Away

Abraham had purposely told me he would talk to me in a week when the boat docked, but he knew he wouldn’t wait that long. Before he left town, he emailed Harvey without me knowing and asked for my apartment number so he could mail me a card to open on my birthday. (“I know I walk by your apartment number at least twice a week,” he later told me, “But I just look for the second door on the left, never the number.”) Whereas on my Valentine’s Day card he had scribbled a short joke, he left a lengthier message in my birthday card telling me he missed me and he was sorry he couldn’t be there with me. He included a gift card to Barnes and Noble because he knew I loved to read and thought it might occupy my time while he was away.

On my actual birthday, he turned on his phone in international waters and paid one million dollars to send me a dorky picture of him holding that day’s newspaper, pointing to the date and smiling. He was wearing the t-shirt I had bought for his birthday; I knew it wasn’t coincidental. In his hand was a fistful of gambling chips. He called me his lucky charm.

He turned on his phone the following day and paid another million dollars to tell me that the stars were beautiful and he needed me with him.

The next day he sent me a drunk video from a bar. They can’t all be overtures.

When he got home he gave me a bottle of nice gin—the good stuff—and I had a gin and tonic or six, and I told him he did everything right. He missed this big thing in my life, my first birthday with him, and he did everything he possibly could to make me feel special. Only I was crossing the line into sloppy drunk, so I rambled, to which he laughed at me and told me I was cute when I was drunk and telling him that he was perfect. Well he isn’t perfect, what he did was perfect, and you get the idea about the rambling.

I love this man.