i love hearing about you and your wife it gives me so much warmth and hope - if your comfortable, do you have a first meeting or first date story? totally ok if you'd not share! i hope you and your wife have a wonderful anniversary, 11 years is quite a feat!
oh ho ho you've unlocked my special interest. i love talking about our first meeting/date.
(a read more because i did not make this short)
we actually "met" on tumblr! we both signed up for this penpal blog where you got matched with someone who had similar interests as you. i verified with my wife this morning and we both said we liked cats-i'm assuming that's what they matched us over. i dropped a joke in her inbox that went unanswered for days despite her reblogging and posting and was like welp, that was a good shot, champ, but you messed it up. no friends for you.
now, this was in the days when tumblr's inbox system (which limited you to 10 asks a day) ate every other message. so it's not that she didn't think it was funny, she just didn't get it. i found this out when i dropped the same joke a second time in her inbox and lo and behold! she thought it was funny. (i have recycled this joke many times over the year and always get an eye roll. like, babe. it's a classic. it's the thundapants joke!)
she did not think it was funny when i told her i was a transplant living in the the armpit of massachusetts because-lo and behold a second time-that's where she grew up and was also still living! it was an auspicious start for me, truly. we figured out that we had a bunch of things in common-i did my student teaching at her high school when she was a senior there, i was a substitute teacher for her little sister's 8th grade class, we missed each other in college by a couple of classes, my roommate and best friend worked at the PT office my wife frequented. we kind of went around each other for a while before we finally landed in the same place.
it took me a month and a half of my best jokes to convince her to go on a date with me because, as she said, she was super nervous. i was like, you have not truly met me yet because i am the stupidest person on earth and not worthy of nervousness. but she finally said yes! and we went out to a local chinese restaurant for crab rangoons. it shared a parking lot with the diner i worked at so i ate there all the time and the people there were so surprised i was (a) sitting down to eat and (b) eating with somebody!
(thus began our tradition of ending up on someone else's first date. the couple behind us was clearly meeting for the first time. he was telling her his credit score and that she could order whatever she wanted off the menu, no worries because he could pay for it. we cringed each time he opened his mouth but it was kind of perfect in a way because it gave us something to whisper about. we have since ended up on way too many first dates to count. it is kind of just a thing that happens to us, no matter where we go.)
our date was really, really good. we had talked A LOT via tumblr inbox (messages didn't exist yet) and the conversation just kind of picked up in person. so much so that 4 hours went by and they were putting up the chairs. and then we talked for a while in the parking lot too until my roommate hit me with the "are you alive or did she murder you and dump your body somewhere?" text. i left her on read and kept talking until the restaurant locked up and all the people went home. i just didn't want to leave. i felt like i knew my wife already, you know? like things just clicked. she was funny and intelligent and she listened when i went on the first of many, many tangents. her patience for me is unmatched and started out that way.
we spent the rest of the summer we lived there spending as much time as we could together. i distinctly remember doing short order cook shifts at the diner i worked at and then rolling up to her house to pick her up and drive around. we had to drive with the windows down because my clothes just effused grease from the fryers. we watched so many movies at my apartment-which is hilarious because about a year into our relationship she informed she was NOT a movie person, she just wanted to spend time together. we have watched maybe ten movies together since that first year.
then i got a full-time job on the other side of the mountain, we moved, bought a house, got married, and the rest is history. but we get crab rangoons on every anniversary and do a lame-o instagram post about each other and i continue to be the stupidest person in the room, just very stupid over her.
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Inspired by this godly post which unlocked a part of my brain I didn't know existed, and solidly gave me complete and utterly brainrot until I wrote something
A thousand thanks to Lily for her wonderful help :))
"Does Kelly not mind you spending all your time with me?" Daniel asks, because she's Daniel and once she's thought something she can't keep her fucking mouth shut, even if she knows it's trouble.
Max looks up, pausing his set of weights, and blinks at her. Daniel feels her cheeks warm. One day, that mouth of yours will run you straight into trouble, young lady, her mum used to tell her, voice firm. Good girls know when to keep quiet. Daniel used to just laugh at the warning. Her laugh is loud and the opposite of quiet, but she used to know that everyone always loved her laugh.
"No," Max says after a beat and then continues lifting. Daniel hates the way her gaze tracks over him, lingering on the movement of his muscles, the ease with which he lifts the weight. Tawny hair brushed out of his eyes, cheeks dusted warm from the exertion. "Of course not."
"Why of course not?" Daniel asks. She wants to sew her mouth shut. This time, Max didn't look over as he answers.
"Kelly's very secure, she's not like other girls. And besides, she knows you."
It's strange. When Daniel was seven and Michelle eleven, they'd gone rock pool fishing. Michelle had been crouched over a shallow pool of water, her finger delicately brushing the tentacles of the anemone. Daniel had been scaling the rocks, wanting steeper, taller, more.
She'd found the shark first, nestled high at between the rocks, and for a beat she hadn't known what she was looking at. Just details, but nothing collective. Rotting smell. Shrivelled holes where eyes should be. Scales of silver lightning. Rubbery fish picked clean. The flash of bone, pearl white.
Then she realised what she was staring at, and screamed. Her father held her while her mother scolded her. I told you not to go climbing! It's too dangerous, Daniel. Why can't you just be good like your sister and stay by the shallow pools?
And then, later, ice cream. Her dad, beside her, explaining the horror away.
It's just nature, Dani. The waves wash them up, and they get stuck there. They can't get back to the sea, and then the sun dries them out.
They drown on air, Michelle helpfully pointed out, her feet kicking happily as she licked her 99. Daniel just just nodded, ice cream untouched. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the sunken holes, the rotting flesh.
She hasn't thought about that moment for years, but suddenly it washes back over her. She feels simultaneously both. The child, staring at the carcass, frozen in shock. The shark, burning up in the sun, chocking on air.
"What does that mean?" She asks, and somehow her voice is normal, is fine. She's fine. She's not a girl or a shark. She's stupid and a fool and a gawky, ugly idiot, but she's fine.
Max manages to shrug, even with the 50kg weights. "You know. Just that Kelly knows you. She knows what you're like. And she knows me too, of course."
Daniel swallows. She nods. She hates everything about herself.
"That's sexist," she forces herself to say lightly because if the silence stretches anymore, Max might notice and set his weights down and look at her, and Daniel can't bear that. She doesn't want his eyes on her, taking in every blemish and imperfection. The boyish, ratty clothes she works out in and her curls gone frizzy with sweat and her inked skin, so different to Max and Kelly's pale, perfect complexions.
"What's sexist?"
"Saying she's not like other girls," Daniel tells him, setting down the weights she been doing. Instead, she goes to grab the skipping rope, just for something to do.
Max laughs. Daniel's glad she's turned away. Her cheeks are burning again.
"It's the truth. You, of course, Daniel, are not like other girls either." He says it lightly and ends with a chuckle, as if it's all just a joke. Daniel drags a sweaty hand over her cheeks. Burning, burning, burning.
Apparently, in Max's mind, she and Kelly are the same; both not like other girls. Kelly, with her faultless makeup and wonderful daughter and classy dresses and perfect feminity. One end of the scale. Daniel, the other. Barely even considered "a girl." Always one of the boys, only woman in f1 for a reason.
"Thanks," Daniel says. She wants to make it sound humorous, like she's in on the joke too. Instead, it's too cold; muttered as if she actually gave two shits about the conversation anyway. She has an F1 season to prepare for, she's too busy to care about stupid shit like this.
There's a beat of silence as Daniel stretches out the rope, feeling the plastic flex and give. Then, Max exhaling, the gentle bump of his weights against the floor, the workout bench shifting as his centre of gravity changes. Daniel keeps her back to him, ignoring it all.
"I did not mean it as insult," Max finally says, stubborn. Daniel forces a laugh, turning to give him a smile, all teeth.
"Of course not Maxy. I get that." Voice light and blithe. One of the boys.
She thinks he'll drop it, but instead, his frown only grows. Pinched brows, thin lips, cheeks growing blotchy. Blue eyes regard her, intense and unyielding. She burns from the inside out.
"I've upset you," he says, in that blunt, genuine way only he can do. Daniel barks out another laugh.
"Don't be stupid. You're not important enough to ever be able to get under my skin." She gives him another smile with only teeth. She feels insane. Her mother tells her good girls stay quiet.
"I'm sorry," he tries again, growing frustrated now, "I did not mean -"
"I told you, you didn't upset me," she drops the skipping rope without actually using it. "Anyway, I'm bored. Wanna get lunch now? Or are you still trying to pump those muscle with more testosterone?"
Max gives her one last, searching look before standing. They're almost the same height. She wants to shrink to nothing.
"That is not how testosterone works, Daniel," he says with the air of an overworked teacher. He looks at her with a smile, uncertain but genuine. She laughs, allowing him to move the conversation on.
She walks out of the gym first but holds the door for him. He grins, relieved. His fingers skim hers as he takes it and she lets go. A chill runs through her. Cold like scales, cold like ice cream untouched.
Follow up here!
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