He walked right in the door. Same as every day. It had been a long one, this day. Stress and worries and not much time for the quick phone calls, two to five minutes each, they usually had during the workday, three or four times a day, where she updated him on the minute details of exactly what she was doing or had been doing or was thinking of doing next and why or how she planned to do it. He loved those calls for all their nothingness and triviality that meant so much because it was between the two of them - like the one this week where she called only to say that the roses that she planted in their garden had bloomed. "B, did you see the roses?" "No" "They bloomed, like 20 of them, they look so good." "Really?" "Yeah. That's all." "Okay, bye." "Bye."
And she was there. There she was, as she was most nights, sitting on the couch with her 'fur babies'. She called the pets 'fur babies'. This particular night was stifling hot. And she was less sitting as she was poured onto the couch in the manner one employs so as to not have any two pieces of the body touching, anywhere. Fingers even spread apart. Seeing her induced a smile and memories of how he would come home to her back when they lived in an apartment, with a roommate, in a different place. He would come home later in the evening from work than she. She would wait up for him, sitting on the couch, this one more a love seat, in this exact poured manner - keeping cool and lazily looking at some television show with the remote hanging in her hand hanging off her arm hanging off the side of the couch. And he would, before even placing down his bag, climb onto the love seat, opposite her, and grab her feet or legs or some other nearby body part and squeeze. That's all. Just squeeze. And she would smile, before even looking up to acknowledge that he had come in and before even saying hello. And but this would be communication enough.
This was home for him. Just as it had been back in the apartment. A catharsis. Immediate and total. Home. No, Home! Really, a purifying of emotion. Like coming to the surface of the sea after a near drowning. And it wasn't so much that he was home - like this was his house - as it was that she was there and that she meant 'home' to him. Comfort. Stupid pet names. Subtle knowing smiles. Nighttime laughter. 17 on a scale of 1 - 10. Spooning (when it wasn't so hot). Telling her about nightmares and vice versa. Throwing a leg over hers in the middle of the night. Being late for work because being in bed with her sure beats anything the day can bring. And remembering that time, the exact time, that they realized they wanted to grow disgusting and old together. This 'home', this feeling, could get him through anything, he was sure of it. He lived for it, I guess you could say.
And so he looked at her, wryly, out of the side of his head. And smiled. A satisfaction all over his face. And she knew, he thought, and she smiled back, he thought. Nothing more. Nothing more needed. And 'thank god for this' he thought to himself.
And says..."Happy Birthday, Bushkies." And they'll talk more later, I'm sure, but it won't match this instant - like meeting her again for the first time. He started dancing around the room. Dancing and sort of strutting. He had totally forgotten about the day, about everything. He's moving like James Brown - sort of. An idiot. She made him do this. Not like forcing him to do it, the 'dancing', but something about her turned him into a child. Like seeing her triggered this trick the back of the brain liked to play on the front, it always had, whatever it was. An idiot child with one pursuit, a single objective...to get her to laugh. However brief and fleeting - so long as it was a true laugh. That laugh, so pure, all the reward he needs.
"Stop it Lovey."...laughing
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