The countdown

Should you ever find yourself soaking the afternoon’s feeble sunlight, nestled between the pillows of your couch and in your colleague’s – and lover’s arms – his shirt discarded, your fingers drawing galaxies along the freckles on his chest – and hearing your husband turn the doorknob and issue a casual ‘Hello’ from the hallway as if it isn’t three hours before his workday even ends, my best advice is to start counting down. 

40, 39, … As Andrew sheds his shoes, jacket, umbrella, and other accessories, you give Jason a visual cue to pick up his missing clothing item and pull it back over his head. You press your frizzy hair down in a forceful attempt to tame it. One look suffices for Jason to understand he must do the same.

30, 29, … Andrew removes his hastily ironed shirt and heads for the first T-shirt to present itself on his side of the closet. Plenty of time to silence Nina Simone’s voice from the laptop Spotify – too sweet, too suspicious. Switch it up to something bouncy, Arctic Monkeys. 

20, 19, … A good ten seconds of hand washing. You take Jason’s arm as if you’re inviting him to a waltz and lead him to a seat at the dining table across the room. You glide back toward the TV cabinet and open the middle drawer. It’s full of pretty notebooks you gifted yourself as an impulse to journal, only to fill the first two pages before abandoning the idea. You grab one notebook from your Art Nouveau phase – cover adorned with Mucha’s ‘Daydream’ – and place it in front of Jason. You have to go back for a pen. You find one and deliver it to the notebook scene – a two-second delay.

8, 7, … Andrew’s footsteps echo down the hallway, nearing the open kitchen, closing in on the living room. You sit down on the couch with your laptop on your lap and open a random Excel file from the cluttered desktop. Breathe in, hold, one more breath, let it out quietly through the mouth – we’ve practiced for moments like this. 

‘Hello,’ you say, voice apathetic, the tone-de-jour of last months’ silent home dinners.

Across the room, Jason sits motionless, holding his pen. You catch his eyes and see he fully, hopelessly trusts you – the thing you love most about him. You gaze through the window at the sun slipping behind a layer of clouds.

All you want, there and then, is what you had forty seconds ago.