Long Distance Love
I sat at the small oval table in the “kitchen” of the apartment. The kitchen was really just the carpeted area near the foot-wide strip of fake linoleum tile under the counter and accompanying sink. The room resembled a kitchen closely enough though. In addition to the sink, there was a refrigerator and oven. Then there were the small oval table and its two accompanying chairs, Chris’s desk that sat in the corner behind the table, and a waist-high hutch, on top of which sat the microwave and some bulk bags of knock-off brand cereal. I sat facing the wall of the kitchen that contained the sink and stove, and every few minutes my eyes were drawn to the gritty, neon green digits of the stove’s clock. The small light above the sink was on, dimly lighting the kitchen in a cold, blue-ish hue. Techno music blared from Chris’s desk area, where he was currently sitting with his laptop, drinking his probably-cold-by-now coffee, and surfing around on the internet. I held my own cup of coffee between my hands, and contemplated the bleak gray light showing through the slots of the window blinds. Pittsburgh seems to always have a depressing, gray tint to it. Oakland certainly wasn’t any exception. In my chair, I pulled my knees up to my chest and gripped my coffee mug a little more firmly, trying to warm myself against the cool, bitter atmosphere outside.
For what seemed like the hundredth and third time, I looked over at the clock on the stove: 2:14 p.m. It hadn’t even been two minutes since the last time I had checked it. Johnny had left for work at 5:30 a.m., and I had been waiting since 5:30 a.m. to see him again. He was going to be home any minute.
I tried not to study the clock, attempting to occupy myself instead with the unfamiliar coffee mug in my hands. It was painted to display a map of the world; the continents and countries portrayed in un-complimenting, visually disagreeable colors, and all set against an ocean of a hideously bland shade of pale blue. The ugliness of it was almost funny to me; I wondered how many third graders could have done a better job at creating such a coffee mug.
I turned my eyes form the ugly world to the clock again: 2:17 p.m. Any minute, I kept appeasing myself. I was so eager to see him walk through the door, and yet, even in my eagerness, I was terrified of the departure that I knew would closely follow his return. Even so, I couldn’t help wishing he would get home faster. Any minute.
I heard Chris grunt slightly as he stood up from the desk behind me. He dragged his feet across the stained, once-was-cream-colored carpet as he walked past me over to the coffee pot by the stove. He wore a dark green bathrobe over a short-sleeved, white t-shirt – an outfit which I would come to recognize over the course of the following year as his normal attire for hanging around the apartment. As Chris poured more coffee into his mug (which was far less appalling than mine – a dark blue one with the name of the tech school he used to go to scrawled across the side in yellow-gold cursive letters), he groggily sighed and ran a hand through his red shoulder-length, slightly-curly hair. He jerked his fingers through some knots, repeating this gesture a few times as he turned from the coffee pot and leaned lazily against the counter.
“So I guess when Johnny gets back I’ll, ya know,” he paused as a yawn interrupted his sentence, “get a quick shower or whatever and then we can take you back to school.”
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I felt sick at being reminded of the four hour drive that would separate me from Johnny for at least another month. “Okay,” I forced myself to respond. I gazed down at my ugly world mug again. The clock seemed less appealing now that the time to leave was getting painfully close…any minute.
Chris groaned as he pushed himself upright from the counter and walked across the room at the same dragging pace. He sat back down at his computer and, in a few clicks of his laptop’s mouse, a happy hardcore song was reverberating off the walls of the apartment at a moderately loud volume.
Even through the music, however, I plainly heard the sound of a key turning in the lock of the apartment door. I looked up expectantly as the lock released and the door swung open, and Johnny stepped into the apartment. He looked cold and slightly out of breath, and I could tell he had hurried from Forbes Avenue, where Chipotle was located, to the apartment on Parkview Avenue. His nose was pink and little wisps of hair clung to his face, though his long brown curls were pulled up in a high ponytail. His eyes connected with mine as soon as the door opened, and a wide, but tired, smile spread across his face.
Johnny flipped on the kitchen’s yellow-tinted overhead light before grabbing another coffee mug and pouring almost the rest of the pot into it. He came over and kissed me, and he and Chris exchanged their “Hey dude”s. Then, in an action I would come to know so well, he was maneuvering the chair from the opposite side of the table around to where I was sitting so that the corners of our chairs were touching. He sat down and I leaned in to the smell of the cold city outside, the coffee in his hands, and the smell of delicious Mexican food that clung to him as a result of his standing over the grill at Chipotle for eight hours. I sat as close to him as I could, holding his left hand in both of my own while he held his coffee in his right. Chris had slightly decreased the volume of his music and was talking to Johnny, probably about something interesting Chris had read during the day, or some insane porn video he had found on the internet. I wasn’t listening. The sound of happy hardcore and Johnny and Chris’s conversation filled the apartment. The warm tint provided by the ceiling light cancelled out the dismal coldness of the small light above the kitchen sink. The gray light coming in from the blinds in the window now seemed distant, and added to the comfortable feeling inside the apartment, which, by contrast, felt like a safe and separate world from the city outside. As I snuggled closer to Johnny’s chest, he pressed his lips against the side of my forehead, and I smiled wider. Oh, I felt myself realizing …this is what it could be like. Every day. We could be happy. I sighed and let all my weight relax on him. This is what it feels like…
“Alright,” Chris groaned, standing up. “I’m gonna get a shower and then we can leave.”
