Windows

Icy grey snow crunches under my heels as I turn onto the street a block away from my office. The sun is already starting to set, casting shadows of bare trees across the sidewalk that leads me into a windowless Irish pub, where I will nurse a tall beer for well over an hour after the office is locked for the night. In the pub I sit on one of the high stools and absently scroll through my phone’s camera roll; the brightest thing under the Edison bulbs that hang from the low ceiling. Another hour passes this way with only one more beer set on my coaster, until I have scrolled so far back in my camera roll that my college roommates are smile drunkenly up at me, covered in Halloween face paint. A photo from the last day before my senior year is the first thing to catch my attention all week.

That summer had been hot, but windy, as if the campus had been adrift on the sea. The daylight was eternal but the breeze took up my thoughts and tossed them always into tomorrow. 

I walked across the brickwork of the quad, running my thumb over the wicker handle of the basket carrying my new textbooks. It was the last day before classes started again for the fall, and I had everything I needed. There was nothing left to do to prepare; only the afternoon in front of me. I pushed the glass door of the Earth Sciences building open with my free arm. There was a hallway to cross, then an exit, then a short walk across the train tracks to your house. 

I stepped past your unlocked front door and over the hallway carpet to your room. The door was ajar and I pushed it open swiftly so it wouldn’t creak. You were lying over the bedcovers at an angle, turned away from me, your head barely resting on the corner of a large pillow. I placed my basket down on the windowsill beside a simple glass vase filled with the summer’s last lavender blossoms. The scent filled the room and then waned with the breeze through your open window. I crawled up onto the bed beside you. Your eyes opened slowly as I laid my fingertips on your cheek. You must’ve been asleep before I came in because it was warm to the touch. I sat upright on the bed, let my fingers wander down to your bare back, and looked through the eggshell-coloured window frame to the dense crab apple tree that consumed the backyard in its branches. The wooden slats of a simple oat-coloured trellis were almost indistinguishable through the feathery white flowers in late bloom across the entirety of the view. The house was mid-century and so the glass in the window was single-paned and imperfect. Original glass is rare in houses that old, and therefore valuable, though I did not think anyone valued the original paint that was flaking off the thin wooden crossbeams of the window frame.

One lacey white curtain was held back from the window by a white plastic clothespin; the other had been pulled across the expanse of the sill. It’s wide mesh pattern made the view pixelated like a video game from the 90s. I imagined the dog from Duck Hunt leaping out of the tree branches. Instead, I watched as the breeze brushed the curtain gently against my basket, the glass vase, and a short ceramic watering bowl with a wide spout that sat diligently by its side. In between the flower vase on the left and my basket of books on the right was a basic coffee mug, no doubt half full of instant coffee that you made that morning and forgot about. These things were all silhouettes to me, outlined in detail by the sweeping afternoon sunlight that illuminated the light wood of the sill. 

A flowery scent entered the room each time the air passed through the curtain, and then faded again. I took my phone out of my jeans and focused it’s camera on the curtain where heart shapes formed out of squares fluttered in the lazy breeze flowing through the fabric. The bottom edge of the curtain had hearts arranged in a clover surrounded by diamonds knit so finely they disappeared in the shadows between the folds of the curtain as it moved with the breeze. I snapped a picture.

I turned my phone to show you. Your eyes opened, studying it for a second, and then you smiled and closed them again. I slid my phone back in my pocket and with my other hand touched the top of your head, where the pillow was holding your hair back from your forehead.  Your eyes lifted to focus on my face and we smiled at the same time, which only made us both smile much wider. You brought your bare foot over to my leg and touched my left calf with your toe; it was ice. I pulled my legs up and laughed. You were still grinning. I slid my legs back down to cup your foot under my knee to keep it warm. Your feet were always cold. I remember your downturned head studying my legs where they covered your foot, and you murmuring, maybe without thinking, “Marry me.” 

I thought about it for a few seconds and whispered back, honestly, “okay.” 

I think you knew I meant it. Then I looked back at the window; at the curtains and the lavender and your coffee mug and my basket of books; and I dreamt of tomorrow.

I slide off the bar stool and put some cash on the counter. It is just as dark outside as it was inside. Shoving my phone and wallet into my back pockets, I listen to my heels scrape through the snow too quickly.

I slow down, take one step as I inhale the cold and another step to exhale. One at a time, carefully placing my heel before my toe, heel, toe, heel, toe. I stop at a light. The crosswalk says GO, but I know it only takes 18 seconds to cross, so I wait until the numbers flash down to 18, then take big steps over the white lines. I stand at the other side for the time it takes the light to say GO again. I pull my phone out. It is still open to the photo of the crab apple tree in your backyard through the window. I delete it. Then I walk home slower than I have yet, eventually  within sight of my house that has no lights on in the windows.