He took it with him when he left two years ago.
And just as easily carried it back.
• • •
I tell him he looks like one of the puffed-up fish in the tank by the entrance.
Prickly but cute.
He doesn’t like that.
He responds by pretending to hang me over the shark tank.
They’re nurse sharks.
Completely harmless.
I know this factually.
I cry like a small girl anyway.
He laughs so hard he has to hold onto the railing to stay upright.
A family of four stares at us.
I wave at them while being dangled over a tank of technically harmless sharks by my boyfriend.
My boyfriend.
• • •
I haven’t used that word yet.
Even in my head.
It fits so well it almost scares me.
We find a bench and sit with overpriced, slightly questionable hotdogs and I stare at him in a way I’ve never been allowed to stare at him before.
Openly.
In daylight.
In public.
Like he’s really mine.
Because he is.
He’s eating his hotdog and watching the crowd and completely relaxed, like he’s always been this person, like this has alwaysbeen us, and I’m sitting here approximately two seconds from making a scene about it.
He catches me looking.
Of course he does.
He always catches me.
“Ro.” A warning in his voice. The familiar one. “You really can’t look at me like that.”
