What Ben Wrote For My Wedding

He was walking east. She was walking west. The ribbon of sidewalk was only so wide.

They'd seen each other a few times before, at the cafe where she worked, the new place downtown where he'd park with his newspapers to drink coffee and maybe make a friend.

He'd been feeling old and unconnected, living the lonely existence of a workaholic newspaper man. To compensate, in recent weeks, he'd been shopping for a BMX bicycle. He wore baggy pants and was growing quite a collection of colorful, unworn, outlet-mall sneakers in the closet of his tiny apartment up the street. When the cafe opened, he saw an opportunity to reconnect with humans that don't live on the pages of his books and magazines.

She …