All At Once - by Maq

‎It happened at the grocery store on a Sunday evening.‎She was standing in the cereal aisle with one box tucked under her arm and another held up close, reading the back like it might say something worth knowing.‎I almost kept walking. ‎I thank God every day that I didn't.‎I asked her which one she'd pick. She looked up at me like I'd asked something genuinely difficult, tilted her head, and said, "Neither. But if I had to, this one... the mascot looks more...trustworthy."‎I laughed. She smiled like she hadn't really expected me to. And something in my chest — some tightly wound knot I hadn't even known was there — came quietly, permanently loose.‎That was eight months ago. I bought the cereal. I don't even like cereal.‎· · ·‎Tonight is her friend's rooftop birthday party. She shows up in a yellow sundress and I lose my train of thought mid-sentence to the person I'm talking to. I don't recover it. I don't even try.‎She finds me after a while, weaving through people with a glass of wine and that look she gets, like she's amused by everything, like the world is a joke she's in on. She stops in front of me and narrows her eyes.‎"What's wrong with you?"‎"What do you mean? Nothing's wrong with me."‎"Something's wrong with you." She says cheerfully, like I'm supposed to be happy about that. "You've got that look."‎"I don't have a look."‎"Everyone has a look." She sips her wine. "Yours is very loud. And you have it on right now, like you're trying to solve something."‎I am, I think. I have been trying for eight months. I just haven't gotten there yet.‎. . .‎We end up at the edge of the rooftop, away from the music, elbows on the railing. The city spreads out below us in every direction, all lit up and enormous, and she leans forward into it like she wants to get closer, like she loves it, and I watch her do this and feel something so large and so overwhelming that I don't have a name for it. I have tried. I have gone through every word I know, and none of them are right.‎· · ·‎She tells me about her week. A difficult conversation with her mother. A small, stupid victory at work that made her happier than she felt she was allowed to be. A film she watched alone at midnight that made her cry, and she describes the exact scene that did it — a quiet moment in the middle where a man sets the table for two out of habit even though he is eating alone.‎"That's the thing that gets me," she says. "The habits. The muscle memory of loving someone."‎I look at her. I think about the way I have already, without meaning to, built habits around her. The drink order I know without asking. The side of the pavement I steer her toward, away from traffic, every single time. How I read things now and think: she would love this. I have to tell her this.‎I think about all the ways I am somehow already eating at a table set for two, and she doesn't even know it.‎· · ·‎We leave before midnight. The streets are quieter now, still warm, and she takes her shoes off at some point and carries them, walking barefoot on the pavement like it's the most natural thing in the world, like comfort is something she simply decides to have.‎I fall into step beside her and think...this. This exact thing. Her and the warm night and the sound of the city going soft around us. I want this to be something I get to keep.‎I love her, I think, not for the first time that night. I love her so much it unravels me.‎I love the way she moves through the world like it is mostly good. I love that she cries at the quiet scenes. I love that she chose a cereal box based on the trustworthiness of a cartoon mascot and stood by it completely. I love that she says what she means and means what she says and doesn't shrink herself for anyone, not even a little, not even in rooms where other women do. I love her at rooftop parties in yellow dresses. I love her in the cereal aisle on a Sunday or a Tuesday or any other day. I love her in every small and ordinary version of herself she doesn't think anyone is paying attention to.‎I have been paying attention. I have been paying attention to nothing else.‎· · ·‎We stop at the corner where we always say goodnight. The streetlight above us is doing that thing where it flickers slightly, and I look at her - the line of her profile, the way the unsteady light catches her face and makes her look like something out of a dream. I think: how is it possible that she does not know?‎She turns to me then, like she feels the weight of it, and she must see something in my face because she goes a little still.‎"What?" she says.‎And I think: I could say nothing. I have said nothing so many times.‎But she is standing in front of me barefoot on the pavement with her shoes in her hand and the light flickering above her, and I have loved her for eight months quietly and carefully, like a man who is afraid, and I am so tired of being afraid of the most important thing I have ever felt.‎So I say it. Imperfectly, of course. Not the way I would have if I'd planned it — and God knows I have planned it, in the shower, on the commute, at 2am staring at my ceiling. But it still comes out simple, almost plain, the way true things do when you finally stop dressing them up.‎"I think I'm in love with you," I tell her. "I've thought so for a while. I just...wanted you to know."‎She looks at me for a long moment and I swear I can hear my own heartbeat, and absolutely nothing else.‎Then she sets her shoes down on the pavement. And I don't know what she's about to do. I don't breathe. I don't think I even exist in that moment.‎She looks at me the way she looked at that city from the rooftop. Like she wants to get closer.‎And then she kisses me.‎

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