(The prompt was one word – click. I had 60 minutes to write and polish this story.)      

 

Click. Click. Click.

If Ramona heard Brian click that pen one more time, she swore she’d go over there, grab it out of his hands and punch it up and down until the pen broke and there was a giant hole in his paper and the table.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

She looked across the table. At least Brian was writing, and Ramona hoped he was doing what he was supposed to be doing – relationship mending. On one side of the paper, he was supposed to list why they should stay together. On the right-hand side, why they should split up.

Click. Click. Click.

He was back to thinking.

Ramona sighed and looked at the paper in front of her. A neat and orderly person, she’d folded her paper in half and labeled the left-hand side “Reasons to Stay.” On the right-hand side, in bold letters, she’d printed “Reasons to Leave.”

The therapist they’d been seeing suggested they create these lists as homework. Ramona thought homework was far behind her, back in her college days 10 years ago. She’d attended a small university near her hometown right out of high school. Ramona, always a perfectionist, sailed through her accounting classes. She stayed an extra year and earned her master’s degree. Soon after, Ramona was hanging her Certified Professional Accountant certificate on an office wall.

To clarify, she’d used a level and the ruler on her phone to ensure the certificate was centered, but she couldn’t live with an off-center picture on the wall.

The sound of paper being wadded up and thrown against the wall jolted Ramona out of her thoughts. The overhead light was on, and the fan was slowly spinning over the table. The smell of baked fish hung in the air, and Ramona wished she hadn’t steamed broccoli to go with the fish.

Brian was running his hands through his curly hair, and he’d taken his glasses off. He was staring at the wall, a look on his face Ramona knew well after five years of living together. It was “I’m frustrated.”

Brian sensed she was looking at him, so he picked up the pen.

Click. Click…

“What’s up?” she said, hoping to stop that infernal clicking and to also find out what he was thinking.

“I don’t want to do this,” he said, tossing the pen on the table.

Ramona felt her body grow cold. Did he mean he didn’t want to continue the relationship, or he didn’t want to keep writing the list. If she asked the question, she’d have her answer, and that was an answer she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

But sooner or later, she knew, the answers had to come out. The ledger sheet had to balance, the numbers had to go in the correct column. So it was with relationships. They had to balance. They had to fit into the categories.

Respect. Companionship. Trust.

Ramona stayed quiet, the pen in her hand. She felt her thumb move to the top of the pen, and she started to click it. Not to get back at Brian but out of nervousness.

“I know it’s not easy, but I think it’ll help us see our strong points and our weak points,” Ramona said quietly. “Then we can work on things from there.”

Brian stood up and took a deep breath. Ramona noticed how wiry he was and remembered how she’d been attracted to his basketball-player frame. For someone tall and thin, Brian moved with a cat-like quickness. He did that in everything – he was quick to laugh, quick to anger but quick to get his temper under control.

Whereas Ramona’s life clicked easily into neat and tiny boxes, Brian’s life was more like ping-pong.

“Don’t you think this is stupid?” he said, his hands on his hips. That was a loaded question, Ramona thought. There was a long list of things she thought were stupid – filling out questionnaires time after time at the doctor’s office, having to put in a two-step verification whenever she wanted to access her cable bill and dealing with someone who didn’t understand that when someone gave you a task to complete, you did it.

“Well, no, I don’t think it’s stupid,” Ramona said slowly. “It might seem a little silly, but if we can’t talk about things, then we have to write them down. That’ll at least give us a starting point.”

Brian grunted and went over to the refrigerator. Food was always soothing to him, so Ramona kept lots of fruits and cut-up vegetables in nicely labeled containers.

But Brian didn’t pay any attention to the refrigerator side – he opened the freezer door and took out a carton of rocky road ice cream. Then he went over to the drawer and got out a spoon.

He wasn’t going to eat that right out of the carton, Ramona thought. She started to remind him to get a bowl, but something told her to let him blow off a little steam.

Instead, she looked to the other side of the room and saw the ball of paper Brian had thrown against the wall. She got up and walked over to the paper, bent down and picked it up. She held it like a snowball in her hand.

“What happened?” she asked him.

“I got frustrated,” he said, getting a big scoop of ice cream and downing it in one bite.

Ramona pulled the paper closer to her.

“Can I read what you wrote?’ she said.

Brian shrugged.

“If you want,” he said. “I just couldn’t get my thoughts to click, you know. They’re all over the place.”

Ramona wanted to tell him she hadn’t expected anything more. Brian was always all over the place, but he was a soothing mirror image to her rigid, always-in-control personality.

She sat down at the table and unfolded the paper. She smoothed it out and saw Brian had initially made a headline for the two columns. Ramona had expected to see a blank piece of paper, but there was quite a bit written. But instead of the two sides with pluses and minuses, Brian had written one paragraph.

Before reading anything, she looked up at him. Brian was looking at her, almost holding his breath.

“You didn’t do the list,” was all she could say. She thought about her own paper. She’d printed all the reasons why she should stay on the left-hand side, just as she’d been assigned.

Stability. Companionship. Tenure.

She didn’t want to use the word “tenure” but she couldn’t think of a word that meant they were already five years down the line, why throw things away? It was like a treasury bond – the interest grew slowly, but after 20 years, you’d have a substantial sum of money.

“I know I didn’t follow the rules, which probably makes you crazy, but I wrote what I felt,” he said. He spooned another scoop out of the carton.

“Go ahead and read it, Ramona,” he said. “I don’t want to have any secrets.”

Ramona wasn’t sure what he’d written and she was terrified that when she finished reading, things would be over between them. That feeling of being terrified of losing him wasn’t what she thought she’d feel when they started this exercise. She was the one who had everything together – she kept up with their bank account, knew the passwords to their credit cards and made sure they contributed to their 401k accounts. If their relationship didn’t make it, she’d be fine. She could take care of herself with no problem. Then why, she asked herself, was she so scared to read what he’d written.

Finally, she looked down at the wrinkled paper and began to read.

“I remember seeing you for the first time. We were downtown at that dark bar on ladies night. You were with a bunch of girls, but I didn’t see them. Only you. Your pretty red hair and that blue headband caught my eye. I started talking to you and we clicked. I’ve never regretted talking to you that night. In fact, I haven’t regretted talking to you every day for the past five years. I have regretted the things I haven’t said. That pretty much boils down to two words – thank you. Whether or not you realize it, you saved me, Ramona. You’re my anchor.”

Suddenly, tears filled her eyes. When she looked up, Brian was as still as she’d ever seen him. She was ashamed of what she’d written.

Stability. Companionship. Tenure.

Those were words you’d write about a retirement account, not a boyfriend. Looking at Brian, thinking about what he’d written, she thought of those last two words – my anchor. The thing about anchors, she thought, was they were heavy. They didn’t change. They bogged things down. They didn’t allow ships to drift in the waves to new adventures.

She reached down, picked up the paper she’d written, balled it up and threw it against the wall. It wasn’t until this moment that she realized she wasn’t the one who saved Brian. He’d saved her from a black-and-white life. He was the color in her landscape, the one who didn’t always paint the sun yellow.

Ramona needed him more than he needed her, and that realization finally clicked with her.

She got up and went over to the kitchen drawer. She fished out a spoon and went over to Brian.

“Rocky road, huh?” she said. “Is it good?”

Brian smiled.

“Only one way to find out,” he said and held the carton out to her.

Ramona’s spoon hovered over the open carton, and Brian wiggled it around.

“No such thing as a wimpy first taste, Ramona,” he said smiling. “Go ahead and get a huge taste. Dig that spoon all the way to the bottom. What stays on the spoon goes in your mouth.”

She followed his advice, and the ice cream melted on her tongue. She’d closed her eyes to savor the taste, and when she opened them, Brian was looking closely at her.

“We click, you know,” he said softly. “Just like this ice cream. Who’d have thought marshmallows would make a difference in chocolate ice cream. But they do.”

Ramona nodded, too full of emotion to talk. Brian put the carton down on the counter, taking her spoon and his and throwing them in the sink. Then he gently stroked her hair, leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“Grow old with me, Ramona,” he said. “I’ll appreciate that you alphabetize the spices in the cabinet if you’ll appreciate that I’ll make you put down your laptop and come dance with me.”

Ramona leaned against him, the texture of his sweater soft on her cheek. She closed her eyes and let go. She knew they weren’t out of the woods but for the first time in months, they were at least on the same path. She’d always be the one with the compass and map and he’d always be the one pointing out the flowers and birds along the path.

But that’s what made them click.

“What do you say we forget the lists and go to bed early,” Brian said.

“Great idea,” said Ramona, and without another thought about melting ice cream or clicky pens on the table, the two embraced, kissed and wordlessly began anew.

— The End —