There’s a young lady standing on the corner wearing a faux leopard coat J. Crew makes I’ve always admired. If I were just a little younger, I too would look like Sheena of the Jungle, hailing a cab.
As I approach packed with compliments, I see two huge tears sliding down her pretty, 20 year-old (if that) face.
She looks up like a deer scared and confused, shocked by something. “What is it?” I gently ask.
She, without pause, shows me a text she’s just received.
Apparently, her boyfriend just broke up with her by phone.
I immediately get angry at the gutless way this kid casually behaved.
I have to say, she took it better than me, keeping her poise despite more tears.
“Did you have any idea he was going to leave,” I ask, trying to comfort more than pry.
“He did it one other time, when I went away with my parents, to Italy. He got mad. He started seeing another girl, but then left her too and came back to me.”
I listened noting her trust in a perfect stranger while thinking, what a little shit. He needs to have his ear pulled good and hard, along with a coupla’ other body parts.
I remember when I was her age heartbroken over a guy named Jack who I was sure, I’d never get over. Well, since then, I’ve known many Jacks, but also know she’ll never believe she too will forget this lily-livered lad who just tossed her away like an empty coke can.
“You’re a young, beautiful girl, and he’s an idiot, and you look smashing in that coat.”
Like all kids her age, vanity, at least for a second, switches gears long enough to preen.
Two things come to mind.
Maya Angelou saying…when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
The second…a leopard never, ever changes his spots.
I watch her stoically slip into a cab, knowing, a woman might get wounded, but her strength always bats last. 
SB
