mise en scène

Remember this?

Well, I went east.

Three years I'll be here, at a minimum.

Breathe fast: we're backing off the rim.

niche

We're getting ready for bed, and I have my back to the room, pulling the curtains closed.

From behind me, a voice: "Your butt in pajamas might be my favorite thing ever."

I snerk, turning around. From the waist down, I am built along Kardashian lines, in that inescapable genetic way that no diet or exercise will ever change. "I'm glad you think so," I tell him, "because my butt caters to a niche market."

He throws up his hands and announces happily, "I am your niche!"
    

Sometimes it's just that simple, you know?

way to my heart

Him, 2:21 pm:  Just leaving a lunch at the presidents' home.  I'm 
               important.

Him, 2:23 pm:  But not good at grammar.

Forget sexting.  This is the type of text that totally undoes me.

what lies ahead

I'm just inside Target, hunting for a red plastic basket that doesn't have gum stuck to the bottom, when my phone buzzes. It buzzes a lot these days.

"Want to know why alcohol is ridiculous?" He's at happy hour somewhere, a few beers deep.

Yes, I answer.

"It made me just now -- after all our conversations -- come to face the fact that I'm losing you."

---------------

Remember that guy who asked me out the right way and had opinions on John Irving? He is, in fact, the only guy I've been seeing since September. And he is, in fact, my boyfriend. That's strange to type. But here we are.

There's just one little catch. The other thing I haven't told you is that I've been applying to graduate schools. Most of them are far away. And he's been applying to jobs. Working in athletics, as he does, he could end up nearly anywhere in the country. But there's not a lot of overlap between our likely destinations, and chances that we'll be in the same city four months from today are slim to none.

---------------

"Noooooo, no, no," I text back immediately. "This isn't the week for that problem. You focus on getting the job. Then we'll deal with you and me."

I mean it. He knows I'm a) sincere and b) right. But oh, man.

Heartbreak is crouching right around that corner. And standing there by the Dollar Wall, with only my chintzy little basket for a shield, I can already feel how bad this is going to be.

kryptonite

There's this picture on Facebook. He's standing in profile, wearing khakis and a tie.  His hands are in his pockets, the hem of his blazer casually rumpled, one of those boy-details that has always undone me. And he's craning his neck, looking upwards at the shelves that fill the room. The caption — written by his sister, who’s studying divinity at Yale — tells me he’s looking at rare books in the Yale Club library.

I spent my first two years of college convinced, utterly convinced that this was the boy I was destined to marry. This picture, could I have seen it back then, would have done nothing to soften that conviction.

Morgan, as usual, sums it up best: “I can actually hear the sound of your 18-year-old underpants exploding from across the space-time continuum.”

third wheel

“I'm a waiter, and an uninvited participant in just about every date you've ever been on.”

Includes such gems as:  "When I return to drop their check, they're making out shamelessly, in the weird but common belief that because they are sitting and I am standing, I cannot see them."

I don’t even want to think about what waiters all over Los Angeles must think of me.

judge and jury

He says something, contradicts himself, anticipates my reaction, contradicts himself again.  Across the table, he's suddenly a one-man show, my own personal vaudeville act.

Laughing, I say, “I think I’ve just become totally irrelevant to this conversation.”

“No no, that was all for you,” he answers, returning to his ceviche.

“Correction:  I’ve become the audience to this conversation.”

“And the adjudicator.”

Well, yes.  “Well put,” I tell him.

He shrugs.  “The advantage of being a single girl.  Surely you know that?”

“Usually I try to pretend like I don’t.  It seems nicer that way.”