The New Girl

[September] - Birthday Bitterness (1)

"Have a good run," Joe smiled toward the redhead as she finished rushing around the flat, grabbing all the items that had mysteriously ended up scattered around the living room and kitchen like her ear buds and her water bottle.

"Thanks," she smiled briefly at him, leaning up to give him a peck on the cheek, the slight flush on her cheeks not going unnoticed by him as she hurried toward the front door without another word. 

Joe let out a sigh, still feeling her lips on his skin and shaking his head slightly to try and get a grip. They'd been dating more than seven months and he still felt like a giddy teenager every time she got close to him. 

"You guys are being so weird," Caspar interjected loudly, his feet up on the coffee table as he lounged on the sofa, watching the interaction closely.

"Hm?" Joe asked, still distracted by scent of Dianne's hair she'd left in her wake. 

"You guys," he raised an eyebrow, "Are being weird."

"How so?" Joe asked, already knowing the answer. 

"It's like you're walking on eggshells around each other," Caspar explained. "Like you're afraid to talk about anything except super safe topics and you're being super polite. What happened to farting in each other's faces and smelling each other's feet?"

Joe grimaced at the blatant grossness in his relationship that his roommate had just pointed out. Though he had to admit - he did miss the giggles that came from Dianne after she'd let one rip in his vicinity.

Caspar was right - they were being weird.

However, walking on eggshells had been the obvious next step after the emotional and tumultuous few weeks they'd endured the month before. Though they had never broken up - the two weeks of silence made it difficult to return to normal. Sure, they had had the expected talk - working through their issues and pointing out Joe's problem with fleeing conflict and Dianne's issues with confidence. But what they hadn't dug into was how those issues affected the relationship they were both very still invested in. While they'd owned up to everything, they hadn't made a plan to really move forward, instead just slipping back into the surface level normalcy that they both craved.

It didn't help that they were both working harder than ever before, leaving them only evenings to catch up, when they were both exhausted and not in the mood for deep conversations. Joe could count the number of nights on one hand when they'd both been awake for longer than 30 minutes at the same time. 

Of course, there were moments that almost felt normal - like when he'd wake up with the little redhead wrapped around him in her sleep. She'd thankfully moved back into his room after that night he confessed he couldn't sleep without her, and that helped their journey back to normalcy leaps and bounds. 

There were also the times when Dianne would deliver a gut punching joke at his expense, and he would do the same in return. Those jokes came naturally - there was no trying, nothing forced. The only difference now, was that instead of laughing together until they cried, they'd pull back, reverting back into a polite co-existence, too afraid to keep pushing and venture into an area that was too sensitive. 

And of course, they'd kissed - that had only taken a day or two to get back to, when the urge had become just too much for Joe to bear. Dianne to her credit, had reciprocated immediately, but things felt slightly different. They hadn't gone beyond short, limited kisses, and an occasional nighttime cuddle. Their bodies knew what they were doing, but it was like there was a mental block on achieving the same level of intimacy. There had been a few nights recently where he'd internally cursed his brain for pulling back when other parts of his body were clearly ready to dive headfirst back into the relationship they'd shared before everything blew up.