It is raining. I was told to expect rain. On the flight over, I kept dreading it and sent you a telepathic message to bring an umbrella. You used to tell people that our bond was so strong that we could read each other's minds. You would mention at parties, and end with "we're always finishing," and then my bit was to say, "each other's sentences." Those who had heard this before would laugh, politely. You found this hysterical every time, and you would laugh so hard you would cup your hand over your mouth and wrinkle your nose, and then I'd start laughing, and everyone would look at us, and it would make me feel like I was an alien, or something even more unremarkably out of place.

The highway is strange and soaking tonight. You squint and try to peer under the mist and the rain that is peeling off of the tires of everyone in front of us. The road is looping back and blurring into itself, and it feels like we have been driving in circles forever, or hardly at all. All the shopping malls and car dealerships are closed and sprawling out, indefinitely. All of these exits look deluded and foreign and none of them lead home. You look tired, you say. I haven't eaten since breakfast, I say. Breakfast is the best meal of the day, so you can have it twice, you say, and pull into the diner (it doesn't matter which). This is your way of reminding me of the late nights in college when you would stay at my apartment every Saturday and I would make eggs over easy and toast for you after your night class and say the exact same thing in your ear. You remind me of this because you told me once that this is what made you want to stay with me when things started getting rough with us, when I found a place in Brooklyn and you were still student teaching and smoking a pack a day in Montclair. You remind me of this because it explains to you why I left, and why I came back, in one easy-to-swallow anecdote.

They give me free refills on coffee so I put down one cup before you even open your menu. Two cups of coffee in and I am asking you to come out to California with me. I've been wanting to ask you since I first got there, but I ask you like it's an impulse decision, like the waitress just happened to slip the idea in that first cup. I tell you about my job offer, the sitcom with the dad from that show about the flight academy, and how I can help get you settled down for a couple of months while you find a school to teach in. It won't be hard, I say. I know people. I know pull-out couches with down comforters. I am confident. I am trembling. I owe $15,000 in student loans. I tell you almost everything while you stare off into me. I talk to you about the weather there, how in three weeks I have never seen it rain. I talk to you about the smell, the clear air (comparatively), and the streets that turn into beaches if you follow them through. I tell you about my Tom Sizemore sighting and how even the billboards are for products I'm interested in buying. But mostly I talk about how the food over there, how everything is organic and fresh and how much better it feels to eat. This stuff, it's like someone poured salt on cardboard, I say. And I think you're offended, slightly, but I don't know why. You didn't make anything.

The waitress comes by with a fresh pot, taking our orders and topping me off with my third cup. How do you like your eggs? she asks me. Over easy comes tumbling out of your mouth. They are the first real words you've said since I offered a new home to you and I am both terrified and comforted they are about the state of white and yolk from pan to plate. That is how you like them, right? you ask. It's not going to be that big of a change, I say. We don't have to get married, I insist. This is not a proposal to get married. But it is, really, and my eggs come out salty and overdone. And I am poking my fork at them, prodding around their blunt, flaky roundness, listening to your loud, empty phrases about responsibility and settling and I feel myself stumbling around the arguments when all I really want to say is this -- I am moving to California and if you don't come out with me, it's over. I want to spend my life with you, but I can write you out, easy. I slept until eleven when I was out there, and didn't eat a thing until midafternoon.

You sprinkle some salt on your eggs and a cough erupts out from you, like you have been suppressing it for hours. If I go, it has to be serious, you say, throwing down a couple bucks for tip. You have to love me like this. And you make a wedding band with your finger. Forever. No, you don't understand, I say, and place my hand on yours. I love you like this. And I kiss your forehead. Like this. And I trace a line with my lips down your cheek. Like this. And I come tumbling into your mouth, and your tongue feels salty and wet circling around mine, so limp it is almost dangling, almost cusped on the edge of escaping.


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