Reprinted with permission the Fireside Chat chapter of dating memoir A Year of Mr. Lucky by Meg Weber (SinCyr Publishing).
My long day begins when I drop the kiddo off at school slightly late and with her homework for the week incomplete due to a ginormous fuss we had about it yesterday. After three client sessions my noon clients cancel. I take that as an opportunity to get a pedicure. This is an excellent choice for self-care, minus my decision to re-read my entire correspondence with Mr. Lucky while my toes get their workup. My nerves are already frazzled and that doesn’t help. My four afternoon client sessions go well, although I’m more distracted than feels right at work. I rush out of the office to get home to my daughter and relieve the new nanny.
Shifting gears from therapist to parent, I navigate the kiddo through bedtime snack, teeth-brushing, pajamas, and a bedtime story. The goal is to get her curly little head on the pillow as close to 7 p.m. as possible. Calvin and his husband agreed to babysit while I go to Mr. Lucky’s for the evening. She’s almost asleep when the loud squeak of the front door startles her. “Yes,” I reassure her, “they’re here, now off to sleep.” A few minutes later I think she’s settled enough to extract myself from the bed but I’m wrong. When I try to sneak out, she whips her head around and demands to know where I’m going. Meekly, I answer, “Nowhere, (yet).” Finally, she falls asleep enough for me to slip out and get dressed for my evening with Mr. Lucky.
Off I go with a dish of apple-pear crisp to share. I’d made it as a thank-you for the boys for watching Frances. It’s sweet of them. Especially since Calvin is sick and feels horrible.
When I pull up to Mr. Lucky’s house, I see a fire burning in his fireplace. It looks inviting and cozy. I’d had a pep-talk from Summer on the drive over about being my true, authentic self and I take that to heart as I knock at his door. We greet each other with bright smiles, and I hand him the crisp I’d brought. He shakes his head at me, mutters something about me and my gifts. It’s true, I don’t like to arrive empty-handed. When I ask if I can give him a hug, his affirmative reply is warmly delivered.
He offers me something to drink. We chat about his recent travels, and then we sit on the couch near the fire and talk. And talk. And talk. It takes us both a bit to warm up socially, although I’m way less fidgety than I feared. It feels natural to be in his presence. The conversation is lively and engaging, reciprocal and full of curiosity. Without consulting my notes, I casually work my way through everything I need to say.
After a bit, we switch gears to start a game. The game is fun – lots of talking, both casual and more intense, over the board. We share anecdotes about our lives, our families, the one friend we have in common. We discover a shared love of card games and I ask whether he plays dominoes.
“You seemed relieved at my email,” I venture.
“Yeah, I forced myself to read what you wrote and was incredibly relieved. I told myself, ‘Right, Meg understands. I can just be honest with her’.”
I smile in response. He gives what I suspect is his usual line about getting all the good letters. I tease him about just being gracious, which he jokes is easy to do when you’re winning. At some point his cat comes into the room and joins us at the table. They share a sweet nose-to-nose moment that very nearly melts my heart, and I say so. He laughs.
There’s a moment of embarrassment about my inability to count on the fly. I try to add up points for a word I play and I get it all wrong. I hold on to myself though, without spiraling into shame about this shortcoming. “Numbers trip me up like that sometimes. I’m great with words, but counting aloud is often my downfall,” I explain.
He’s friendly about it and doesn’t dismiss me. “Why do you think that’s true for you?” he asks.
“Mostly, I’m trying to move too fast. If I slow down I can usually do it.” I feel like I’m under a microscope the rest of the game each time I add my points. When I mess it up again he’s gentle and encouraging. It feels sweet.
After the game, which he wins, of course, we settle back on the couch for more talking. “So what exactly is so challenging for you about the emails I send?” I ask.
“Your desire to know so much about me feels almost as like an attempt to subsume me.” It’s such a vivid description of how the excess intensity affects him. I completely understand how it could impact him that way and am so grateful for him saying it. “It’s rare for me to talk at both this length and this depth, with someone that isn’t my partner.” I smile at that. “It feels good to talk with you. I enjoy this. It just also feels foreign.”
Earlier in the evening we talked about hobbies and I admitted that I often struggle to answer questions about my interests. “Really I think what we’re doing right now is my hobby. Being together, talking, laughing, sharing stories.”
He laughed and said, “I get the feeling you could leave from an evening like this and go off into the night to have another long conversation with someone else.”
“Yes!” I confirmed. “In fact, if my friend Calvin who is watching my daughter wasn’t sick and asleep on my couch, I likely would go home and talk with him for an hour about how tonight went.
“And he would want to know?!?” Mr. Lucky is astounded.
“Yeah, but he’s a therapist too,” I explain.
This kind of intimacy is the norm with my friends. I tell him how me and Summer, after 27 years of knowing each other, still mostly just sit and talk when given the chance. This seems to solidify the point for him. It doesn’t mean he can relate, but at least he understands.
“I assume anyone who wants to know this much about me must be falling in love with me,” he says.
We talk about the specifics of how and when we’ll spend time together in the future. I ask if the ideas I laid out in my email were acceptable to him. “I think so,” he says. “That periodicity feels right to me.” I love that he drops words like that in our conversations. Thankfully, he didn’t also play it during our word game. We make a date to scene in two weeks – a brief lunch hour rendezvous. He muses, “I appreciate the depravity of coming home at lunch during my work day to play with you and then return to work.” I undoubtedly like it too.
As we consult our calendars to make plans, he says something about how this gives us a chance to touch our phones. “Well, we aren’t touching each other,” I note. “We might as well have our hands on something.” I tell him Calvin didn’t believe that we were only going to talk and play a game, but that I’d been clear that I had to enter this situation believing nothing else was going to happen.
Mr. Lucky agrees. “Although it’s tempting, because after all we’re both already here and we both enjoy it.” I like that he’s tempted. Earlier in the evening over the board game, I asked whether we would get to scene again. “Yes,” he answered. “Nothing wrong with the play at all. No one is saying that!” That’s my favorite thing he said all night.
It feels good to have cleared the air by talking freely and openly. I struggle to keep from laughing when he says that as much as he’s enjoyed our conversation, he’s afraid his throat might actually be a little sore from all the talking.
Just after midnight, I force myself to leave. I don’t want Calvin and Adam stranded at my house forever. We share another warm hug on my way out that definitely conveys sexual energy. He asks if he can keep the crisp that was leftover, but wants to give me back the container. “It’s okay,” I say, “I’ll be back.”
“Oh right! Well isn’t that handy?!”
Yes, indeed it is.
A Year of Mr. Lucky is available from Amazon and Bookshop.