Forever Yours

Meet the Parents [35]

35.

Maureen

Sunlight played on my closed eyes. A slow, lazy smile spread across my face as I peeled back my eyelids.

Ryan's bedroom.

I looked all around me in silent, steady wonder. Sitting up, I pushed back the blankets tangled around me and stretched. The clock on Ryan's bedside table said it was 8:02 in the morning. Ryan was nowhere to be seen. The bedding he had slept on had been picked up and left on a chair. My clothing from last night was folded in a neat pile at the end of the bed. They were warm and dry, like they'd just come out of the dryer.

Suddenly I noticed a folded paper next to the clock that I hadn't noticed before. Maureen, it said, in Ryan's handwriting.

I hope you slept well, love. I left to get us some breakfast. There's a (new) toothbrush in the bathroom and a (clean) towel if you want to shower. Be right back --

Ryan

My chest tightened. Ryan... my Ryan. I gripped the note and my clothing to my chest and took a long, deep breath. Gah. I wished he was right in front of me so I could fling my arms around him.

-

After showering and doing my hair, I stood for a moment in Ryan's bedroom looking all around me. How was I here? How did this happen? I thought in amazement. If I wasn't seeing it I almost wouldn't believe it. My chest ached with happiness.

I had to wait for Ryan to return so I decided to do a little exploring. Heading downstairs, I wandered through the rooms, running my hand along the walls.

The first bottle I found was a Jack Daniel's. It sat, empty, on the kitchen counter.

The next was an empty bottle of what was once tequila, lying on the table - surrounded by a sea of empty cans of beer.

Sitting on top of the TV was a half-empty box of cigarettes. A knot of unease formed in my stomach. I found a garbage bag and went throughout the house, collecting all the discarded glass bottles, counting them up- and becoming increasingly distressed as the tally grew.

When Ryan returned, he found me sitting at his kitchen table, bent over a piece of paper, full garbage bag at my side. I didn't look up when he came into the room.

"Maureen?" He asked after a quiet moment. I didn't respond. "Maureen...?"

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

When he got no answer, he calmly sat down across from me, a paper bag of croissants in one hand and a tray of hot coffee in the other. I didn't look up from the notepaper as he pulled the food out of the bag and wrapped it in a napkin to hand it to me. I didn't take it, only frowned deeper as the sum on my paper grew.

"Congratulations," I said finally. "You have officially removed six point zero six hours of your life by smoking the twenty-six cigarettes that were absent from those boxes right there. And that's only a rough estimate. So, if one day, when, you know, you're sixty or something- depending on whether you live that long or not, that is- and we're just sitting on a veranda, talking or whatever, and you suddenly keel over and die- we will know why!" I ended my lecture in a furious shout and Ryan looked at me with his amused and serious eyes, not fazed in the least. I watched, disconcerted, as he took a sip of his coffee.

"That all?"

"No. No. That's not all. You've become a raging alcoholic, haven't you?"

"I have not," he protested, laughingly.