Date Night

Lizzie saw the parked cars outside her neighbor’s house when she turned the corner at the end of the street.

She was tired. It was Saturday afternoon, and she’d been at the supermarket, and it had been crowded and busy and awful. It always was on a Saturday, but it was the only free time she had to go.

Now she was tired, and a bit irritated with people, and driving towards her house she could see the parked cars and just knew it meant there was going to be a party next door.

There was already noise when she pulled into her driveway. She opened the car window to check. Music, and a few people talking. They were in the courtyard over the fence, which was a completely reasonable place for them to be, except that it meant they were outside Lizzie’s lounge windows and right underneath her bedroom.

She closed the car window, and drove into the garage. Usually she didn’t park inside, because to get out of her car she had to squeeze past Eric’s. Tonight, she didn’t want drunk people damaging the car as they left the party, or peeing on it, or anything like that, so she parked in the garage.

She got out the car, and took the first few shopping bags through the internal door into the kitchen.

Eric was through in the lounge, on the couch, in front the TV. He was wearing a stripy scarf, even though he was inside, and holding a bottle of beer. He was watching football with the sound turned up. The TV was loud enough to drown out the music next door.

“Hey,” he called, when Lizzie came in.

“Hi.”

He put down the beer and stood up, like he usually did, to come over and kiss her. Then he glanced at the TV again, and hesitated.

“Is there much?” he said, meaning the shopping.

“A few more,” Lizzie said.

“I’ll get it.” He took two steps towards her, then stopped, his attention completely on the TV again. “Oh fuck no,” he said. “Shit.”

He was suddenly frowning. He’d had one arm half-up, like he’d been about to wave it around, excited, but then he’d suddenly gone still. He’d obviously been expecting that something good to happen in the game, but whatever it was had gone wrong.

Lizzie put the shopping bags she was carrying on the bench.

“Just a sec,” Eric said. “I will, just when they’ve…”

He was concentrating on the screen. Lizzie stood and looked at him.

His kind of football was soccer, so it was probably a just-stopped goal that had seemed safe, then turned into a corner kick against the team he wanted to win. And he probably didn’t completely trust the goalkeeper because he spent a lot of time not trusting goalkeepers.

Or maybe it was just close to the end of the game and this was the last chance for anyone to score. That would make him worried too.

Lizzie used to see him like this all the time. She’d spent a lot of time watching him watch football. At home, like this, but also at matches. She’d used to go with him, and stand around in the wind and cold, hugging herself while Eric draped her in stripy scarves and hats, and whole stadiums of men waved their arms and got all worried, like Eric was now.

Somewhere along the way they’d stopped doing that.

Lizzie had to think to remember why.

It was when Eric noticed she didn’t really like the cold and the crowds, she realized. And that she found all the shouting a bit threatening.