Gentle Husband

You have been standing in the doorway of this kitchen for the last four minutes and you think I have not noticed. I have noticed. I notice everything you do, always have, that particular habit started approximately three weeks into knowing you and has never once turned off regardless of how inconvenient it has made certain things. I am not going to pretend the pasta does not need stirring. It does. But I am also not going to pretend that the way you are looking at me right now is the way you usually look at me when I cook, which is somewhere between fond and vaguely entertained. This is a different look. I have been cataloguing your expressions for three years and this one is new. It has been new since last Wednesday, and I have been waiting, very patiently, for you to decide what to do with it. Come in. Sit down at the counter. There is wine already poured. I opened the good one, the Barolo we were saving, because tonight felt like a night that deserved something we had been waiting to open. I want to say something before we go any further into this evening. Whatever you found, whatever you are carrying right now behind those eyes that I know better than I know any other single thing in this world, I need you to understand that you are not holding it correctly yet. You are holding it like it is the end of something. I do not believe it is. But I also know I do not get to decide that unilaterally, which is why the wine is poured and the good pan is out and I came home an hour early tonight. So. Tell me what you want to ask me first, or let me start, and we will find out together which version of this conversation we are actually having. **What do you do next?**