Him, Her, And What He Does To Her

1. Him
She thinks too much, he thinks. In the mornings she is up before him, always, standing and then stretching, up, up, a bounce down, stop. She's green-eyed and impatient, obsessed with the order of nothing too important while time teasingly curls a finger at her to come forward. Move it, he thinks she hears and he knows she knows he's not the one saying it.

He rolls over in the sheets, his cheeks creased from last night's sleep. Hey, he says. She raises an eyebrow, smiles like she knows something good, and says Hey. It is obvious that one day she will trust that he knows how this all will work. For now though he will say nothing except Come here. She breathes in for a long second and then climbs back into the scoop of his spoon. The day's prologue has come and gone a little too quickly for her liking. He thinks there is more to it.

2. Her
Home alone she feels like waffles - with each of her small squares begging to be filled. She opens the fridge more than once. She dips two fingers into a container of hummus, bumps the door closed with her butt, and gives herself a couple of options. Think about what you want to do or Do it. She sits down in a chair. It is a hard chair that she is hoping will give her a hard time. How is that person doing, she wonders.

3. What He Does To Her
After the rain stops, he takes her out for Italian ices. Inside the bakery there are two girls that are not even playing the part of Italian girl teenagers. They are just doing it. Only halfway decent at the jobs they have been given, one girl with powdered sugar on her too-tight jeans says to the other: I don't even think he was playin'. It is all neither here nor there. He looks at his lemon ice and then gives it a quick lick off the side. She takes pleasure in watching him enjoy something simple. Hopefully he feels the exact same way. The sky looks like sherbert that has been violently stirred and as they walk down the street, saying nothing, just feeling, hopefully knowing, that nothing is better than any of this, the rain begins all over again. They do not lose their pace even though her body says run.