On Tuesday night I met you by accident while wandering around Roose’s like I’d planned to do alone. Sometimes it’s nice to forget I’m not as independently dispositioned as I once was. I’d called you hours earlier to tell you that work wanted me late, you’d said that was fine, there was something at home you needed to get done anyway. But that night I guess we’d thought the same thing again. In produce you and I made eye contact in the concentrated way we tend to, trying to play off our respective lies.
My scarf and heavy jacket sat lopsided on top of narrow shoulders, your green sweater was thrown over the black shirt whose holes I fixed last month, all in an attempt to make us feel less juvenile in suddenly adult bodies. As we walked with heavy feet down the empty aisle where canned soup just past its expiration would be restocked overnight, you calmly asked me if I thought you loved me more than I loved you.
“No,” I replied shortly, pursing my lips, not pausing to look at you in reassurance like I was sure you wanted me to.
As if we were married and you were accustomed to the staples in our shared fridge, you lazily ran bloodshot eyes down my shopping list that I’d scribbled on the back of last month’s water bill, then turned to observe the mess of things I’d already put into my basket. I quietly led you down aisles lined with food wrapped tightly in masses of yellowed plastic; you patiently followed, keeping some distance as you trailed. I remembered when you pursued me loudly, when we pursued our future with determination. You don’t want me any more than I want you, it’s just that one of us can save face a little better. I looked back, selfishly asking you to come closer. You complied—it was the right thing to do—moving with purpose and good posture. You’d likely be the person to tell your son or daughter to stand up straight as they dragged their feet down grocery store aisles like I do.
We picked up conversation, mindlessly mimicking the ones we’d heard friends’ parents engage in; things about how work was going, what needed vacuuming on Sunday, whose parents needed what on which holiday. While I read through lists of ingredients on the backs of packages, comparing different configurations of the same product, I noticed in the reflection of a window how intently you stared at the back of my head. I pushed my face further into the objects I held, trying not to allow you the privilege of memorizing the color of the cold-induced flush in my cheeks or the five places along the left side of my head where coarse white pokes through the red of my hair. I picked up a box of pasta that had some type of new, bluntly midwestern combination of flavors for the filling and commented on how I’d buy it someday when I was bored of my routine. You corrected me,
“We—we will get it someday.”
My face got hot in embarrassment because I couldn’t easily return the implication behind your sentiment like I’d been able to easily do at the three month mark.
Lately in the middle of the night on the rare occasion you’re not staying over and I’m mindlessly watching Glenda, my fat yellow goldfish, swim around her blue-tinted plastic bowl, I remember all of the reasons we shouldn’t be together; at least not for this long. I remember why two years ago I had doubts about you and why you had hesitations toward me. I wonder if they’d still be there if we looked hard enough. Maybe if we thought about it and talked it over like we do everything we’d find compelling reasons all while proving how well we get along even in difficult conversations. I ask your smiling picture on my bedside table if he, too, thinks about the unnecessary trouble we’ve caused each other. I wish you’d be the one to make the right decision. There is no clean cut explanation to give anymore to parents or friends or a stranger who thinks we look pretty perfect when my arm is tucked neatly into yours. Our relationship is on a timer because our goals will never align in the way we need them to until we’re well into our fifties. I think about how broken I will be when you and I inevitably leave the other. I am the type of fragile I worry you are on your worst days which I usually assume will always be induced by me.
Then again, I think of how I rarely dislike you when you’re not around. When you’re not standing in front of me nervously ripping hangnails off your dry fingers I remember all the reasons I simply enjoy the idea of your presence. Most of the time I don’t feel like I deserve the care you treat me with, the patience you meet my unwillingness with, or the many good ways you force me to look at my lack. I am uneasy at the sight of you but not the thought. I just hate to catalyze change, there is no need to cause you any harm before it’s due.
I sleepily whisper to Glenda about how there is inherent fear in anything worth pursing,
“It’s only natural to doubt and worry,
It’s only natural to doubt and worry,
It’s only natural to doubt and worry,
It’s natural.”
Sometimes when I’m awake for too long I miss the strip of paper that you’d casually written I love you on with every bit of sentimental intention as went into the care you took with the handwriting that I could barely read. I’d thrown it away in my usual fit of ambivalence two weeks ago. The paper was on its last legs anyway. I’d unfolded it, loved it, and cried with it so often that it was barely held together by smudgy looking clear tape.
Every slow night after night I come to the same stale conclusion without much convincing needed: I love you with ease, but not longevity.
On Tuesday night after you’d ushered me through an empty register line we sat on a bench outside Roose’s with overstuffed bags made of thin white and red plastic scattered around our feet. We said nothing and looked blankly ahead—at least that’s what I did; our hands tightly pushed together because that was the last right thing to do.
