milkshakes and fries

It's snowing outside, and I'm reading a book about international law statutes. I'm holding a cup of hot tea between my hands, warming them, trying to concentrate. I like his desk, but I work on his dining room table, with art books and novels scattered about, and the Harrowgate Toffee I brought back for him from Cambridge. Just slam the door when you leave, he told me, before going to the movies. I like working in his flat, surrounded by his things.

I took him to his first classical concert. He overtipped the usherette, so that she moved us to wonderful seats in an empty theatre box, full centre, and we listened to Beethoven together. Then we drank lots of champagne and I forgot the entire conversation we had. I was afraid I had said something wrong, something mean, something scared, but the next morning he was there, and he hugged me. He was there.

Let's take this day by day. I said, OK. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to try. We have our own lives, our own things, and when we go out together to have dinner with friends, we never stay too close. But then he smiles at me from the other side of the room. There's a tacit convention between us: this is who I am, this is how I am. I'm not better than this. Day by day.

For my birthday we're going to have milkshakes and fries in the best milkshake place in Paris.

You're strange, he said. And it's strange how well we get along. We're very different.

I like him.