Bridget wiped a drop of pond water from her cheek and smiled. Ridiculous, she thought

She didn't expect much. A few awkward winks, maybe a man holding a fish in his profile picture.

They walked the gravel path past the orchids, then the succulents. He told her about his daughter’s new baby. She told him about the time a first edition of The Code of the Woosters slipped from a cart and broke her toe.