It’s game night (which was her idea, her way of getting you to do things together, her way of keeping you home with her at least one night a week). This week she’s chosen Monopoly and keeps sticking her thimble game piece on her pinky.

“You’re going to lose your place on the board,” you warn her, shaking the dice in your palm.

“Am not,” she giggles a little and reaches across the board to touch your nose with the thimble.

“Fine,” you roll the dice. “Damn.” Two moves forward and you’ve landed yourself in jail.

She laughs at you and you reach behind yourself, grabbing the first thing you touch and tossing it at her. A heart shaped pillow flies past her head and hits the lamp on the end table, knocking it over. It hits the floor with a soft thud and she looks at you with her mouth agape and the hair on her right side mussed a little from the pillow grazing she’s received.

She gets up to inspect the damage, bending over and putting the lamp back up on the table. “You’re lucky that just cracked the lampshade a little. My mom gave me this lamp.”

She sits back down, folding her legs beneath her, still smiling a little. Then you ask her, “Where the hell did that pillow come from anyway?”

She’s suddenly not laughing and not amused and she’s biting her lip, looking down at her row of hotels.

You get it. “Right, well. But why is it still here?” You knows you aren’t supposed to be like this anymore. You’ve promised that you’ve really changed this time. You’ve promised that she isn’t a possession to you. Not anymore.

So you shake your head. “Never mind. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter,” you say, clearing your throat.

She takes the thimble off her pinky and stands. You watch the toes of her bare feet sink into the carpet and smile, because you can appreciate those things now. You can love just her toes wiggling around in the carpet. You really can.

“You want another beer?”

You look up at her face and smile softly, standing yourself. “I’ll get it. You want anything?”

She smiles widely at you, her teeth brightly shining. “Another glass of wine?” She holds her empty glass out to you and you take it, kissing her on the cheek as you make your way to the kitchen.

You turn around in the entryway just to make sure her shoulders don’t slump when she thinks you aren’t looking. There’s a moment when you think they won’t this time. She keeps them high for a few seconds, but then they drop as she sits back down on the carpet, bring her knees up to her chest and resting her cheek there.

You come back out with a Corona and her glass of wine. You hand it to her, watching her bring it to her lips and tip her head back as she lets it slide down her throat. You takes a sip of your beer to feel the same warmth she’s feeling down in the bottom of her belly.

A year after you’d ruined it forever, she came back. Things hadn’t worked out the way she’d thought. You thinks maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to take her back. You shouldn’t have let her in so easily after everything. But you hadn’t found anyone else who knew you (or wanted to know you) the way she did. And she’d looked up at you with tears gleaming in the light outside your door and said, “It was a mistake. Please.”

So you let her inside.

The story, in her words, is that “it was too much, too fast and it was all too soon and he wanted forever right away and maybe I wanted that too, but right then I just wanted something new and there was a fight about moving in together and he walked out and-”

You still haven’t questioned her about the video camera (new, and you know she bought it with him, because why else-) that sits hooked up to her TV all the time. You aren’t sure you want to know what’s on it or if she stays up late sometimes watching the thirty seconds of random stuff she taped with him when she first bought it on that whim when she thought now (finally) her life was worth documenting, worth remembering.

That was two months ago and you still aren’t completely sure that she won’t leave again. That she won’t suddenly realize that she wants marriage and kids now, too, and she wants them with him, not you. You mostly just don’t take these days for granted, because you’re almost positive that she’ll come to her senses and realize that forever is what she’d always wanted with him. You know she loves him more.

This is just sojourn.

She’s finished half her glass of wine when you ask her, “You miss him?”

And she puts her glass down on the corner of the board, the base of it pushing your race car out of jail. She’s silent for a long moment, her fingers resting on the rim of her glass, moving in idle circles. Then she takes in a deep breath and nods, looking up at you with frightened eyes.

You’ve had so many chances and they all seem to end the same way.

So you just say, “Okay,” and hand her the dice, “Your turn.”

----------------

Five elements courtesy of Bailey08 on TWoP:

-Monopoly
-a heart-shaped pillow
-video camera
-broken lamp
-Corona


Started: 2/24/07 @ 1:25 PM
Finished: 2/24/07 @ 2:31 PM