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When the titles don't come easily, she often thinks the piece will be lackluster. She had been off her game since she allowed the possibility of real. She remembers telling him, "I swear you think I'm lying to you but just the tiny bit that we've been talking, I connect more with it than I did with my second husband."
Although it was true, she didn't yet say the harder stuff. "why do you never ask me any questions?" "what am I to you?" and the most fervent one "Do you think I'm a prize or a pleasant placeholder."
She had invested a lot in her relationship with him. She had spent money like it didn't matter. In her eyes, the most important thing on the planet was to find someone to watch die and vice versa. The music was getting frenetic, and the chairs were so fragile and few. The usual story at the end of times.
He dropped her off at her house and she complimented the renewed growth of her basil plant. He pointed at the tiny bricked off plot that she mowed around in the backyard.
"Is that your garden?"
"Yes".
He laughed, "wow. I know you said this place was sad, but it wasn't sad until I saw that. That is truly sad. I'm sorry."
She looked at it again through a different lens and felt embarrassed. "Have you ever heard of that book the $350 tomato? well I got one tomato and it ws $30. Besides, the basil has come very handy. I use it all the time."
"ha! well, it's sad."
She didn't say, well at least I tried. For me, that's huge compared to where I've been.
It had been a year yesterday that she had come from a plane into the tiny town of shame and charity and loser. Her mother had driven her, and her brother and sister-in-law had joined the caravan. It's not hard to remember the terror.
They arrived in Florida. The car ride had only had a few awkward silences, but she was so thrilled to be able to flirt with someone she really wanted that it both censored her and enlivened her (Why can't I fucking be authentic).
"look, we'll have to go back tomorrow. She wasn't prepared to give me the paintings that I wanted."
"Ok. You want me to go with you?"
"Yes, it's easier that way. I told her you were coming, and I called you my girlfriend."
Her heart leaped, and then she succinctly crammed it back into its jar (he won't like her when he really gets to know her so may as well treat this like a seasonal meat.). She calculated all the time the best way to be and how to present herself, yet she wished it was easier and flowed.
He described their first meeting again. "remember how late I was? There was a huge fire right by my house and then I hit a long train crossing."
She replied, "oh, I was so grateful. I had been so sweaty and flushed. It was nice to have time to settle."
Later, when they were both tipsy on Pina coladas (and god she loved typing that) she was bold enough to ask him a few probing ones. He said he thought she was smart and liked her voice. she told him again about how she felt like she recognized him when she first saw him although she had not been particularly unhappy - he made everything focus instantly "If I can connect with that - I want to try."
While he was gone on his errand, she had made her way to the beach. She told herself, "if nothing else, it's worth it for this moment with myself and to just relax like you can't relax any other way."
When she returned to the room, he was on the phone. She took a shower and the powdery sand was so hard to wash off. She knew she had flashes of beauty, and she also realized she could be very ugly. She wished she could know just quite where she stood. She had used the yellow bathing suit she had so insisted upon that she bought two to pick. She used about 60% of the items she brought. She only wept one night thinking she was finally rejected.
He made love to her in a way no one ever had before - a way that was not questing and exploratory but instantly habitual and patterned. She made love like she drank - as a means to an end. She loved more than anything that feeling of absorbing someone's shocked wave into her body. The connecting. The dancing could come later, yet she was of course confused. Where was the love part? It was so different than any other way she had tried it - putting flesh on a scaffold. It was hard to describe, and she did it poorly and incessantly thought about it.
The most pleasant surprise had been that combos road trip snacks still tasted someone good. Everything else revisited seemed often like a disappointment. She opened and ate them after he had dropped her off and downloaded his podcasts "now that I won't have anyone to talk to".
Even though she didn't want to, the air was so unseasonable cool and she was so restless that she cut the front yard. In the middle a kind male pit bull came in escaped from his enclosure. He didn't come near her, but she could see the balls.
Whatever love was, she just wanted the tender tellings to be true. She was sweating so much it dripped off her hair.
The pressed daisy seemed a bit of a mockery, yet she kept it to remind her of something. She wasn't sure what.
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