November 18, 2012
"Babe, you ready yet?" I called, fastening my bracelet around my wrist. In an odd turn of events, I was done before Myles.
"Yeah, I couldn't get my hair to sit right." He said as he came out of the bathroom.
"You'll always look beautiful to me." I grinned up at him, hands resting on his chest. "Now, shall we go?"
"Don't you want to put your shoes on first?"
"I will once we're out of the room, I'll probably break an ankle trying to walk on the carpet." The carpet of the hotel room was very shaggy and my heels would definitely get snagged on it. I slipped them on in the elevator, trying to hold in a giggle when Myles frowned.
"That's just cheating." He grumbled.
"You just don't like that I can look you straight in the eyes." Five inch heels made me almost as tall as he was.
"It's not that, I'm just used to being able to tuck you under my chin and I can't quite manage it like this." He took a small step back, looking me up and down. "You do look great tonight love."
"Thanks, I try." I did a little twirl for him just as the elevator doors opened. Hailing a cab was a little difficult, as neither of us spoke Spanish, but we managed to get our point across by pointing at the map. For all of Lola's Spanish lessons, I could pretty much say thank you, ask for the embassy, and order a taco. Really, that's all you need, but I wished I could speak more. Maybe when I got home I'd get a copy of Rosetta Stone or something.
"I'm not used to it being warm." Myles commented as we got out of the cab at the restaurant.
"Well we're south of the equator, the seasons are reversed." He opened the door for me and I slipped past him into the packed restaurant. The last time I'd been to Argentina was with Rosemary Starve and we'd come to this place when we were starving and roaming the streets at three AM. It had been crowded then and it was now.
We ended up at a table in the corner next to a large family celebrating something. They were talking too fast for me to understand what they were saying, but I assumed it was a birthday. Two menus landed in front of me and a waiter speaking rapid fire Spanglish asked if we wanted something to drink. Before we'd managed to say more than "water, please," he was rushing away to another table. They seemed understaffed, as usual.
"Can you believe it's already been a year?" I said to Myles over the top of my menu.
"It feels too fast and too slow at the same time. I feel like I've been married to you for ten years and yet it feels like the months passed by so quickly." He smiled at me.
"You know, this is the first time we've made it to an anniversary." We'd also finished our first consecutive year together back in August, but we didn't celebrate that. It really did feel like we'd been together for years but in reality it was short bursts over the course of ten years.
"Here's to many more." He paused, glancing down at the menu. "What are mollejas?"
"If I remember correctly, it's the thymus gland of a calf." I had to laugh when I saw the face he was making. "Hey, waste not, want not."
"I think I'll skip the mollejas." It took some time to find something that wasn't going to give him a flare up, but we eventually flagged down our waiter, who had to be wearing rollerskates, and ordered our dinner. It was hard to hear each other over the noise of the restaurant, but the warmth of his hand on mine and seeing his smiling face across the table was enough. I wasn't going to lie and say that I was okay with the separation. In fact, I hated it. I hated being on a tour bus in Europe knowing he was halfway across the world. Sometimes I liked to imagine that I'd never left Spokane and that I was a photographer and he was still teaching guitar. The two of us would work nine to five and come home, make dinner, watch TV, fuck, and go to sleep. And while that routine would get boring, it was infinitely preferable to going to sleep alone in our apartment.
