“Yeah, he’s like, you know. One of those dudes.”

“One of those dudes?”

“Yeah. One of those wife dudes. All about his wife, that’s his life, his wife, yadda.”

“Hm,” I bit my cheek, and tried to keep the next bit haughty instead of giggling, “Are you one of those wife dudes?”

“No my dear, I am not,” he said, and I cackled, acted affronted, the way an affronted person would.

We met because of okCupid, back before you had to put your real name up. I didn’t really care about his username. I didn’t get the reference. My usesrname was Sharkqueefs, though, and he claims he didn’t even read my profile, he just saw my username and hit me up and asked me to the Mutter Museum, because it was a unique date idea.

I am unsure how so many Philadelphian men in the 2010s decided, independent of one another, that the Mutter Museum was a unique and romantic date idea. I had never asked the slew of them who had thus far asked me to the Mutter Museum why they thought looking at dead babies in jars was romantic.

I asked him what was up with that, though. He reacted defensively. We went back and forth for a minute, and then I stopped responding.

Then it was Valentine’s day, and I was lonely.

I hit him up because I got the reference, this time. I’d seen Frasier since then, and I understood it, and it was funny. I didn’t remember we’d talked until I opened the chat, and then I’d decided whatever, I’ll invite him over anyway.

He came over. I was living at the time with someone with even fewer social skills to cling to than I have, and they played Dragon Age: Inquisition the whole time in the same room we were in, and my dog licked his shaved head, and the whole thing was fresh and new so he laughed instead of freaking out, and I loved my dog and he could tell that, but he couldn’t tell I’d henna’d my hair and that’s why it was orange. Eventually I told him, but he kept forgetting.

I didn’t think we’d talk much at all.

We talked for four straight hours without realizing it.

The next morning he was leaving for work and we kissed, me on the step up to my porch so I stood taller than him, and he was clumsy without the awkwardness that so often goes along with that. He pushed solidly against me and I knew then for sure that there wasn’t bullshit here, at least, none of that. We agreed to meet again. I didn’t say “I love you,” but with horror I realized I’d thought it.

He grinned like he’d heard me think it, and said “Later.”

Walked towards the bus stop. Not walked, really, though–stomped, perhaps?

Charged. Almost, anyway. Almost charged.

That’s how he walks.

This was the first time I’d noticed it, and the biggest thing I had learned about him yet, and it is the thing that makes note of every other piece of my husband. He walks, sure. He walks head down and glare in place. He is not angry; he is thinking.

At any minute, he might start charging.

We know that, from the outside.