11. Keith
KEITH
TIME FLIES WHEN FALLING IN LOVE
Time was a funny thing.
For the past two years, I had felt stuck in a quagmire of it, weighed down by wasted years of spinning my wheels and daunted by all the unknowns stretching in front of me. While I had been longing for that to change, I certainly hadn’t expected it to anytime soon, let alone so easily.
It turned out that dating someone who made me laugh, made me feel safe, made me feel impossibly handsome, and also rode my dick like it was going out of style, improved a ton of things that made every day feel so similar to the last.
Never in a million years would I have thought I’d end up dating one of the students in my workshops, but that was exactly what happened. We spent three weekends of the month together, and it would have been four, but Olivia kept one weekend to do special events with her family, which I admired.
I’d heard a lot about her family, and I really wanted to meet them.
But considering that we’d only been dating for six weeks, I understood it wasn’t the right time yet.
I had a bit of a skewed perspective because every time I talked to my mom, she was asking when she could be introduced to my new “partner.”
At first, my mother had used the term “girlfriend” but it didn’t sit right with me.
Possibly, because I was a thirty-seven-year-old man and the phrase didn’t feel serious enough for the emotions building inside me.
Or, possibly, because it reminded me too much of high school when my mother would get excited anytime another teenage girl showed interest in me.
Either way, Olivia seemed to agree with me, as she’d started calling me her ragazzo after the third date.
Which, by the way, had been even better than our second, and the second had been better than our first. Whether we went to the movies, a restaurant, a bowling alley or any other combination of events, we always had a great time.
Great didn’t even do it justice. When I was around Olivia, it was easier to forget everything that was weighing me down. Being around her also made me want to be better. I was going to the gym more consistently, seeing my mother more often, and working on my canoe more than once in a blue moon.
All of that in only six weeks. Probably too soon for me to have hauled out the word partner, but “the insanely beautiful and smart woman I’m going on weekly dates with and who broke my bed frame” didn’t quite roll off the tongue.
“I want to thank all of you for being a part of my workshop,” I said, standing at the front of my class.
Although Olivia and I had a rule not to bring our relationship into the workshop, I loved seeing her an extra day of the week.
She’d absolutely rocked her project. The only student who had done better was Amanda.
That was an odd pair if I’d ever seen one.
Amanda was in her early twenties and spoke in a mix of Gen Z and Alpha slang terms that I only slightly understood because it reminded me of the densely clustered terms that the oldest members at the nursing home used, while Olivia spoke in a mix of academic-adjacent and millennial.
Amanda always wore bright colors and usually pink, with Olivia favoring jewel tones and solids.
The young woman had told me it was because she was born in summer and Olivia in autumn, or something like that, but Olivia’s birthday had been a week or two before the workshop started, so I didn’t get it.
“You truly have been one of the easiest groups I’ve ever had, and your questions have helped me put together even better binders for the next one. I owe all of you, so that was why I wanted to say thank you in return.”
I lifted the stack of pizza boxes I’d been hiding under my workstation with a particularly thick tablecloth.
That was another thing I’d noticed in my nearly forty years of life: almost everyone got excited about surprise pizza.
Especially since I made sure to have vegetarian and vegan options.
Thankfully, when my students had filled out the class application, I had them list out allergies and food sensitivities.
No one had a gluten allergy or coeliac disease.
I’d done a lot of research in my first class for someone with a very severe form of that condition and in the end they still had to take their pizza home with them, because removing it from its protective box and insulated bag while everyone else was eating gluten around them apparently put them at risk for cross-contamination.
“These are for all of us to enjoy while I check out your finished projects. When I’m done with you, you’re free to leave, hang around and socialize, or ask me any questions for woodworking projects you want to do at home.
You’ll find paper plates, cups, and napkins below your workstations.
Soda and water are in the fridge in the back.
And don’t worry, it’s been sterilized since the shop teacher forgot his lunch in there and it grew its own colony of… whatever that was.”
There were some cheers, including a truly hearty one from Amanda, a lot of claps, and smiles all around.
It wasn’t thunderous applause or anything like that, but it might as well have been to me.
It was a sign of a job well done and me bringing some brightness into people’s lives in a world that so often seemed so bleak.
“Now, everyone line up! I made sure to get a little something for everyone, yes, I’ve got vegan for you, Pat, don’t you worry.”
That brought about a few more murmurs of approval.
Once people started lining up, I looked out over the happy faces.
It wasn’t just Amanda and Olivia who were talking to each other, but my eldest student Rudy was laughing with the middle-aged couple of Pat and Patty (affectionately called Pat squared in my head) while another middle-aged woman, Vidalia, was clunkily signing to my hard-of-hearing student D’angelo.
It was a temporary community, but it was still a community.
“Aren’t you going to have some?” Olivia asked.
She was the last in line because she had the last workstation in the shop, but she didn’t seem to mind.
I’d learned a lot about her in the last six weeks, and one of the many things I’d picked up was that she was always observing.
Not in a paranoid or unsettling sort of way, but it was clear to me that she was so used to having far too much responsibility, so she was always on alert to respond to a need.
At least she wasn’t that way at my place. Truly, it was the only spot I’d ever seen her guard come all the way down.
I considered it an honor.
“I’ll have a bit after I go around. Hard to have a bunch of conversations when my mouth and hands are full.”
She leaned in slightly, her voice low even though she was the only one left in the line. “I don’t know. I kind of like it when your mouth and hands are full.”
I nearly choked on my own spit but managed to keep some semblance of normalcy. “Olivia!” I hissed.
“Thanks for the pizza,” she said as she loaded her plate with a piece of pizza from each box except the vegan one.
I took a deep breath as she headed back to her workstation, trying not to think about how much I also liked having my hands and mouth full of her. Shaking that thought away, I headed toward my first student to ask them about his project.
***
“Have you ever looked up at these high-rise apartment buildings and thought that behind all those windows is a person with their own story, their own heartbreaks and triumphs that we’ll never know?”
I paused mid-lick of my ice cream, taking time to consider what Olivia was saying.
Spring was starting to creep into summer, so our dates had shifted from indoor places to stay warm and cozy on a chilly night and to outdoor events where we could enjoy the relief after hot days that were only going to grow hotter.
This led to us going to several outdoor concerts, a jazz festival that got rained out, a food truck rodeo, and a whole lot of walks.
“I can’t say that I have,” I answered honestly.
In the three months that we had been dating, I’d never needed to lie to Olivia.
When I made mistakes, we talked it out. If she said something that accidentally hurt my feelings or made me feel a certain type of way, she apologized and vice versa.
I never once felt disrespected or trivialized, and it had led me to realize that a lot of my previous relationships and even friends-with-benefits situations hadn’t been healthy.
And not just because of the women—it would be easy to blame them because they weren’t there—but because of my own flaws.
Flaws I’d been working on lately instead of accepting their inevitability. “Do you feel that way often?”
I switched my focus from the myriad of windows to the gorgeous woman beside me.
I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow, in the quarter of the year that we’d been seeing each other, she’d become even more stunning.
Maybe it was her finding her style and being comfortable in it, but I liked to think that it was something else.
Like maybe the healthy glow that came from a happy relationship.
Even though I knew it was a little egotistical to want to be part of the reason, I enjoyed seeing my partner flourishing no matter the cause.
“No, not often. But every now and then. Honestly, it can be a little…”
“Overwhelming?” I supplied.
The smile on her face was so soft, so fond, it made my heart race.
I’d been in situationships longer than Olivia and I had known each other, but none of them had moved me like she did.
None of them made me stop and think the way she did.
She truly took nothing for granted, despite always seeming like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.
A weight I very much enjoyed her sharing with me.