For all of five minutes.

Even though I still had congestion, I went to work at the bookstore today. And I walked around the majority of the day in some sort of Tylenol Sinus-driven haze.
 
When I started carrying a stack of books toward the back of the store to shelve them this afternoon, I saw Dax in the aisle. I said hello.
 
I haven't seen Dax in over a year. Our last encounter was primarily awkward, for I went through this whole bitterness thing about him.
 
(This time, I was friendly, I swear, but I noticed that he's gained weight. I wonder if he'd noticed that I lost weight. I wonder if he was happy to see me. I wonder why I want him to be happy to see me.)
 
This time, he said hello and then hugged me. He told me that he went looking for me with his friend Addie at my old store. I'd told him that I'd moved to Buckhead back in August and transfered bookstores back in May.
 
He told me he graduates from grad school - in philosophy, not archaeology - in December.
 
I got called up to the register before we were able to talk much more. I actually went looking for him when the rush died at the registers, but I couldn't find him.
 
Dax used to be nice to me. We used to be, if you can believe it, pretty good friends. But I scared him, and he broke my heart, even though we were never really involved in a relationship.
 
My melodramatic nature, sadly, is why Dax still matters to me. But the whole thing makes me wonder whether I actually have significant relationships, relationships worth worry over.
 
The first time I saw Dax after he stopped talking to me, 11 months after he told me that he "needed time" because I was blunt when I edited one of his essays, I was so angry with him that I was shaking and rude to him. I was in such a bad mood after seeing him that day that I asked a manager to spend me home early.
 
This time, since Dax has become one of my "ghosts" who just appears in my memories now and again, it was just a little weird to see him. I wanted to be friends with him again, three years later. I wanted to see if the time and experience we've gained might've made us better able to handle the potential our friendship had.
 
But I couldn't find him again in the store, and, even though he seemed happy to see me, he didn't say goodbye.
 
So maybe it's for the best.