The Widowhood │ John

I become restless waiting for John to get to my house. I begin to nervously reclean the house that I had just spent the last couple of days going over. When I run out of the things to wipe down, I decide to sit outside on my front steps. I am thinking that the fresh air will give me a doze of reality and I won’t be so nervous. It is a beautiful, warm May day outside. My front yard is alive and as I sit on the steps of my house, I think about how good, but crazy this all feels. I wonder if I will like him as much in person as I have liked him over the phone. Would he still like me? Is this whole New York thing absolutely crazy? What if we hate each other and it all blows up once we get there? 

Suddenly, he is pulling into my driveway, and I realize that this was it. I had to dial back the anxiety and the crazy thoughts deep into the center of Katherine-ville and allow myself to be open to John and to whatever was going to come from this weekend in New York. I stand up, rubbing my hands together trying to get them to stop sweating. He’s already out of his car and rummaging in his passenger seat as I walk over to him. I feel my breath catch in my chest as he turns, and we look at each other for the first time. He is more handsome in person than he is in his pictures, but it is the look that he is giving me that makes my steps feel suddenly a little off. 

There is a look that a man will give you when he sees a woman that he is inexplicably drawn to and one that he views as his. It is not a look that a woman will see often and when it is given, it is usually a significant moment where a woman knows that her life is about to change again. It is a piercing look that you feel to your core and if you are as drawn to him as he is to you, your stomach will flip in all kinds of ways sending waves of little butterflies through you. It is possessive and animalistic. I have only ever gotten such a look twice in my life, once from Phil when our dating was turning into something serious and now again from John on my front lawn. I had not been expecting that, and he knocked me off center at that moment. What surprised me even more was how when I met that piercing animalistic look was how quiet my head became and how in that moment all I saw was John and felt all kinds of butterflies fluttering through me.

I knew at that moment that he feels it too because as soon as it started, he was already apologizing for staring at me. I don’t remember what I said as it took several more moments for my brain to reconnect to the rest of me, but I probably smiled and made a joke. He hands me flowers and a loaf of sourdough bread that he made. I think it’s one of the sweetest things that anyone has ever given me. There is a subtle giddiness that seems to settle over the both of us and I invite him inside. We make small talk about things as I put the bread away and my new flowers into water. We stand in my kitchen at the island and have one of our first kitchen chats, the first of many that will follow. There is a gentle tension that falls in between us that adds a little nervousness to the giddiness, I suddenly feel a little stupid…a little love-struck.

And then just as suddenly as my life had changed, we are on our way to the train station and into Manhattan.