Lost

“I’d be lost without you.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I know. Teasing.”

But it was true. Both ways. We found each other after we’d each flamed out with others. We’d chat in the breakroom with coffees autopsying our latest disasters. The time my date left early because his mom called and her cat got out. (I never found out whether it was found. I didn’t want to know.)

The time he told his date she had spinach in her teeth and she pulled out dental floss at the table and then smiled at him and he said it was gone though it wasn’t. He signaled for the check.

Things were so bad that we both wondered about half-way through some dates whether it was in the bottom ten and how to explain what went wrong on Monday.

I was tentative. “Do you ever think about, I don’t know, us going out?”

He lied and said he hadn’t. Which he admitted when we were both naked on a Sunday afternoon soon thereafter.

I don’t know if we ever went on a “date.” We left the office one Friday in the rain. I had an umbrella. He didn’t. We got close to one another and I kissed him at one corner and he kissed me at the next.

I know that I’d be lost without him. I’ll never admit that. Although I do mention when he has spinach in his teeth.