While home from college for the weekend, Trisha went to meet a guy she dated in high school, Chuck Chandler, for lunch at the Rio Bravo in downtown Atlanta. Chuck lived on campus at Georgia Tech. She had thoughts that he might want to start going out with her again so she dressed up nice to impress him - a flower print sundress and very fragile-looking, freshly polished 1.5-inch heel pink slides with a single 1.5-inch wide curved strap that accented her freshly painted pink toenails.
Trisha felt like she was dressed quite nice and she felt confident as she pumped the accelerator to he floor with her dainty pink slide while jetting down on I-75. Traffic was heavy as usual, so she was running just a little late as she anticipated her reunion with Chuck.
She parked in a garage near the restaurant and had to walk carefully (practically sideways at times) to maneuver the heels on the sloped ramp of the parking garage without having them slide off her feet. She also had to avoid the occasional oil slick that could have easily made her fall. Trisha got to the street corner across from the restaurant and the traffic light was already green so she began to cross. However, just as she started across the pedestrian signal changed to flashing “Don't Walk” so she began to hurry a little more on her tentative heels.
About 3/4 of the way across the light turned red so Trisha decided to run across the last lane of the street. Her left heel caught briefly in a street crack and her foot started to come out of the shoe. As she tried to recover, the heel came lose and she back kicked her shoe about 12 feet into the middle of the street, with the heel landing pointed straight up.
At the same time, a panel truck came by making a left turn and the spike heel caught in the tire thread and stuck into the tire, just shy of puncturing it. The driver heard a thunka-thunka-thunka as he drove through the intersection but he had no safe place to stop so he continued onward.
Trisha did not see the shoe get caught by the truck, since this happened as she was stumbling to regain her balance and composure. Also, the truck turned left away from her making the sound of her stuck shoe too far away to be heard. About one block down the street, the shoe finally fell off and a few more cars ran over the now crushed slide.
Trisha waited for traffic to clear and she stood at the edge of the street with the toes of her now bare foot flexed on the curb to keep her balance while trying to see where her shoe had landed. She noticed a couple of construction workers admiring her legs and her one bare foot. She turned to ask them if they had seen her shoe come off but they apparently could not speak English so them mumbled something and returned to their work, glancing at her legs when she wasn’t looking.
During the next green light she walked out to the median and looked around but saw nothing. On the second green light, she limped back to the original side of the street in front of the restaurant where she knew Chuck was probably already inside and holding a table.
She wondered what to do. The nearest shoe store was 2 blocks away and that would make her extremely late - more than she already was. She decided to try to sneak her problem past him - at least for a while. Trisha hurriedly hobbled into the restaurant, making an odd noise as only one slide slapped against her foot with each stride. She peaked into the seating area and saw Chuck sitting at a nice table. His back was turned to where she could enter the back way and come up behind him. She decided to do just that and she was able to spin past him quickly and into her booth without Chuck seeing or hearing that she was wearing one shoe.
“Surprise!” Trisha exclaimed as she sat down seemingly out of nowhere. “Sorry I’m a little late. Had to get through traffic and stuff. It’s good to see you!”
Chuck replied, “Trisha, it’s great to see you too. I’m glad you agreed to meet me down here. I’ve got some stuff happening on campus later on and I needed to stay close.”
Lunch and their conversation were both nice and seemed to be going well. It had been 3 months since they had last spoken, and that was at a New Year’s Eve party they both attended, but not together. After high school graduation, both agreed to split up as each were going off to school and needed some time to meet other people and get involved with each college campus. They also agreed to evaluate things toward the end of the first school year and then decide what to do next. Chuck began dating a girl, Anita, from Waycross his freshman year, so the one-year re-evaluation did not happen. It was now almost two years and she had heard that Chuck and Anita were having some problems. Although things were going well during lunch, Chuck had not mentioned anything about their dating again.
Late into the meal, Chuck dropped his napkin out of his lap and when he got it off the floor, he glanced at Trisha's cute legs, beginning to show a spring tan and saw her one shoeless foot on the floor and the other shoe dangling tentatively off the end of her foot. This pleasant sight made him wish he had dropped his napkin earlier. He dismissed the single shoe, thinking it had just dangled and dropped away out of sight or something. As Chuck paid the bill and they were about ready to leave, Trisha was nervous about how to tell him what had happened without sounding clumsy or something- she had a history of clumsiness that she had hoped to grow out of. She had so wanted to make a good impression, one that would make Chuck consider restarting their relationship.
Chuck asked, “Well, you ready to go?”
Trisha sheepishly replied, “I have something to tell you, it's sort of embarrassing.”
“What's the problem, Trisha?”
“Well, I lost one of my shoes crossing the street to come in here.”
Chuck looked under the table and confirmed his earlier observation. Trisha curled her bare toes on her foot in embarrassment. “How did it happen?”
“Uh, er, I was crossing the street out here and the light turned red when I was only 3/4 of the way across. I started to run and my heel caught in a crack or something. Before I could do anything my shoe kicked back into the street. When I finished crossing the street and turned around, traffic was coming through; my shoe was gone, nowhere to be found.”
“It has to be somewhere, we can go back and look again.”
“Okay, Chuck, maybe you can be my prince charming and find my glass slipper.”
They went outside, Trisha still limping with one shoe on and one shoe off, having to walk on the toes of her bare foot. They looked all over the intersection and in the gutters; they still found nothing. Trisha conceded her shoe was gone and Chuck walked her to her car. Chuck did not mention anything about their relationship and did not ask for a specific follow-up date but simply gave her a hug and said goodbye.
She thought he’d been turned off by her clumsiness despite all else she had done to be attractive to him that day and decided to drive home without talking any more about “them.”
Chuck walked to his parked car and pulled out into the same street that the panel truck had taken earlier. In the middle of the intersection, he saw a mangled shoe with a pink strap. He pulled off to the side of the street when he got a chance and went over to claim the shoe. It was practically destroyed: the sole was crushed and split; the single strap was torn completely off and oil-stained.
Trisha got home and ran up the stairs to her room carrying her one shoe in her hand. When she got in her bedroom, she slung it into the back of her closet. Hopelessly abandoned like her remaining brown loafer from the one lost at the MARTA station just a few weeks before. She was feeling sorry for herself mostly because Chuck did not seem interested, not so much because she lost a $30 shoe.
About 30 minutes later, Chuck called and told her he found her shoe and what condition it was in. He asked her out to lunch the following afternoon (before Trisha would have to drive back to Athens). Afterwards, he carefully cleaned off the oil and dirt but it was still not wearable and obviously unfixable. While cleaning it, he was fascinated at how fragile it looked and wondered how she ever walked in them in the first place. He also remembered how good the other shoe looked dangling on her tanned foot.
When he arrived at Trisha’s house to pick her up, he brought in the shoe and sat it on a table in the foyer. They eventually had a good laugh about the mishap over dinner.
While talking, they were reminded of something similar that happened back at Sprayberry High when Chuck played basketball:
**Author’s note: Read Story 13 for details on what was talked about as Chuck and Trisha reminisced about something from back during their senior year of high school - it is one reason why Trisha feared looking clumsy in front of Chuck.**
After lunch was over, Chuck dropped Trisha back at her house and to her delight; he suggested they give things another try after spring semester. Trisha agreed and expressed her joy that he had come to that decision. He gave her a nice hug and a peck on the cheek and began to leave.
Trisha saw the pink slide he had returned to her and reached for it. She handed it to Chuck and said, “You put all that hard work into cleaning up but I still can’t wear it. Why not keep this as a souvenir?” Chuck gladly accepted it with a chuckle and left her house.
When Chuck arrived back at his dorm room, he carefully placed the mangled slide on top of his chest of drawers next to his other valuables as a reminder of what the summer might bring. His roommate thought it was weird but soon got used to it being there. Back in Athens, without knowing what Chuck had done, Trisha placed the other, still wearable, slide on her dressing table for the same purpose.
NOTE: This story can also be found at Dangling.Com.
