Last week, it was storming cats and dogs and buckets and all sorts of metaphors. Initials and I had just finished running in from his car, carrying plastic bags filled with groceries for dinner. We were bounding up the steps, soaked and slightly annoyed that we both forgot our umbrellas at my place, when he slaps his head with the palm of his free hand in a classic tv-show setup in an expression of how stupid he feels about forgetting something. He didn't quite say "D'oh" but he did make an annoyed grunt, then muttered "We forgot dessert."
As he fumbled with the keys to open his apartment door, I tried explaining to him that we didn't need dessert. We were both on 'half-diets,' which means that both of us have noticed that our pants are fitting a little tight lately but neither of us are motivated enough to do things like work out more or count calories. Instead, we just try and do things like eat fewer burgers and more sub sandwiches when we go out to eat, and not complain so much when we don't find a good parking space.
My explanation fell on deaf ears. He wanted dessert, and so after he plopped his grocery bag on the kitchen table and made a cursory greeting towards his overweight lesbian roommate and her overweight girlfriend, he said he was going to run out and grab some ice cream, and maybe some more alcohol. He opened the cookbook to check the temperature and preset the oven, and then ran out while I put away the chicken breasts and pomegranate spread.
I finished putting away the foodstuffs and went into his bedroom, mostly to avoid hanging out with those two lesbians, because they add absolutely nothing to table except for unshaven legs and really generic jokes contrasting Bush-the-president and bush-the-slang-for-vajayjay. They were watching a rerun of "So You Think You Can Dance" and I don't think I could have cared less. I turned on some music on his desktop and checked my email.
A few minutes later, I could hear one of the lesbians waddling towards me and knocking on the door. (I know, I know, I'm making a lot of fat lesbian jokes. But these ladies are incredibly fat, to the point where his roommate can't walk down the hallway to Initials room without walking sideways. When the company she works for was bought out in June, she was forced to lose 20 lbs because the new insurance policy wouldn't cover people who weighed over 450 lbs.) (Oh, and I should probably mention that it's not genetic or health-based. Her sister is average sized, and the pictures of her parents she has on the walls show them to be only slightly overweight in a middle-aged suburbia sort of way. She's just a lazy lesbian who eats a lot, and I don't feel bad about making fun about them.) Long story short, I hate them.
She sticks her head in, and says "I think you should head in here. Initials fell on his way to the car."
Oh shit. I rushed out into the room. Initials was in the kitchen, standing by the sink, slipping his right hand under running water and grimacing painfully, tears forming in his eyes as the red filled the sink and swirled before going down the drain. Blood was also rushing out of his knee and pooling on his bare foot.
"Oh shit. What happened?"
"I was running to the car and I slipped where the grass turns into the gravel part of the driveway, and I got some gravel stuck."
"Stuck?"
Instead of responding, he removed his hand from the running water and I could see a black bulge under the skin near the wound as the blood pooled around it before dripping large drops into the sink. It was incredibly gross, and the face I made made it clear that I do not do well with gore.
The lesbians yelled from the living room that they were about to head out to dinner (Hometown Buffet, no joke). I went down on my knees with a big roll of paper towels, dabbing his scraped knee with the wet paper and folding the pants of his shorts up and out of the way of the blood.
Eventually, the blood subsided and Initials was able to remove all of the gravel from under the cut. I ran to his bathroom and looked from some medical equipment. I brought out his hydrogen peroxide and let him clean his wounds. I said I would run out to Walgreens and pick up some gauze and medical tape to keep the bandage covered, since most of his band-aids were small and aimed towards papercuts.
"No you won't."
"Huh?"
"You will walk carefully out to Walgreens to pick up the stuff. It's still raining really hard."
"Well, I'm going to take your car, but point taken. I promise to be careful. And hurry."
I stuck my hand in his right pocket and grabbed his keys. I walked carefully in the rain, holding an old newspaper over my head to keep some semblance of dryness. My feet were soaked from the puddles.
The entire drive to the store was filled with worry. The windshield wipers were in overdrive, and the streets were empty. Would I have to bring him to the hospital? Has his insurance kicked in yet? (It hadn't--he just got a new job, and his insurance won't kick in until 6 months.) What if it gets infected? It's so gross looking. I hope he can debride it himself. Oh, I feel so bad for him.
I was filled with worry and dread. And care. And... love? When I first saw him standing by the kitchen sink it was like my heart dropped. He's in pain, I need to do something. I felt this surge of care and energy and concern and doggedness, like when you hear stories about housewives lifting up SUVs to save their baby. Nothing should happen to him. It's not allowed.
I may not be in love with him, but there's definitely something. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's definitely there, and it's definitely good. The question is, which I probably should have made more clear in my previous post, is if that something is going to be enough for the long haul. And depending on my mood, the answer varies from "Probably not" to "I hope so."
Oh, and he's recovering nicely, FYI.
