Nick found women, as a gender, adorable. When I sneezed in the Christmas aisle of Tesco he held his breath and grabbed my arm and said, “Oh, you’re just a little squirrel, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am a tiny squirrel,” I said. “I have no idea what to get my mom. You just pick something.”
“What does she like?” he asked studying the rows of silver ornaments and boxes of chocolates.
“I could give her a rock with a face painted on it and she would love it. She’s grateful for anything,” I said.
Nick frowned like he was staring at a dying kitten on the side of a highway.
“When you talk about your mother like that it makes me wanna buy her everything.”
I grabbed a cheap box of dark chocolates and put it in our basket. Nick looked down and shook his head.
“She’ll love it,” I said and we went to check out and leave. I was cold as we walked across the windy car park and Nick rubbed my shoulder.
“Our cashier was so chubby and cute and old. We should make a point to use her line every time,” he said.
We went back to Nick’s flat and drank wine and watched a television show set in Prohibition era America. Five minutes into the show he stood up from the couch.
“I forgot to call my parents,” he said.
“So?” I said.
“I call them twice a week.”
“What for?”
“They’re my parents.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little needy?”
“I dunno,” he said and grabbed his phone and went upstairs to his study. When twenty minutes passed and he hadn’t come back down I went to get him. He was sitting at his computer playing online poker.
“I’m sorry I’m such a bitch,” I said and got down on my knees. He swiveled his chair towards me.
“It’s okay. Come here little bunny,” he said and I pressed my face and top of my head against his lap. I could feel he was getting hard so I rubbed his penis through his pants and stared up at him.
“You wanna see my boobs or something?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said so I pulled up my shirt.
He smiled and twisted my left nipple and we went back downstairs.
We continued watching the show about Prohibition. We commented on how much America had changed and how it was still the same. We wondered aloud if some casting mistakes had been made. We talked about how one of the more fleshed out characters was a Christian and how that was refreshing. Towards the end of the episode there was a scene where a young man went to see his estranged, dying father. There was something about the way his shoulders were hunched as he stood next to father’s bedside that drove me to tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said and rushed to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and wept. When I came out Nick had turned off the television. He looked at me like I was baby fox caught in a trap.
“You can talk to me about anything, you know,” he said and hugged me. “You’re beautiful and talented and you’re the woman I’ve been waiting for my whole life.”
“I’m never gonna marry you,” I said playing with the buttons on his shirt.
“I’ll wear you down,” he said.
“If we did what would we do?” I asked.
“I’d sell this place and we’d go to America. We would drive across the country. We could live anywhere you wanted.”
“The Pacific Northwest,” I said. “No, the desert. We could live in an air stream trailer and we’d have a dog—“
“A mutt?”
“Of course,” I said. “And you would sit on the porch with a shotgun. Oh, and all I’d do all day is write and drink and have sex with you.”
“Or maybe we could move to the woods somewhere and I could build us a shack,” he said.
“You don’t know how to do any of that outdoors stuff. You went to boarding school—ugh, lemme see your socks,” I said and sat back. He put both of his feet on my lap and I inspected the holes where his toes had rubbed through. I pulled out my sewing kit from the side table and began to fix them.
“You’re the best thing that’s happened to the world ever,” he said.
“What about Gandhi? He was all right.”
“I didn’t think I could love you anymore and then you fix my socks.”
“Shut up already,” I said.
“Come here, squirrel,” he said and grabbed me by the waist and kissed me all over my face.
“You’re so gonna marry me.”
“Maybe,” I said.
That night after we had sex and he fell asleep I lay next to him and thought about our fantasy future in America. We would start in my home state of Minnesota and continue west across the desolation of North Dakota towards Montana. We would stay in motels and I’d walk across busy intersections in flip flops to buy cigarettes and whiskey from the gas stations. The days would pass too quickly for us so we would slow them down by staying in bed and making love and reading aloud absurd stories from small town newspapers. I figured it would take me six months before I left him.
“You still up?” Nick mumbled and wrapped his arm around me.
“Go to sleep,” I said.
“Remember to send out those chocolates to your mom tomorrow,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. Nick fell back asleep and I thought about my mom getting the package in the mail. It would be snowing in Minnesota. Her lips and fingers would be chapped, but her eyes would be bright and grateful—the same way Nick’s eyes were sometimes. I imagined sloughing off their love and sliding under the door like a ghost. I would go to my father’s bedside. I would hunch my shoulders. I would say, “I never knew you and I don’t love you. Can I stay?”
