A Year of Stories (Collection Two)

Busy, A Love Story

I wish the radio worked.

It was the last thing I asked him to do before I left.

"Jim, could you take the other car in for me? It would mean a lot. The radio has been acting up, the power locks are on the fritz, and the brakes pads haven't been replaced since we went to Detroit to see your Great-Aunt a half-decade back."

It would have taken him an hour, maybe two, but he was busy.

"I'm busy, why can't you do it?"

"Because I'm at work Jim."

"Then do it tomorrow, no big."

"I'll be at work then too. You're home, it won't take long, and you promised that you would do it a month ago, can't you just..."

"What don't you understand about 'busy' Andrea?"

"What I don't understand is why you always seem to be busy when I ask you to keep your promises, Jim."

"I don't have time for this, I'm..."

Busy.

I think everyone has a super power, Jim's is the uncanny ability to be busy exactly when I need him.

Busy "closing the deal," busy making "the call," busy playing golf, busy with his friends, busy trolling social media for new places to rant about his theories on free market economics.

Too busy for little old me.

"Darling. Please, you don't have to do this."

Except for today. Not too busy today, are you Jim? Not too busy to send me text messages.

2.

We married young, too young.

I was eighteen, he was twenty.

They say that boys mature more slowly than girls, but Jim seemed to be the exception that proved the rule, at least to my love addled teenage brain.

Instead of getting drunk every night, or screwing everything with a skirt – Jim was going class, Jim was networking, Jim was spending time with me and only me.

He had his life together, he had plans, he was going to be one of those Internet Billionaires.

I know it sounds stupid now, but back then people like Jim were doing it all the time. It seemed like every other week, a 20-something with a computer and a bad haircut was trading in his dad's Aveo for a Porsche.