I watch her.
She doesn’t notice, or if she does, she doesn’t acknowledge it.
She sits at her lit companion desk and clicks away on her keyboard. It keeps her interest.
Which means I get to watch her. And remember.
She rises and walks over to a file cabinet, giving me a glimpse of her small feet shod in suede pumps. I remember tripping over those pumps when I stumbled to her bathroom in the middle of the night. She kicked them off when she got home, complaining that they were more difficult than most to break in.
I watch her feet walk back to her desk and remember her instep gently rubbing against the back of my calf as she lay beneath me and told me she loved me. The sensation of her foot on the back of my leg was nice, but no comparison to what kind of effect her words had on other parts of my anatomy.
I can’t see her toes, but I remember them tucked under my legs trying to warm them while we sat on my couch, me watching the Knicks, her reading some boring novel. I felt small toes creeping underneath my thigh and looked over to her only to find her innocently engrossed in her novel. I’d volunteer to get up and get her some socks, but I kind of like the intimacy.
Her cropped suit jacket shows off how tiny her waist is. I remember how my two hands can practically span her body. I remember thinking she was almost too fragile to make love to—that someone that small couldn’t possibly survive being pawed by someone as oversized and oafish as myself. I remember her reaction to my hesitation.
“After all you’ve seen, you refuse to believe this?”
I hear her fingernails click on her keyboard and I remember the crescents they left on my skin as she grabbed my back to encourage me further inside her as if to demonstrate that not only could she survive our somewhat mismatched sizes, but that she relished it.
She rolls her shoulders to ease the tension from sitting hunched at her keyboard and I remember how her bathtub is big enough for two. I saw her shoulders peeking out from beneath a tub of bubbles as I snuck into her inner sanctum. I remained silent, content to observe her relaxing in her tub, thinking it was one of the most sensual images I’ve ever had the pleasure to observe. Until she turned to me and invited me to join her.
She didn’t have to ask twice.
A hint of her perfume wafts over to me and I remember what her perfume smells like between her breasts. The bottled version, sprinted by some vacuous woman in a department store as I walk by does nothing for me. But add a little eau de Woman-I-Love, and I’m a goner. I guess it’s true what they say about good perfumes adapting to the person wearing them.
She pushes her hair back from her face and I’m treated to a glimpse of her ear. I remember nibbling on it and whispering wisecracks in it that alternately amused and aroused her. She likes having her ears and neck kissed. Especially that place where her neck meets her shoulder. I’m glad I know that and I selfishly wish I were the only man who did. But, I won’t ruin my daydream now with idle thoughts of jealousy.
I stare at her perfectly coiffed hair and decide I prefer it tangled. And mussed. And spread out on the pillow. Our lovemaking has an adverse effect on her hair—she loses that sexy, classy, kickass woman of the nineties look she’s perfected and looks like a woman who has been rolling around in bed thoroughly enjoying herself. I’m fairly certain that she enjoys herself, because I’d like to think that in this, as in all aspects of our life together, she is incapable of deceit. She’s never been able to lie worth a damn to me. Why would this be any different?
I watch her mouth pursed in thought and remember the smile I received the first night we made love.
I get caught staring by hazel eyes that see all, know all—eyes that have looked into my heart and know the secrets I used to keep in there. Eyes that know what I’m thinking about, and it ain’t little green men. Eyes that tell me what she’s feeling even when she doesn’t want them to. Right now they express amused awareness, indulgence, and something that used to scare the shit out of me. Windows to the soul. Her eyes hold the secrets of the universe. And sometimes they let me peek in.
I watch her.
****************
He watches me.
He always has. He doesn’t think I notice, but I do. And yet, I’m content to be watched. I revel in it. Because now I know what he’s thinking.
We sit in my darkened office—darkened at his request—and try to put back together the shambles of our lives.
He’s happy. We still don’t have the answers, but we’re back in the business of finding them. Together. Stronger than ever before.
Because one day he stopped watching. And, I stopped being content to be watched.
He watches me.
>From the very beginning, he watched me because he didn’t trust me. I knew he watched and I was careful to show him he had nothing to fear.
After I returned from my five year coma, he watched me to make sure I wouldn’t disappear on him again. Almost as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune that I’d come back, his vigilance upon my return was strong, almost suffocating. He watched me in silence, not ready yet for a declaration of any kind of feelings.
After his true identity was revealed, he watched me to see when I would leave. He thought I would, I think. That my personal sacrifices had become too much for what he still considers his cause. We didn’t get along for a time, and he watched me to see when I’d bail on him like everyone else in his life. I didn’t. He watched me, but he never said a word.
And then there was the possession. He watched me like the proverbial hawk. Searching me for any sign of weakness that he could turn to self-recrimination. Every tear I shed, every shadow under my eyes and every pound lost was catalogued by sad, self-hating eyes. I was a very special lab rat, and he was a benevolent keeper, watching and waiting.
Once we beat the demon together, he watched me with a newfound admiration and respect. We were together in a way we had never been before. Recommitted to the cause that he was slowly acknowledging had become partially mine. I say slowly.
He watches me.
Today, he watches me like a lover would. And should. And does. I know when he’s watching me with love because his eyes get this faraway look and that talented mouth tries unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. I wonder what he’s thinking about. I wonder if I care. I know it’s about me.
Knowing him, it’s probably the memorable way I distracted him from ESPN’s news of the end of the basketball strike. It’s bad enough we’re going to have to start watching games again.
He watches me and I know he thinks he’s not worthy of me. I know that somewhere in that beautifully brilliant mind of his, he’s convinced himself that he is unworthy of my love. Or anyone’s, for that matter. This wonderfully giving man has so much potential and so much love to give it is staggering. Lucky for me, I can take it.
He watches me. When we make love, he tries not to take his eyes off mine—until it becomes physically impossible, if you know what I mean. But, still he tries to watch. And, he’s catalogued every tremor, shudder and spasm that my body makes. Unnerving? Sometimes. But I know it’s part of who he is. He needs to watch.
Why this never ending need to watch? Perhaps because I’m not the most forthcoming of people. The profiler had to profile from the very beginning. He learned early on to look for any sign of caring. He can see straight through me sometimes—when I forget to hide—when I’m too vulnerable to put up the shutters. Whatever he sees when he looks in satisfies him, I think. I hope. I want him to keep watching—it keeps me honest.
He watches me.
The Jarlena Journal 