simple as it should be

"but you'll be fine," he says, stroking my hair as we lay in bed before drifting to sleep. "don't be sad."
"i know," i whisper, but the tears, silent and large, hesitate before rolling steadily down my cheeks. i can't help it, though i know i'm being melodramatic. absence makes the heart grow fonder, my mother reminded me on the phone that day... but i think, how could i possibly be more fond of this boy?
he wraps his arms around me and kisses me on the forehead. "i love you. more than anything." my eyes close, and soon i am sleeping.
today is day two... it has been twenty-eight hours without him. between now and wednesday, i am alone in our apartment, this little oasis which we have made. i moved in six weeks ago, started my new job three weeks ago, and since then our lives have fell into a happy routine. i arrive home from work after him, he is lying on the couch reading or watching tv. i come in and he switches off the tv, or puts down his book, and i go sit down on the futon with him and kiss him on the forehead and the cheek, and run my hand through his short hair. one of us will make dinner, though we often make it together, in our kitchen which barely has room for one, let alone two.
we pick the recipes together over the weekends, make a shopping list and then go to the store. as a child i hated grocery shopping with my mother, but with zachary it is fun... i love picking out produce, squeezing avocados to test their ripeness. we wander the aisles together, musing about snacks and bottles of wine, making a game of guessing how much we will spend. we have a $100 a week budget, and we each have to guess the dollar amount in the cart. i am usually right, but coupons and shopping discount cards throw me off. i like looking at other people's carts, vouyeristically imagining what kind of lives they have. the couple in front of us in the checkout have beets, which zach and i both hate. the woman behind us has cat litter... zach and i want a cat but we can't have one in our apartment. then there are the babies in the carts, who laugh at zach and scarcely pay attention to me. will we get to have our own kids one day?
after dinner we often go for walks, never on any set route. sometimes we walk through the public garden and boston common, stopping to play with dogs and laughing at the plump, bold squirrels who take nuts right out of people's hands. other times we walk on the river bank, holding hands and staying out of the way of runners, skaters, and bikers as we talk about work, friends, and sometimes the future. we walk home on the mall, between the trees and past the statues of poets, sailors, and soldiers.
when we get home we watch jeopardy together. i secretly long to be on jeopardy someday, though i am only sometimes truly good at it. (i am more successful at wheel of fortune, since letters and words just make sense to me most of the time. but the snob in me prefers the thinking-man's game show.) then we often watch movies, on nights i don't go to the gym, since our shows our in re-runs. netflix has been losing money on us, and we watch a strange variety of films, often eating popcorn or ice cream and nestled together on the futon. after the film we exchange thoughts on it, sometimes, but usually i am practically falling asleep and start getting ready for bed while the news is on. i am usually asleep soon after eleven, desiring my eight hours but often getting closer to six. (we spend at least a good half hour a night sleepily tugging blankets from one another, an arrangement i am not sure i will ever get used to, having spent the previous twenty-three years of my life contentedly rolling myself into a blanket log.)
most mornings i wake up before my alarm, to the sun obtrusively shining through the curtains and the buzz of saws and thumping of hammers starting their day in the alley behind us. (seven a.m. is when the city noise ordinance lifts, and the workers are always punctual.) i lie quietly, half dreaming, and listen to zachary lightly snoring next to me. though getting out of bed seems unattractive, i rouse myself twenty minutes later, and putter around as is always my morning custom. i have never been orderly, nor a morning person, and i never have the same morning routine. i gather my thoughts and collect my senses over cheerios sometimes, or take a shower first others, or spend too much time standing in the closet debating what to wear, or sometimes end up sitting on the futon and looking out the window for a fair share of minutes. usually this results in a scramble to get in the shower and get dressed before zach gets up and gets into the bathroom, because i need to leave by eight-thirty at the absolute latest. i walk as briskly as my legs work at that hour, which is to say, fairly slowly, to the subway stop and wait for my train. like me in the mornings, the train is contrary and doesn't seem to adhere to a particular schedule, but thanks to my short commute i usually make it to work with a few moments to spare.
the days at work go by fairly quickly. i am still meeting new people in an office of eighty, and still learning new things. my boss is an amazingly nice woman, and luckily she seems to operate on the same wavelength which i do, which is to say she doesn't think work is something to be stressed out about. she has already let me go early several times. not to say that i don't like where i work, because i do, but i can see there will be days when my position will bore me, at least in the beginning. in a few months i might feel more comfortable jumping into projects outside my position description, but for now i am content to do the basics and get used to my environs.
not to mention the fact, i now have enough projects to keep my summer quite busy. we are meeting with a potential wedding photographer soon, and i have to work on a final seminar paper from last semester which has been accepted to a conference in the fall. my days are full and happy, and life is good... so how can i not be sad when the other half of my team is away? part of my life is missing, even if it just for a few days.
"you'll enjoy the time to yourself," he said. and i don't mind sitting and having time to type this, and being able to take up all of the full bed and not wrestle for blankets at night. but still, i don't like knowing that my happy routine has been disturbed, and no one is here to kiss my forehead at night, or tickle me in the kitchen as i am making stir-fry. i don't like knowing that my love is one thousand miles and sixty-one away, and i am here. i miss him. so perhaps absence does make the heart grow fonder, for him and for the little life which we have made... our little slice of paradise.