The Awkward Path To Getting Lucky. Summer Heacock
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an umbrella of joy.
We have standing date nights on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. If we find some extra free time, we try to meet up more, but working eighty-ish hours a week at the shop doesn’t grant me a tremendous amount of time off. Having the together moments scheduled in advance helps make sure I put the piping bag down and remember to have a life. Well, on those three days of the week, anyway.
With a tiny gray storm cloud floating over my head, I carefully stow away all evidence of my experiment in my nightstand before I set to prepping for Ryan’s arrival.
I’m feeling uncomfortably electrified about seeing him tonight. For a moment, it reminds me of the jitters from the way back parts of our relationship. When we had a date and I was excited to get ready before he picked me up.
This isn’t that. There’s an anxiety brewing inside me, knowing it’s time to shout until we are both fully aware that the emperor has no clothes and a broken thang.
The more the determination churns in my stomach, the clearer it becomes to me how this has carried on for two years. There’s a comfort in our consistency. Our routine may not be dripping with platitudes and romance, but it’s ours, and it’s soothing.
I toss my flour-covered shirt and jeans into my hamper and change into a nearly identical outfit, sans flour. Taking a look at myself in the mirror, a wave of panic flashes through me.
I quickly yank off my T-shirt and toss it back into a drawer. I have to dig pretty far into the Narnia region of my closet, but I finally find something that’s more blouse than T-shirt. At the very least, the cut of the neckline implies I’m aware I have breasts, which is a big step up, really.
Walking up to the mirror in my bathroom, I pull my hair out of my uniform ponytail and grab a brush. Even my hair is efficient. I keep my chocolate-hued locks just long enough that I can whisk them into a ponytail at any height on my head, but not long enough that I have to put in the effort of actually styling them every day.
Plus, when I let my damp hair dry tied back, it finishes all smooth and shiny, if slightly dented. Otherwise I’d have to use blow-dryers and serums, and there’d be frizz to tackle, and I’d just rather spend that twenty minutes sleeping.
As I brush out my hair, a tiny part of my brain wonders when it was that I stopped putting forth any effort in the looks department. I’m expecting some sort of vagina miracle, but I can’t even be bothered to make an effort to look nice for our nights together?
Maybe that’s what’s missing. My vagina misses the joy of getting all dolled up for a night out.
A slightly louder part says it was probably right around the time sex started feeling like a below-the-belt root canal sans anesthetic.
When did Ryan give up?
Did he, though? Is he still putting forth all the best boyfriend maneuvers, but I’m too strung out from work to even notice?
We’ve fallen into a comfortable groove the last few years. Our date nights are simple, but nice. He brings over takeout, we sit together and talk about our jobs and life and the world that happens around us that I rarely get to take the time to notice. We curl up together on the couch with a couple glasses of wine and watch Netflix or a movie or just keep chatting.
It’s nice. These nights are the least stressful parts of my week. I love my time with Ryan, and I can’t imagine my life without these moments of Zen with him.
But the more I analyze us, the more I realize there’s nothing here that screams “relationship.” I could be doing these exact things with Shannon or Butter and have that same feeling of soothing calm.
As much as I’m racking my brain here, I can’t find the intimacy in what we’ve been doing. We have a familiar kiss hello when he arrives, we sit beside each other at the table and on the couch, but we don’t cuddle or make out anymore. I’m not even sure we touch each other much.
A wave of sadness washes through my entire body. I miss touching. I miss the feeling of warmth from being physically close to someone. I miss the feeling of skin against mine. Cuddling up next to him used to be one of my favorite things.
I remember when things started tanking in the nookie department, Ryan took a noticeable step back from almost all apparent physical intimacy. When I asked him why, he said he didn’t want me to feel like he was pressuring me for sex I couldn’t even have.
At the time, I thought that was really sweet, and I appreciated his consideration.
Now I’m just feeling guilty. Like I made him afraid to try to hold my hand. And if I’m being completely honest, I’m also a little resentful, because I really miss that part of our relationship.
I hear my front door open and the familiar sounds of Ryan making his way through my living room to set take-out bags on the counter in the kitchen.
I pull the brush through my hair one more time, set it back down by the sink and head out to greet him.
I peek my head out of my bedroom and watch as he starts setting out containers and cutlery on the counter. He seems right at home.
If I’d agreed to us living together, I wonder if we would have lived here? We never made it that far into the discussion. He’d been hinting at cohabitation for a month or two before our second anniversary, and I liked the idea a lot, but with the onset of trouble in Vagville, I’d always sort of dodged the conversation.
I take a moment and stare at my boyfriend of nearly four years. He’s lovely, really. His green eyes are calm and content as he pops the lid off what looks like chicken makhani.
He used to have the sexiest floppy black curls that I loved. It’s part of what made me notice him in the first place. Around the time of our first anniversary, Ryan buzzed them off after growing tired of a coworker constantly saying he looked like Sherlock Holmes.
I would have taken this as a high compliment, but Ryan maintains that Benedict Cumberbatch looks like a bipedal lizard, and the comparison made him self-conscious.
Three years later, it’s still cropped short.
The anxious wave hits me again. If I’m longing for the warmth and touching and closeness, I can’t even imagine how he feels. Maybe he’s been suffering that wave for two years, waiting for me to get it together so he can have it again.
He looks up from the naan he’s arranging on a plate and finds me lingering in the doorway.
“Hey, babes,” he says with a smile.
“Well, hello there, sir,” I say, leaving my place of reflection and heading out to the kitchen. I lean over the bar counter for our welcome kiss.
It’s just like every kiss we’ve had for I don’t even know how long, but with everything at the forefront of my mind now, I can’t help but overanalyze it. My first thought is it’s quick. Perfunctory, even.
It’s a takeout-on-Wednesday-nights-at-my-apartment-for-three-years kiss.
Lady bits issues aside, it’s alarmingly clear to me now that Ryan and I are way past a simple rut. We’ve hit a relationship trench, and I’ve spent the last two years with a shovel in hand, digging us deeper.
And I refuse to hit that two-year drought mark. I just can’t let that happen. Which means Ryan and I are going to have to talk about this. It’s time. I’ve put this conversation off for nearly two years for reasons I can’t sort out at the moment, but I can’t ignore it any longer.
“So,” he says, grabbing glasses from my cabinet. “How’s life at the office?”
“I think we should see other people,” I blurt out, to the astronomical surprise of us both.
“Excuse me?” he says, still holding the two glasses.
Putting