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We go to the Farmer’s Market, have breakfast on Saturdays, watch movies, eat lunch.

There is no picking each other up involved, and we never do things after dark.

I brush her hair off her face and put my hand on the small of her back when we move through enclosed spaces.

We hug hello and kiss goodbye. Neither of us lingers. We’re going slow. The slowest.

Liz touches me a lot. Strokes my bicep, squeezes my hand. Hugs me quickly around the waist from the side, then lets go just as quickly.

It’s a bit torturous, going slow.

But I get to know everything about her.

For example, I’ve learned how she takes her coffee and how she likes her eggs. I know she’s probably the only person in the world who doesn’t like bacon and I pretend to break up with her over the fact.

I’ve learned how much she loves her brothers, even the older annoying one she calls Mickey, and her stories make me miss my own brother something fierce.

She tells me about her parents and the way she and her brothers grew up around the car repair business. Her childhood was much more modest than mine, and she babysat for pocket money and helped out at her dad’s shop since she was very young. She’s always wistful when she mentions her parents and I ask when she will go see them, and she says she’s not ready, because she knows they disapprove of her new life here. She says she’s not strong enough not to cave under pressure when she’s face-to-face with them. I tell her she’s strong enough, that she can do whatever she wants, and I think about my parents and how they’ve always, always had my and my brother’s back.

Liz tells me about office gossip and swears me to secrecy, which I have no problem with because I have no idea who any of the people involved are. Her eyes sparkle with mischief because she knows gossiping is bad, but she can’t help it. She isn’t mean about anyone, more like she’s delighted to learn about people’s little cracks in the facade, such as that rule enforcers often end up breaking the rules. In those moments, she seems very young, younger than her age, and I feel old and weary. I wonder if I am actually too old for her, if whatever life I used to live is already too much and has made me too jaded. I remember my deepest depths of depression, how I wallowed after Kim and I had split, and I wonder if I’ve been irrevocably changed, if I will ever again be the man I used to be more than a decade ago, before everything went to shit. I hate that I’m not that man for Liz right now, because she deserves the happiest, most optimistic version of me, and I don’t know if I will ever get him back.

****

Joe: I wanna check if something violates the Slowness Accords

Liz: Shoot

Joe: We’ve been getting together during daytime

Which has been amazing

Liz: Yes?

Joe: I want to go to the movies. Or see you after dark

Liz: I really want that too

You have no idea how much

Honestly

Joe: I’m sensing a but coming up

Liz: But I am worried I will start to feel trapped again

Like I did when we first met and things moved really fast

Joe: I don’t want you to feel trapped

But I don’t want you to think I don’t want you

Or that I am a dude with no initiative

Because I want you badly

Very. Badly

Liz: