Her feet trumped against the cement as she pulled her worn faux leather purse harder against her shoulder. She stared up at the billboard with glistening eyes, blocking herself from sending signals to her glands to prepare more tears. The reflex to bite her bottom lip announced itself again, and she gasped as a car sped by--the driver, furious, waved his fist at her.
It was a warning.
Walking too close to where the sidewalk met the blacktop would cause something worse.
She knew where she wanted to go, but getting there in one piece was the challenge. She only halfass wanted to keep herself together, after all.
She stopped glancing ahead, she looked down at the sidewalk as if it made it easier to stomp along unnoticed. The air felt heavy, as if it was going to rain.
She was intending to fix a dilemma that had started fifteen months before, a dilemma that had perhaps affected her more than any other. It had all started in the front of the window of a boutique store. It had all started in front of a copy of Gustav Kilmt's "The Embrace".
He had walked up and stood next to her.
He was drinking something frothy and pretentious.
She wasn't going to pay any attention to him, until he turned his head to her, and told her "your concentration is nice...I've never met a woman who could stand in one place for ten minutes, and enjoy it."
He had asked her if she wanted to come along with him to a vintage camera store.
It had taken off from there in the normal fashion, or as normal as she had known all of her other relationships to be. He was over so often her cat had come to regard him with disdain instead of viciousness. They shared icecream from a carton, while watching trashy reality television. They had sex in the most random instances, on the most random and awkward surfaces imaginable.
The months rolled on.
The arguments intensified, and perhaps over the most miniscule things.
How to place the mugs in the cupboard. How to make the bed. How to fold towels.
She began to take the long way to work, just so that she would have more time to think about what was happening to her. His apologies after every fight were daunting to her. His willingness to correct whatever void was between them intimidated her. She was comfortable with keeping him at arms-length. The way he was making her feel was bewildering her in the worst way--she wondered if she was even cut out to be in love, or even understand what it meant.
Just as soon as she had confidently decided she was freaking herself out over nothing...
He took her to a small restaurant on the river, beckoned her to dance with him on the boardwalk under the moonlight, and...proposed marriage to her, on bended knee.
Before a proper resignation could be mustered, she turned around and left him kneeling there. She walked right to the bus stop, and went home to her cat. She sat down on the sofa until five in the morning, staring at the black screen on the television, and contemplating if what had happened was not actually a figment of her imagination.
No one had ever done anything like that in her twenty-eight years. No one had expressed the vulnerable nature of a man on his knee. No one had offered her a piece of expensive jewelry that had so much responsibility attached to it.
She wanted to feel sorry, but she couldn't in those odd and incomplete moments.
Her life before him had been so different, after all.
She was the one who had laughed confidently with girlfriends over martinis, saying she would never get married--marriage was for boring people. She had indulged herself with idle and snarky pleasantries, like leaving little dirty notes in her favorite books at the library, and going bra-less to the market just to see how many people would notice.
And now...
Now here she was, a month later without having spoken a single word to him.
Yet she was moving, and she was clearly on the verge of something profound.
Her hair was unkempt. She was mismatched in attire. Her eyes were watering.
And this is how she had found herself the morning she had woken up, and found his side of the bed cold and empty. The cat was perched worriedly on the sofa, staring at her mistress as if to say "...where is the fellow who scratches my head every morning?"
That was the first incident that rocked her uncomfortably.
The rest followed suit very quickly.
There were no towels folded weirdly in the drawers. The place was entirely too clean. The smell of men's cologne and aftershave didn't clutter her bathroom. The pair of shoes he'd left behind sat at the door, not moving an inch day after day.
Her mornings were filled with anxiety, her afternoons with annoyance, her nights with loneliness.
So she decided she had to see him again, and that all of those questions would be answered with the very sight of him.
If she loved him truly, she'd know.
If she didn't love him, she'd know.
All he had to do was open his door, and she would just know.
That's why she was here, climbing up the three flights of stairs to his apartment door. And that's why she was clutching her purse in anticipation, as her quivering finger rang the doorbell. She supposed this was why her eyes were still watering, and her eyes were threatening to flood rivers again.
She jumped slightly as the knob turned.
She stared at him as he opened the door, and stood there with a weird look on his face. And they stood there, looking at each other, as if half expecting one or the other to say something to break the silence in the hall.
But, the problem was...she couldn't say a thing.
The answer she had come for was never more apparent, and it left her speechless at the sight of him there. Her mouth gaped open like a guppy.
He put his hands on her shoulders, and pulled her into him.
Her cheek pressed against his shirt, and as if by reflex, her eyes closed and she inhaled--smiling, and struck dumb by the scent of his laundry detergent.
His lips touched the top of her head, and in those auspicious seconds she received the one thing she wanted since that night--
him, back.
