Lovely

You're looking out the window.

He waits through the first verse. Fingers on the wheel, one hand, the other resting on the console between you. You don't reach for it. That's a new thing. You used to put your hand under his on long drives, palm up, and leave it there.

Chorus comes. He starts singing it himself. Quiet. He gets the harmony wrong on purpose — pitches down where the song goes up, mumbles the word he knows you love — and waits for you to look over and tell him he's butchering it.

You smile at the windshield.

You don't look over.

He lets the second chorus play out and turns the radio down.

“You good?”

“Yeah.” You're already answering before he's done asking. “Just tired.”

“Yeah?”

“Long day.”

He nods. He puts his hand on your thigh, palm flat, and leaves it there. You cover it with yours after a second — not the way you used to, threaded through his fingers, just laid on top — and he doesn't say anything about that either.

At the light, he looks at you.

Your head's against the window. Eyes on the road ahead of the car. You're not on your phone, which is the other new thing — three weeks ago you'd have been showing him something a mutual sent you, laughing before he could even see the screen. Your phone is face-down on your thigh under his hand. It hasn't lit up in a while.

The light turns green.

“You want anything?” he says. “I can swing by somewhere.”

“No, I'm okay.”

“Sure?”

“I'm sure, babe. Thank you.”

The thank you gets him. You don't thank him for asking if you want a milkshake. You never have. You'd say only if you're getting one and then eat half of his no matter what you ordered. He almost points it out and doesn't.

He drives you home.

———

You're in the kitchen when you get home.

He's watching from the doorway. You've got the fridge open and you're looking at it like you don't remember what you came in for. You do this now. He's seen you do this three times this week.

“Hungry?” he says.

“No, I —” You close the fridge. “I don't know. I don't think so.”

“I can make you something.”

“You don't have to.”

“I know I don't.”

You look at him. You almost smile. It's the little one. It sits there for a second and then it's gone, and you say, “Maybe just toast.”

“Toast it is.”

He makes you toast. Butter, cinnamon, the way you like it. He puts it on your plate and hands it to you and you take it with both hands like it's more than toast, and he watches you eat half a piece standing at the counter before you say you're going to go get ready for bed.

It's nine.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I'm just —”

“Tired.” He finishes it for you. He doesn't mean to. It comes out gentle. You look at him like you've been caught at something and he wants to take it back immediately.

“Sorry,” you say.

“For what.”

“I don't know.”

He sets the pan down. He crosses the kitchen and he puts his hand on the back of your neck the way he does, thumb behind your ear, and he leans down and kisses your forehead. You close your eyes. You lean into his hand a little. Not much. Enough.

“Go to bed, babe.”

“You coming?”

“In a bit. Gonna clean up.”

“Okay.”

You go. He listens to you go — bathroom, the water running, the medicine cabinet, the water again, the bedroom door. He cleans the kitchen slower than he needs to. He wipes down a counter that isn't dirty. He puts the butter back in the fridge and stands there with the door open the way you were doing ten minutes ago and doesn't know why.

When he gets to the bedroom, the light under the door is off.

He knows before he opens it that you're not asleep. He can just tell. Something about the way the room feels — you're too still, or you're not still enough, or he's known you long enough that your sleeping body sounds different than your awake one and this is the awake one. He gets in bed. He doesn't turn a light on. He rolls toward you and puts his arm over your waist and pulls you back against him, and you come — you always come, you've never once not — but you don't reach back for his hand. You used to find his fingers under the covers and lace them through yours before he'd even settled.

Tonight your hand stays where it is.

He puts his face in the back of your neck and breathes.

He doesn't say anything.

He's not going to say anything tonight.

———

He's up before you.

He's downstairs making matcha when he hears you moving around in the bedroom. Drawer opening. Drawer closing. Another drawer. He finishes his and starts one for you the way you like it, and he's on the landing with it when he hears the small sound.

He wouldn't have heard it from the kitchen. It's that small.

He sets the mug on the hallway console and goes.

You're on the bedroom floor. You're in one of his shirts and nothing else and you've got the top drawer of your jewelry stand pulled all the way out, in your lap, and you're going through it with both hands — sorting, pushing things aside, checking the same corner twice — and you're crying. Not loud. You haven't made the sound again. Your shoulders are doing it and your face is wet and you haven't looked up.

He says your name.

You don't hear him. Or you hear him and you can't stop.

“Babe.”

“I can't find them,” you say. You're still looking. Your hands are still moving. “I can't find them, Joe, they were right here, they're always right here —”

“Okay.”

“They're the — you know the ones, the little gold ones, the — I got them at that place in Athens, they're not — I don't even know why I —”

You stop. You put both hands over your face.

He's already moving. He's on the floor before you've gotten the next word out, sitting behind you, pulling you back against his chest with one arm around your ribs and the other hand where it goes — palm at the back of your neck, thumb behind your ear, holding. You come back against him hard. Your whole body does. Like you've been holding yourself up for a long time and you finally get to stop.

He doesn't say anything for a while.

He just holds on.

Your hands are still over your face. He can feel you trying to breathe and not being able to. He puts his mouth against the top of your head and keeps it there.

“Hey.”

You shake your head.

“Hey. I've got you.”

“I'm sorry,” you say into your hands. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, it's — it's earrings, Joe, it's stupid earrings, I don't know what's —”

“Shh.”

“I don't know what's wrong with me.”

His arm tightens.

“Nothing's wrong with you.”

“Joe —”

“Nothing's wrong with you, baby.”

You cry harder. He feels it in his chest, the whole shape of it, and he doesn't move. He doesn't try to turn you around and look at you. He doesn't ask you anything. He puts his chin on top of your head and he holds on, and his hand stays where it is, thumb moving slow behind your ear, and he lets you.

The drawer is still in your lap. He reaches around and lifts it gently and sets it on the carpet next to you, and then he puts his arm back where it was.

You keep crying.

He keeps holding on.

He's not going anywhere.

———

You stay there a while.

He doesn't count how long. You're not crying as hard anymore — it's coming in slower now, the shape of it changing, and he can feel you starting to breathe again. His hand is still where it was. Thumb still moving. He hasn't said anything in a while and you haven't either, and the sun is coming through the blinds in the flat morning way it does, and the drawer is on the carpet next to your knee.

You take your hands off your face.

You don't turn around. You keep your back against his chest and you look at the drawer on the floor and you say, “Joe.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm —”

You stop. He waits.

“I'm sorry.”

“Baby —”

“No, I — I mean it, I'm — I've been like this, I know I've been like this, and I didn't want to —”

You stop again. He can feel you trying to get the sentence out and not getting there. He doesn't help you. He wants the shape of it from you, whatever shape it comes in.

“I didn't want to make it your thing,” you say. “I didn't want to be a — I know it's been weeks, I know you can tell, I'm not — I know I haven't been, and I just — I didn't want to load it on you when it's not even — I don't even have a reason. Nothing happened. I just feel like this and I couldn't figure out how to tell you that without it sounding —”

“Without it sounding what.”

“Dramatic.”

He closes his eyes.

“Or like I was — I didn't want to be a bother. You've got so much going on and I'm just —”

“Stop.”

You stop.

He turns you around. Not fast. He shifts and he gets his hands on your shoulders and he moves you so you're facing him on the floor, cross-legged, knees against his, and he waits until you look at him. It takes you a second. Your eyes are red and your face is a mess and you won't quite meet him at first, and he waits, and you do.

“You're not —” He stops. He can hear himself about to get it wrong and he stops. He tries again. “There's no version of this where you're a bother. Okay? That's not — you don't get to be that. To me.”

“Joe.”

“You're just mine.” He says it like it's the answer to a question. “The sad part too. That's mine too. That's not — you're not loading it on me. I'm already carrying it, I've been carrying it, that's — that's the deal.”

You start crying again.

He pulls you back in. Your forehead against his collarbone, both his arms around you, one hand at the back of your head now, the other flat between your shoulder blades. You've got a fist in the front of his shirt. He can feel it. He doesn't let go.

“I've been trying,” you say into him.

“I know you have.”

“I didn't want you to —”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.” He says it into your hair. “I love you. I love you when you're like this. That's not — that doesn't turn off, babe, that's not how it works.”

You nod against him. Small. He feels it more than he sees it.

He keeps holding on.

———

You've stopped crying.

You're still against him. You haven't moved and he hasn't moved you. His shirt is wet where your face is and neither of you cares. He can feel you breathing. You're doing it deliberately now — the long inhale, the slow release — and he recognizes it. It's the thing you taught yourself for the anxious nights. He didn't know you'd been using it lately. He does now.

“Hey.”

“Hm.”

“Come here.”

He stands up first. He does it slow so you can hold onto him if you need to, and you do — one hand at the hem of his shirt, the other braced on his forearm — and he pulls you up with him. You're smaller like this. You're always smaller like this and he never gets used to it.

He walks you to the bed.

You sit on the edge and he crosses the room and opens the second drawer down, the one that used to be his and became yours, and he pulls out the black hoodie. The one you steal. The one that lives in there now because there was no point pretending it was his anymore. He brings it back and he crouches in front of you and he holds it open at the hem, and you lift your arms without him asking.

He pulls it over your head.

He fixes your hair for you where it caught in the collar. He does it with both hands, careful, one piece at a time, and you close your eyes.

“Water,” he says.

“Joe —”

“I'm getting you water. Get in bed.”

You get in bed.

He goes downstairs. He's back in ninety seconds with the water and the matcha he made for you an hour ago, cold now, and he sets both on your nightstand and gets in bed next to you on top of the covers. He puts his back against the headboard. He opens his arm.

You come.

He arranges you against him the way you like — your head on his chest just under his collarbone, one of your legs between his, his arm across your back, his hand where it goes on the back of your neck. You tuck your hand up under his shirt against his ribs the way you always do. First time in weeks. He feels it and doesn't say anything.

His other hand finds the top of your head. Fingers in your hair. Slow.

“You don't have to talk,” he says.

“Okay.”

“I mean it. Not right now. Not later either if you don't want to. Whenever.”

“Okay.”

“But I'm here for it. When you want to. All of it.”

You nod against his chest.

He keeps his hand in your hair. He looks at the ceiling. The sun has moved a little on the wall and he watches it and he doesn't move and you don't move and after a while your breathing starts to change — slower, deeper, that different sound — and he realizes you're actually asleep. First time in maybe a week that you've actually slept.

He stays exactly where he is.

He's not going anywhere.

———

It's almost dark when you come downstairs.

You woke up around six in his hoodie with his arm still around you. You cried again for a minute, quiet, and he didn't move. You told him you'd come down in a minute and he kissed your forehead and left the room, and you heard him downstairs a while later. You washed your face. You took your time.

He's in the kitchen. He's got a pan going and he doesn't turn around, just holds out an arm, and you go to him and he pulls you into his side and kisses the top of your head and hands you the wooden spoon.

“Sit,” he says. “I've got it.”

You sit on the counter. He cooks. He asks you what you want to watch after and you say you don't care, and he says that means Bravo, and you almost smile.

He turns the water on to rinse something at the sink.

He stops.

He reaches for something on the counter by the faucet and turns around and holds out his hand.

“Babe.”

You look.

In his palm — the little gold ones. Both of them.

You don't say anything. You take them from him. You hold them in your closed fist against your chest and you look at him, and he's looking at you, and he doesn't say see, they were here the whole time and he doesn't say anything about the morning at all. He just puts his hand on your knee and squeezes once.

“I love you,” he says.

Then he goes back to the pan.