"man, you wouldn't believe how much i hate mondays. even after a weekend of chilling with the "wife", doing absolutely nothing of significance...wait, spending time with the "wife" is significant. i'll never make the mistake of trivializing our time together so i'll re-write. after days of fun with the family, after nights of making love to my love, i would have been content if the waning hours of sunday had lasted forever and another monday had never come. still, i guess if you were pressing me for a positive about mondays it would have to be 2 for 3 dollars chicken sandwiches at "burger king". yeah, i know. 2 for 3 dollars?! i know!!! but mondays are exponentially better because of this promotional. which is a sad commentary on life, though perhaps just my own life. but hey, did i mention they're 2 for 3 dollars?! dude, that's like getting one for free!!!
alas, today is monday and the "wife" and i are in west chester, driving around like we have nothing to do. but there are kids at school and daycare and somebody's gotta go pick them up. and relatively soon too. it's a little after 1:30 and we've got less than a hour and a half to swoop the first one before making our way for the second. but we're hungry and it is monday. and an hour and a half is plenty of time to sit our asses down at a table and gaze lovingly into each other's eyes while we grab a bite to eat. she parks the car and we head into the "burger king" i've been eyeing since we hit west chester. 2 for 3? more like 4 for 6, with fries, pies and cokes. if you're gonna do it, you gotta do it right, right? there are a couple of people in front of us, an elderly gentleman and his wife, then a mother with a little boy. i touch her arm and motion for her to watch as the old man holds his wife's hand while attempting to count out correct change to pay for their food. "seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine...eight seventy-nine, there you are ma'am", his wife squeezing his hand so tightly my hand starts to hurt. but i understood. she is so frail-looking, a slight breeze would probably knock her over. and he holds on to her like he knows that. i lean down to whisper into her ear, "that's us in fifty years" and she smiles as he, tray in one hand, leads her towards a window booth. the mother asks her son what he wants to eat and he names off like twenty things, practically the left side of the menu, until his mom finally decides he'll either eat a hamburger kid's meal or go home hungry. i honestly think that kid was still ordering food after he and his mother had their food and were seated at another booth in the restaurant. i watch her, the cashier's fucking up our order and her tone is changing. why do people make her tone change? when her tone changes she's less than calm and i need her to be calm. i give her "the look" and she smirks at me. she already knows what i'm gonna say so she utters a few "woosahs" under her breath and proceeds to deal with the cashier in a much more "diplomatic" way. i'm proud of her but i already know i will be checking my food for spit, you know, just in case someone didn't feel there was sincerity in her sudden change in demeanor. our food's ready and i keep my head down, hoping they're unaware i'm really kinda suspicious about how it may or may have not been cared for. but whatever...if i find bubbles where there shouldn't be any, they're gonna need more than the "king" to stop somebody from getting stabbed with one of their plastic forks. i pick up our tray and carry it to a two-seat table where we can share an intimate lunch together. i love every moment i get to spend with the "wife" and i try not to take any of them for granted. not even a 2 for 3 dollar chicken sandwich lunch on a monday at "burger king".
"wife"...i don't exactly know when i started calling her that but i know it was pretty early in our relationship. the funny thing is people have been giving me shit about it. they've seen the myspace surveys where in which i answer those relevant questions by referring to her as the "wife". "what are you thinking about right now? the wife. what would you rather be doing right now? in bed with the wife." and for some reason that's unacceptable to them. like it's an affront to marriage or something, like i'm blaspheming the title. or when some people ask how we're doing and i tell them we're good and that i'm done looking for someone, that i've found the person that i want to spend my life with, they scoff because apparently we haven't been together long enough for me to know that. "hey, you still with your girl?" "um, yeah. you see this chain don't you?" "you shouldn't wear that, when you break up it'll just be a remainder of her." "well, we are together and that's its purpose now. i look at it and i see her smile. i hold it in my hands and i'm touching her. and she does the same. plus, we're not gonna break up. she's the one. and now i'm done." damn, a show of confidence please!!! just how long is knowing you want to be with someone supposed to take? how long until your heart knows it needs that other person to survive? who knows? i know i knew right away. i knew the first time i held her in my arms i didn't want anyone else occupying the space of my heart. she's talking to me between bites of sandwich and fries but my mind is drifting. i'm thinking about us and our future. our future. those two words... i know how i feel about her. and i know how she feels about me. i know today we've never been happier in our lives and that we owe each other more than a little bit of gratitude for that. i wonder if we'll be as happy in 5 years, or in 20 years, 50 years. and then it hits me. the fact that i'm even asking myself these questions tells me all i need to know about her and us. about what i want and what i want to do about it. so in the middle of her saying something i hadn't really been paying any attention to, i take an ring-sized onion ring from the tray and drop to one knee in front of her. she stops talking, she pretty much stops everything. she's not blinking, she's kinda just staring at me and i have to check her neck to make sure she's still breathing and hasn't gone all "mannequin" on me. one thing for sure though, she isn't laughing. she knows me well enough to know that i'm not bullshitting her with this proposal. this is no joke. yeah i can be as silly and as crazy as the best of them but i don't fuck around when it comes to my relationships, either literally or figuratively. i slide the onion ring "ring" onto her finger and i tell her that every day we've been together has been better than the day before it because every day i fall more in love with her. i tell her that i'll always love her, that nothing will ever change that, that we're forever. so, on the dirty floor of a "burger king" restaurant selling 2 for 3 dollar chicken sandwiches, i ask her to be my wife. but because of perspiring eyes and unintelligible words, it takes an employee wiping off a nearby table to tell me she said yes. i stand up to take her by the hand and we kiss for the first time knowing that "wife" isn't just a pet name anymore, it's our future.
so in the middle of her saying something i hadn't really been paying any attention to, i catch myself. she's right, we'd better get a move on if we're going to get to the school by 3. and with that, we pack up our stuff and are on our way. another monday in a forever full of mondays for us...
except not. 'cause that was long ago and now she's where she is and i'm not there. and we're wondering where we went wrong. maybe if i had proposed that monday at "burger king" things might have been different. i don't know but i think about it. i think about that and chicken sandwiches not being 2 for 3 dollars where i am."
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