I don’t know why I decided to go with eggs over-easy on Wednesday morning. I’m strictly a scrambled-only kind of guy. Toss in a little turkey bacon for some extra healthy protein and you’re good to go. But no—I had to have them over-easy. The idea popped in my head and I couldn’t make it disappear. It was more like a single firefly lighting up in an abandoned field than a light bulb turning on, yet I was unable to ignore it. And just as a firefly illuminates and fades, illuminates and fades, the notion throbbed on and off way down deep where I couldn’t get to it, couldn’t cover it up. Maybe it was the first memory a couple of days earlier sputtering back to life that spawned this need to modify My Routine. Whatever caused it, call me “ruined” for a good twelve to sixteen hours. Shauna was her name. (I realize how close that is to Shayna—I’ll get to that later.) She liked her eggs over-easy. College sweethearts. The captain of the baseball team dating the hottest girl in her sorority. We were in love for a time, and then one day I changed my mind. I wish there was a specific reason, because that would make the memory easier, but there wasn’t. I was in love and then not in love. Call it youthful failings, call it cold feet, whatever you want—it doesn’t change the fact that I was in something that I no longer wanted to be in and I didn’t have the balls, the guts, or the courage to break it off.
