The Great Escape

"I have some questions," she said as she plonked herself right in between the TV. Lucas knew this was coming, this had been happening from the time she decided she wanted to make dinner. She made mac and cheese from scratch, in his head he called it the 'I am done with the world and I am going to blame it on you' meal. He settled in and made himself comfortable for the long night he was about to have with his bowl of cheesy comfort, she did make amazing mac and cheese.

"Luke are you listening to me?"

"Kimberly, I always listen to you. Also, it is just the two of us here and you are sitting in front of the only other thing that has a voice..."

"I just asked a simple question."

"Yes, Kim I am listening to you."

Taking in a huge gulp of her mac and cheese, she almost didn’t want to say anything, but she decided against it. “I’m confused about things, they are just never what they seem to be. Love is not like it is supposed to be, friendships are not how they are supposed to be, LIFE by itself is not how it is supposed to be,” she said with the dramatic flair that only Kimberly could muster when she was down and low. Lucas knew that he shouldn’t be saying anything, even though he knew there was a pause but that pause was because she was now trying to frame her words so they didn’t come out the way she thought them in her head. She was, right about then, editing on this mental notepad vigorously. He had another forkful of his mac and cheese.

“You know this is weird, life is so weird. Why does it give us a better option when and only when we have already made a decision. If someone has made a decision to stay, life will give you a golden opportunity but the thing is, you can’t stay anymore. And then you have to pick and choose, life just wants to test if you’re a flaker, and that is just so unfair!” she said as she took another mouthful of mac and cheese. Lucas knew this was his cue to look a little sympathetic, which he did without even trying. “We are also so weird. When we get an opportunity and when that gets taken away from us, we just sit and start figuring out a way to make that opportunity taken away as a good thing, we look for pluses in a thing that we should be angry about. You know, we should get like an allotted days to be angry about the things and crib and cry about them for a while before we start accepting the pluses. But then there are always people around giving you advice and telling you it’s going to be okay, but it’s not is it. Why can’t we mourn a lost opportunity?”

“Kim, you always have your crib days when something doesn’t go your way, sometimes those days turn into a week. You mourn a lost opportunity very well, and the people around you don’t mean anything negative when they say things are going to be okay. They are trying to help you accept and also maybe see that people them, those people are around even though your opportunity is lost,” he said, mostly to himself because he knew Kimberly wasn’t listening.

“What about escapes? We were supposed to be each other’s escapes weren’t we? Then why do we want to escape each other now? And it isn’t a one time thing now, it happens more often than not. There were supposed to be perks of getting to know each other but now knowing each other a little too well isn’t all that great. This stuff we weren’t warned about, that knowing someone all too well isn’t going to be an amazing thing. Like I know you are on auto-pilot at the moment and probably aren’t listening to anything I am saying but you know the faces that you need to make every moment I say something depending on my tone. We were supposed to be the thing for each other that wasn’t on auto-pilot and before you bring it up, I did hear everything you said. Yes I did have crib days, but when was the last time I did? Now I self soothe before the demolition even begins.”

For the first time in forever, Kimberly pushed her bowl of mac and cheese away and started looking for a comfortable position on the couch that she couldn’t suddenly find. The air in the room had suddenly gotten stuffy.

“Kim, no one said it was going to be easy. Life in general wasn’t going to be easy. There were going to be plenty lost opportunities and plenty days where you’d regret your decisions. Yes, we were supposed to be escapes for each other but the truth here is there is no escaping this anymore. Hugs don’t solve problems and sometimes we aren’t the ones we need when things are going south. It is messy, it is all messy. Life is pathetic, people are mean and they are always going to be. And we will want to escape each other more often than not. But here’s what we can do for each other, we can be those two people in the whole world who thinks the other walks on water no matter what. And baby, I think you dance on water like the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and ever will see. I am going to forget that sometimes, but I know when I see you, I will remember. EVERY TIME.”

“You are not so bad yourself Mr charming, I'm glad you use your ears too. They are kinda cute,” she said in between wiping a red nose with his t-shirt and pulling on his ears.

In between all of that, Kim did manage to find her comfortable position. As she snuggled closer and folded herself into his lap and it all seemed like just another day when he involuntarily let her, and rubbed her back while he spoke. Escape or not, there was always a life raft available when they needed it, they figured.