Tracy couldn’t believe it. She’d known Eric for seven years and for five of those they had been seeing each other but she had never seen him act so callously. His new job was exciting, obviously. She understood that it took a lot of his attention and time but this was too much. This was too important.
Tracy and Eric are Star Wars fans. Now I know that everyone is a Star Wars fan (If you’re pissed off by that assumption you’re the exception that is proving the rule) but Tracy and Eric are fans with a capital “F”. Conventions, cosplay, meet ups the whole shebang. They met at one such convention. Tracy was dressed up as a sexy Boba Fett and Eric was dressed up as a decisively un-sexy sex slave Leia. After a long conversation about the objectification of women in the original trilogy, the Ewoks as a clumsy metaphor for the Vietcong and which US president Palpatine was meant to be an analogue for they decided to stay in touch. Steve lived in Vancouver but Tracy in Seattle so they maintained a friendship consisting mostly of tagging each other in memes on Instagram and annual meetups at San Diego Comic-Con.
Eventually, Tracy had an opportunity to come to Vancouver. I won’t bore you with the specifics of Tracy's job because, ho-boy, it’s boring but they were opening a Canadian office and needed a representative to head up the new operation. It was a great career opportunity sure but although she never admits this to herself, much less anyone else, she was moving for Eric. They met in person for the first time in nearly a year and again hit it off. A week later she surprised him at the craft brewery he worked at one day with a pair of tickets to a marathon screening of the original trilogy at some indie theatre. “May The Fourth Be With You” read the tickets “A celebration of Star Wars”.
May the 4th, it was about as easy anniversary to remember as there could be and yet here she was staring at a text message that read “Keg cleaner shit the bed, going to be home late, don’t wait up”. She looked from the text back to the date at the top of her phone just to make sure it wasn’t her imagination. Star Wars Day wasn’t just their anniversary, it was a celebration of the very reason they got together in the first place. It was an opportunity to share the love they have for each other and the happiness they now have in life with countless others who have had their lives impacted in similar ways. To connect to something greater than themselves and pay homage to this powerful force that has connected so many people. And yet here we are. Maybe it meant more to her than Eric knew. Maybe it was naive to assume that someone else could care as much as her about something so trivial.
These thoughts were all swirling in Tracy’s head in a relentless loop as she arrived home from work. She buzzed herself into the building and took the elevator up to the apartment they shared, chucked her keys into the little bowl by the door and headed towards the kitchen with the intent of grabbing a beer when something caught her eye on the living room coffee table. A gift basket wrapped in a burlap sac sat carefully. “Brewquet” read the tag. She flipped it over, "I’m sorry I couldn’t get tonight off, I love you. -Eric”. Sitting beside the gift basket were two tickets fanned out carefully. “May the Fourth Be With You, day two, the prequel trilogy - May 5th 2018, Rio Theater”.
Obviously, as the delivery driver, I only saw that tag and all other details are just speculations but I have a real intuition for these things and I feel like this is probably about ninety percent accurate. I also have to assume that she left his ass and moved back to Seattle after enjoying those perfectly curated craft beers because the prequel trilogy is hot garbage.
Kisses
-Darrence
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