Chicago, IL. January 1992.
When Jenny Adler shows up to her first day at a new job, she hopes it can be as simple as it is on paper - a few short months of doing paperwork and answering phone calls before she moves on to the next thing. It was never...
THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS were some of the most cheerful Jen could remember having since childhood. Her days were spent in the role of actress, putting on a ruse by being politely distant from Robert at work so that no one would suspect that there was anything going on between them. But when she shed off her facade in the evenings, he filled them with kisses and laughter and gentle touches, making her question why she didn't give herself full permission to fall for him sooner.
He knocked on her door on Saturday morning, come to pick her up for their date to the art museum. When she saw him there, the corners of her mouth pulled up into a huge smile. The two of them were nearly matching, both in white shirts and blue jeans. She wasn't sure she'd ever even seen him in jeans before—she was still learning about all of the sides of him that existed outside of the one she saw at work.
She pressed a kiss against his cheek, then almost giggled when she felt the beginnings of stubble on his jaw, yet another one of those completely normal things she'd hadn't experienced before now. She loved that they kept popping up, and loved how gradual learning everything there was to learn about him was. Now that she was in it, she was happy for them to take their time, to go slowly. She didn't want to fall all at once.
When you fell as lightly as a feather, you had plenty of time to enjoy the fall.
They'd decided to get to the museum in the morning this time around so that they were free to roam around for as long as they could possibly want, whether that be once they got through everything there was to see or simply when their feet grew too tired. She enjoyed being with him while their minds were still waking up for the day, even though it meant that they were a little quieter. Something about it felt more intimate, more calm, and his hand in hers was a steady, reassuring presence.
Neither of them was an art expert, but they held a decent amount of knowledge between the two of them. They were able to fill in some of the gaps in each other's understanding of different artists and movements and he could offer up a significant amount of historical and cultural context that she wouldn't have had otherwise. She could tell that he loved doing it, too—his eyes brightened and words came faster once she got him going about 18th and 19th century Europe. Dating a history nerd apparently made going to museums a lot more fun than it already was.
He glanced over at her as they left an exhibit on landscape painting. "...Please stop me if this is wearing on you," he told her with a sheepish lilt in his voice.
"Not at all," she lightly squeezed his hand. "And I did tell you to teach me, remember?"
"Not about this," he pointed out.
"But this," she held him a little more tightly now, using her free hand to loosely gesture around them – to the fact that they were here, on a perfectly pleasant date, being happy together. To the fact that this could work; that they worked. "This is part of that."
He smiled at that.
At her request, they made a pit stop in the gift shop on the way out. Everything was ridiculously overpriced, as expected, but that didn't stop her from buying them each a set of bookmarks themed around the landscape paintings they'd seen.
He looked like he was going to offer to pay for them, but when she gave him the stink eye, he zipped his mouth shut.
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