He hadn't expected to wake up to all that.

It was a wet morning, not as cold as the weekend. Wet enough to warrant wellingtons and an umbrella for the walk across the North End to his office. He had to get this week's lecture series squared away, one he was looking forward to because of the subject matter, something near and dear to his heart. Coffee in hand in his old chipped NEAQ mug, he settled at his desk to start the day wading through the electronic pile of mail that had accrued since seven the previous evening.

He read the missive over three times to make sure he got every word of it. He tended to do that, skim over written word to get the gist but not really digging in on the first reading. This time he read it, twice, a third time. He teased out different concepts from the jumble of words. The adrenaline junkie. The fatalist. The Old Soul. The fear. The loss. The guilt. And for an odd moment, the hope. There was a lot of what was said that was in the present tense. There was one line that struck him in a curious way, made something deep inside him twist. He didn't even remember how they met. Some corporate fundraising event most likes. Mackenzie with his hand out on behalf of the Aquarium one more time, muttering curses and insults under his breath in Portuguese to keep himself sane. A chuckle from off to one side, a face looking similar to his own and answering him in kind. Did he blush at getting caught? He might have. He didn't remember. 'Didn't remember' was the bitter refrain of his life.

He rolled his head slowly, stretching out the neck that they had bantered back and forth that needed a rub. He'd been tense for a long time. he'd been trying to stay away from the risk taking behavior that had defined his 20s and 30s. the late nights, the cheap-ass hook-ups, the working on little sleep and less nourishment. The actions of a man who didn't care about taking care of himself because it didn't matter. In a few years he would be a mindless, memoryless lump in a chair so live it all now while he could still remember, while he could still look back a few years in the past and have an image to put with a place, a name to put with a face, an emotion.

He stopped himself from reading it all one more time, then tried to go to work. Tried being the operative word. Every time he dug into the plans for the education calendar for 2017, the words of the e-mail came back to him. sometimes it feels like i live three completely separate lives, and they only barely meet at the edges--boy did he know how that felt like. i'm sometimes lazy. i'm usually tired. i go to work too early and come home too late more often than i should admit. He sighed as he looked at the binders of proposals sitting none too neatly on his desk. He swiveled his chair to look out on the rainy scene below him. A more perfect view of Boston couldn't be found and yet, how many times did he even bother taking it in? He reached up to rub the left side of his neck, right where it met his shoulder and winced. God, he really did need a neck rub. To relax. To be lost in something normal for just a little while.

my best fantasies are domestic.

A crackling fire. The scent of warm bread and pot roast mixing with the salty air from outside. Sweet and tart and cinnamon bursting in his mouth from a bite of a perfectly baked apple dumpling. Serenity. Safety. Contentment. Home.

He turned back to his desk, closed the thick report he'd been reading through. It could wait a few minutes, long enough for him to allow his mind to take over and to not worry about how what he was about to 'say' sounded or to try and polish it all up.


...this is something of a confession to wake up to. A very interesting one.


After more than five minutes of straight typing, he hit 'send'. It wasn't a sense of relief. It was more a sense of '...what next?' And that he very much wanted there to be a 'next'.

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