And I/I/I/I Couldn’t Stop Smiling Like the Whole Way Home

In the before times, and actually I think even while I still had my old job_{<so like a year ago maybe>} we used to drink and make dinner on Fridays. Mimosas and curry or seltzers, shots and pot rice. Freezer pizzas, the cheap cracker crust spinach ones. This was an important, years-long, ritual that began to fall apart when I switched jobs to a new town and then ended completely when crow flu arrived.

‘To all my friends
You’ll find your way
Some summer night I hope I see you again’

Anyway, a bunch of us were draped around counters and the dining room, laughing one night when I went to make fresh mimosas. Mister was long in bed_{<he being a morning person, me not>} by then. Maybe just a new one for myself, maybe I was refilling a few glasses, I don’t remember. And we use cider in our mimosas a lot of the time because it isn’t as acidic and I pulled the jug off the refrigerator shelf and extremely drunkenly-firmly raised it up and brought it down to unsettle the dregs and just absolutely obliterated the rail of the top shelf on the door of the fridge. Part of where it connects enthusiastically exploded into plastic fragments and jars and bottles and cans rained down onto the tile floor, leaking but thankfully mostly not breaking. For one tiny second, you could have heard a butterfly gasp, and then my one friend squeaks in horror and we all started braying laughter. I bent down to begin scrambling to pile everything back into the fridge on a shelf, just thinking about trying to mitigate the absolute carnage in my kitchen, and I hear the bedroom door open.

I whipped my head up at the sound and with that complete determination of the drunk and in trouble, whispered extremely forcefully and very, very quietly
.             ;Don’t come out here;
.                                                     and then just stared through the fridge door at the general direction of the hallway until I heard Mister shuffle safely into the bathroom and one of my friends whispered back
.                                                                                       ;do you think he heard you?;
.                                                                                                                                            and I whispered probably not, then began cackling again in spite of myself.

It all got cleaned up, of course, and new drinks poured and I hadn’t even remembered it yet as I was drinking coffee the next morning and making a bagel or whatever as you do on a Saturday morning and Mister just evenly, with no preamble goes
.                                                                                                                                                                           ;so I figured out why you didn’t want me to come
.                                                                                                                                                                            out here last night;

‘To all my friends
I’d love to stay
…
Promise you’ll smile off a memory’
-Dermot Kennedy