“Hey, beautiful,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You sound down.”
“Brutal day,” she hedged, admitting nothing.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Put me in the witness protection program?”
“That’s above my pay grade, babe.”
“I think I just want to go to sleep, okay?” she asked sheepishly, knowing he would be able to tell something was wrong.
“Did you get your present?”
“Not yet,” she said.
“Go check your mail, slacker.”
She got up off the couch and stalked down to her mailbox while they continued talking. She carried the box upstairs and slit the tape with scissors. Pulling apart the tissue paper inside, she found a good luck troll with hot pink hair. She burst out laughing.
“That was the reaction I wanted!” he declared.
“Thank you. She’s cute.”
“She?”
“Yes, I’m naming her Lucy. Lucy the Lucky Troll.”
“I got it because you brought me good luck, or at least listening to you did.”
“Which is why everyone should listen to me and I should be queen.”
“And you give me a hard time about ego,” he teased.
“I just wish that people would listen to me.”
“We will. But you have to talk. You have to say what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want. I mean, I don’t mean that. I DO know what I want, I just don’t like how complicated it is. I want you.”
“The only part of what you just said that makes any sense to me at all is that you want me. So let’s go from that. What’s complicated? Are you married? ‘Cause I’m not.”
“No!”
“Are you gay?”
“No.”
“Okay, me neither. Are you a wanted felon? Do you have a secret terminal illness?”
“No. What are you doing?”
“Does your family hate Irish people, graphic design or the guitar?”
“Not that I know of.”