Things you love will get you

One foot in the grave
One foot in the shower

Kelly had said it during week nine of what he had finally termed a relationship.  He preferred to think of things in terms of weeks.  “Weeks” just sounds much more insignificant than months or years, no matter what the number is that precedes it.  It’s easier to accept your life being on hold if its only been a matter of weeks.

The words had just spilled out of her like air from a balloon that he had been unsuccessfully trying to tie.   She had obviously tried to say it in some off-the-cuff manner, one that could even have been mistaken for a passing comment, but he knew better.  He figured that she had been itching to say it since about day four, but had been holding out in hopes that he would beat her to the punch.

But, surprisingly, it hadn’t come out like the be-all-end-all relationship closer as he had been dreading.  It had been more of a RyanmaybeyoushouldkeepasparetoothbrushhereIloveyouYouknowincaseyouwantto.  It had been quick and (relatively) painless, the way she let him slip in and out of that sentence, avoiding the parts he hadn’t yet wanted to hear. 

From that point on she seemed to sneak it in quite effortlessly every so often, like at the end of a phone call, after which she would promptly hang up, saving them both from an awkward pause or a forced “okay” on his part. 

Somehow (almost seamlessly actually) the three words that had, in the past, been the deal-breaker for his short-lived liaisons, seemed to nestle its way comfortably into their already somewhat eccentric romance.   

It would be there at dinner with them, or at the breakfast table, lounging in his cereal spoon.  It would be at the bar where they met his friends, only materializing in the dimly lit hallway leading to the bathroom.  It would be buried between the white and pink sheets of her bed, the words even stealing their way from his own lips one night while he was inside of her. 

But everyone knows that when someone says that during sex it doesn’t really count, and he realized shortly afterward that so did Kelly.

He had started to get used to sitting next to her at work, or at least to tolerate the situation by tuning her out.  Hadn’t Toby once mentioned something about waves on a beach?  It seemed fitting… as long as this beach was tracking hurricane winds and maybe even some golf-ball sized hail on occasion.

She was going on about something, which his mind was countering with images of the number of different ways to off himself if he had to hear the words “Anna Nicole Smith” one more time, when his chest seized up with panic. 

“Ryan?  Are you even listen—hey, is everything okay?”

She was peering over his shoulder, watching him rummage around the stacks of paper on his desk.  As he shoved his hands into his unorganized drawers he caught himself longing for the days when he could have emptied his desk in five seconds flat.

“Not right now, Kelly—the computer just deleted this sales report I’m working on for tomorrow, I need to find my jump drive so I can get the other copy.” 

“Well, can I help?”

“No.”

He knew that his voice was sharp and that it was uncalled for, but Michael had been really putting pressure on him since the business school debacle and he couldn’t afford to turn something important in late.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“Ryan?”

Her hand was on his shoulder as he pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose. 

“Kelly, I’m going to have to rewrite this entire report and it’s already five, I don’t… I… shit.”

“I can stay and help you?”

“No… just—I’ll take care of it.  Just go home.”

“I’ll stay,” she said in a more forceful tone than he had heard her use before. 

“Kelly--” he sighed, not ready to deal with the added frustration of having his girlfriend around during a crisis. 

“Give me the numbers,” she held out her hand.  “I’ll type those up in Excel, you just worry about the actual writing.”

He handed her the folder, too surprised to say much else as she settled into her chair and went to work in silence. 

As he put the finishing corrections on the report he realized that they hadn’t spoke in about three hours. 

“I love you,” he sighed as she handed him the printed spreadsheet.  

Their hands both lingered on the pages, her fingers seemingly unable to let them go as a slow smile widened in her eyes. 

She didn’t say it back, almost as though she didn’t want him to realize his mistake and redact his statement, but they both knew that she didn’t need to. 

He helped her shrug her coat on when her arm got stuck in the sleeve and he let her take his hand in the elevator. 

“So… do you want to come over tonight?” she asked as he unlocked his car. 

“Yeah, I’ll see you there in a few minutes.”  He squeezed her hand once before letting go. 

As he drove his eyes felt heavy and strained from the glow of his computer monitor and he found himself following the neon lights into the parking lot of a drugstore. 

Walking down the fluorescently-lit aisles he found what he needed and picked out a blue toothbrush, thinking that maybe he could take a step forward, no matter how small that step might seem.