San Diego Momma's PrompTuesday # 55

San Diego Momma's PromptTuesday #55

This week San Diego Momma starts us off with two sentences with the result that oops! my politics are showing. -- Cocktail Maven

“What are you doing here?” I hadn’t thought to knock.

Aaron raised his head from the table. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “We need to talk.”

“Why aren’t you in Boston?” This I asked as I led Wrigley, slobbering and panting back into Aaron’s apartment and hung his leash up on the hook by the door.

“I didn’t go to Boston. I went to Schenectady.”

“To see your folks?” I hoped.

“No. To see Jenny.”

Jenny. The ex-girlfriend. The high school sweetheart. Damn. That’s the trouble with these younger guys. The boys new to the lifestyle who don’t discover they’re gay until their twenties. Old habits die hard. By now I should know better than to fall for straight boys. I’ll be looking at the other side of 40 in a few weeks. You think I’d have learned by now.

I stride over to the refrigerator for bottled water while I weigh my reply. Finally, I opt for simplicity.

“Why?”

It’s hard, y’know, to explain. I just . . . It’s been almost two years, now, you and me. And, you know how we’ve been talking . . . about taking the next step? Like, me giving up my apartment in Queens and moving into your place in the Village?”

So that’s it. He’s panicking. “Yeah.” I’m not giving him anything to work with. I am determined not to make this any easier on him. I know what’s coming, and I want him to suffer through every second of spelling it out for me.

“Well, you know all about how I was raised, right, an’ how you always crack wise and call me your ‘old-fashioned girl’?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I . . . I kinda’ am. An’ I want all the stuff that every old-fashioned girl wants. I want the big wedding and the white picket fence and the 2.4 kids and the minivan in the driveway for shuttling around a whole soccer team. I want that.” He pauses. “And I think I deserve that.”

“So, mid-game, you’re switch-hitting again, huh? Whatever. I hope you and Jenny will be very happy.”

He stares at me. The look of shock on his face seems genuine. “No! You got it all wrong, Scott! No! I want all of that, but I want it all with YOU, you lunkhead! I’m just sayin’ I don’t want to live together until we go down to Jersey and make it official. I don’t want to wait for the courts here, and I don’t believe in living together without bein’ married. I mean, you’re makin’ a home together, right? There’s a commitment that kinda goes along with that, and I think we should, y’know, commit. The timing is good, ‘cuz my lease is up the end of next month.”

“Um. And, what does any of this have to do with you going to see Jenny?”

“Well, I, uh. Y’know. Thinking about the future got me thinkin’ about . . . y’know. Kids. I asked Jenny if she might be . . . willing to . . . help us out that way. Have a kid for us. Help us become a real family. She says yeah, she would.”

I’m stunned. And deeply moved. I think of how I am continuously amazed by this handsome man sitting here in front of me. Perhaps it is because I always underestimate him. It’s a difficult lifestyle. I’ve learned always to expect the worst. But maybe it doesn’t have to be so difficult. Maybe together, really together, it won’t be.

“You’ve really given this some thought, haven’t you?” I ask.

Wrigley pads over and sets his big, black head on Aaron’s knee. Aaron’s tense shoulders relax visibly as he scratches the dog’s head. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I have.” Aaron’s big brown eyes look up at me a little anxiously, almost shyly. It’s unbearably cute. “So whaddya’ think?” he asks.

“I think that’s got to be the lamest marriage proposal ever.”

We laugh until we can barely stand.