I came over all the time to binge bad TV with him, before retiring to his bedroom to make love after a few episodes. He insisted on cooking dinner for me on several occasions, and I was surprised to find that, on top of everything else, his culinary skills were incredible. Again, I reiterate, this man truly was the total package.
And there didn’t even always have to be a reason for me to come over. Even on nights when there was nothing to watch, and neither of us really felt especially frisky for sex, I would swing by and just chat with him for hours on end. He was as great a conversationalist as everything else, and sometimes he would even invite me to prop up my legs on his lap, and he would very sweetly massage my feet while we prattled on and on about nothing.
And then sometimes the mood would just end up so perfect that we wound up having sex anyway…
I really don’t know how soon is too soon to start busting out the four letter L-word once you start seeing someone. Saying it too early can be a recipe for disaster, especially when it’s a girl saying it to a guy, or at least that’s what I’ve found to be the case.
All things considered, I’d say I managed to restrain myself pretty admirably. But whatever I did or didn’t say to him, my feelings for Malcolm were what I’d always imagined true love to feel like. I’d once thought I loved Dennis, but the feeling I’d had then wasn’t anything at all like what I was experiencing now. He and I had become the kind of couple that says “I love you” without even thinking about it. And however sweet that might sound, that was kind of the problem, because we never actually had to mean it when we said it.
Ours had been the kind of resigned love a married couple might arrive at following decades spent in a relationship. A love based more on commitment than on genuine emotion. You reach a point in, say, a marriage when your lives become too entangled to even begin to try and separate them. You share a mortgage, a dog, a kid, your finances, and so on and so forth, and the idea of having to split your lives back up again seems close to impossible, compared with the simple ease of simply coasting along through life together, in something manufactured to at least resemble genuine “love.”
It said a lot that this was what Dennis and I had aspired to from the beginning, and there’d never really been any puppy love or honeymoon phase to our relationship.
This was not the case at all when it came to Malcolm, and I realized what an incredible difference that made. I was deeply enamored with this man, and from the ways he treated me I could tell he was just as enamored with me, even if he hadn’t yet gotten around to putting it into those three perfect words I was longing to hear.
I was in no hurry, though. Things between us were wonderful enough as they were, and I was confident that things would happen at the exact pace that they needed to between us.
_____
Early one evening Malcolm texted me, and asked me if I wanted to take a walk with him through the city, as he’d suggested I do so many weeks ago when I complained about feeling cooped up. This seemed like a lovely idea, and the two of us embarked from my apartment building into the warm summer evening, a gentle breeze wafting its way through the streets as we went.
It felt like another perfect evening, the two of us talking and laughing at the corny jokes we made. This, I thought, was exactly what true happiness felt like, and I couldn’t believe that I’d somehow gone on for so long without knowing it.
“Do you think we’ll ever go back to normal?” I asked him as we strolled past a drug store, and watched an elderly woman with a mask on leaving with a prescription.
“Normal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be,” said Malcolm, shrugging. “I mean I’m not trying to be insensitive. I know there are people who are really struggling through all this, and I’m in a position where I’m definitely pretty sheltered from a lot of that. But as far as the day to day stuff, people trying to hurry back to bars and beaches, like having a good time is more important than protecting the people around them. I guess my attitude is just kind of like, to hell with that. I mean it would be nice if some things could go back to normal, for sure. I just can’t stand the people who are willing to sacrifice everyone around them to make that happen. They’re just making it impossible for the country to ever safely reopen, anyway.”
“Yeah, I’ve pretty much had to stop tuning into the news,” I said. “As much as I want to stay informed, I really can’t stand seeing how ridiculous people have been acting.”
“I hear you,” said Malcolm, then he laughed. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to get all heavy-handed about it. I guess it just gets me into a bad mood to think about that stuff.”
“Me too,” I said with a grin, and he smiled back at me. He looked dazzling at that moment, in the golden light of the slowly setting sun, and I took in his beautiful visage for a few seconds before turning back to the sidewalk ahead.
“I think things will eventually get back to normal, or almost at least, but it will be a while. I’ve heard a lot of different opinions, about whether it will take a few months, or even years.”
“God, just take me now,” I said, letting my head roll back in defeat. Malcolm laughed.
“I’m trying to stay optimistic,” he said. “I think it’ll mostly depend on whether A., people finally stop acting like idiots and actually follow the guidelines like they’re supposed to- highly unlikely… Or B., until they figure out how to come up with a vaccine and make it publicly available. I’m thinking it’ll probably be the latter that comes first, to be completely honest about it.”
“Yeah, sadly I figure you’re right,” I said.
We went on for a few more blocks, not saying all that much. We walked past recently closed-up businesses and restaurants, as well as a few that were doing their damnedest to try and safely reopen, with gluts of customers lined up outside, overflowing to excess after having migrated from their preferred locales, which had evidently been closed down.
There was definitely a melancholy about the streets, but I still felt fairly serene with Malcolm by my side. The scent of the warm breeze blowing in from the sea made me feel calm and at ease, and I felt like I could have spent the rest of my life walking around with this man standing next to me.
“What do you miss the most?” he asked finally, as we waited at an intersection for the crosswalk light to change.
“From the Before Days you mean?” I asked, and he laughed.
“Right,” he said.
I screwed my mouth over to one side of my face, considering my answer to this question. The red hand of the crosswalk sign flashed over to the little green stickman, and we shuffled along the crosswalk, continuing our conversation.
“Honestly I kind of just miss going to movie theaters,” I said with a shrug. “I mean I know that’s dumb, I just always loved going to the movies. It was just different from sitting around and watching a movie at home, you know? It’s like, total and complete escapism.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Yeah, I can see what you mean. It is weird to think that they’ve been shut down for so long. This is, like, the first year without movie theaters since movies started being a thing.”
“God I didn’t even think about it that way,” I said. “That is super weird.”