Important driving tip:  Do not think about the fact that the woman you love is going to be in your shower in approximately seven minutes while behind the wheel.  It may cause near-accidents and/or complete inability to breathe.  Luckily, she doesn’t seem to notice my slight swerving or the way my hands are gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles might just burst through my skin.  We soon pull up into my driveway for the second time that night, and I’m not feeling any less nervous than I was the first time.  If anything, it’s more nerve wracking.

I lead her to the bathroom and once again say a silent thank-you to God for giving me enough sense to clean it up the day before.  

“Alright, we’ve got soap, shampoo; you can steal some of Tracy’s if you don’t want to smell like Old Spice.  Here’s a towel, washcloth…anything else you need?”

She just smiles and shakes her head.

“Okay then, I’ll leave you to…do that.  And I’ll go make breakfast.”

We stumble into each other awkwardly, nervous laughter passing between us until I finally make it out of there alive.  I let out a sigh of relief, count to three, and then make my way to the kitchen, hoping that I do in fact have everything I need for pancakes.  I hear the water turn on and it almost makes me drop the milk all over the floor.   This isn’t good.  I need something to take my mind off of her.  In my shower.  Oh dear God. TV? Movie?  Music?  Music, that should work.  I flip through my CD collection, trying to find something that doesn’t have a million implications behind it.  I decide Wilco is mild enough for an early morning pancake breakfast and I hum along as I pour the batter on the griddle, trying desperately to drown out the sound of running water.

I’ve got a pretty good batch whipped up when I hear her pad barefoot into the kitchen.  Wilco must have worked because I don’t even remember hearing the water turn off, which is just as well because that would have gotten me thinking about…well, never mind.  She’s here now, in a clean change of clothes (hidden in her gym bag, I assume) and damp hair curling around her shoulders.  No make-up, hair un-done, skin still slightly red from the heat of the shower; it’s a sight I never thought I would see and I’m grateful that I got the chance.  Even if it’s only once.

“Feel better?” I ask.

She nods, and a damp curl falls in front of her eyes.  “Much.”

“Good.  Okay, so what would you like?   Orange juice, coffee, eggs?”

“Yes.”

“Not really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, Pam.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just really hungry.  You get the drinks, I’ll whip up the eggs.  Scrambled, okay?”

She moves with ease around the kitchen, and again, it all feels so right.  It’s this perfect picture of domestic bliss that I’ve imagined more times than I can count and for a moment I forget that this isn’t real, that’s she’s engaged to someone else, and that at the end of the day it’ll be like it never happened.

“You put water in your eggs?” I remark as she splashes a few drops into the pan.

“Makes them fluffier.  Trust me, you’ll never go back.” She grins at me while she stirs with the spatula and it’s all I can do to not kiss her right then and there.  So instead, I make coffee.

We eat at the dining room table, more formal than the usual breakfasts I have leaning up against the counter with a bowl of cereal.  We talk about the best form of potatoes in the morning (she says hash browns, I say tater-tots, we eventually agree that they’re basically the same thing), her mom’s French toast, my mom’s omelettes, how Sunday morning meant laughter, reading the comics, and chocolate milk.  I want to know everything; every detail went into making her the amazing woman in front of me: all smiles and syrup on her chin.

“So,” she says in between bites of pancakes.  “What are you going to do?”

I pause, fork mid-air.  “About what?”

“Your living situation.  You don’t want to be homeless in Stamford.”

Oh right.  That.  “I don’t know, I just figured I’d look around when I got there.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes.  “Great idea.   Meanwhile, where are you going to stay?”

“I don’t know—“

“Do you have family there?”

“Well, no—“

“Then how are you going to—“

“I’ll figure it out!”  My voice reverberates through the house and what follows is nothing but uncomfortable silence.  I yelled at her.  I actually raised my voice like a dad scolding his child and yelled at her.  She looks hurt, confused, and goes back to staring at her plate as she pushes around left over eggs.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly.  I get no response from her so I do something I normally wouldn’t under normal circumstances.  I take her hand.  That gets her attention and she looks me in the eye.

“Really, I’m sorry.  I’m just…sort of in denial.”

“I know how you feel.”  This time the silence stretches beyond uncomfortable, awkward, and gets to the point where it’s hardly silence anymore because all that’s not being said is all we can hear; words we’ll never say at full volume in the small space between us.  But as usual, we ignore it.  I let go of her hand and she takes sip of coffee, smiling behind the cup to let me know that it’s okay again.

“Well, I was thinking,” she begins.  “I don’t know how much of this day you had planned out…”

“Pam, I think it’s pretty obvious I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.”  Gotta love subtext.

“We should go to Stamford.”

That I wasn’t expecting.  “What?”

“We’ll find you a place.  Don’t laugh, I’m being serious!” she says, throwing her napkin at me.

“Do you know where Connecticut is?”

“Okay, so it’s a bit of a drive—“

“You think?”

“Come on,” she says, quietly pleading.  “We may not find anything, but if we do…I don’t know, I’ll feel better when you leave knowing that you’re somewhere that I helped pick.”

She never ceases to amaze me.  

“Is that weird?”  

Yeah, actually, it is a little weird.  The whole point of moving away is so I can start fresh, move to a place where I don’t have any memories of her to haunt me at every corner.

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I can’t deny her anything.  And especially with the limited time we have left…

“No, it’s not weird at all.  I’m ready when you are.”

She stuffs the last remaining bite of pancake in her mouth, washes it down with coffee, and beams at me.

“Ready.”

4:59