Jeans (fiction)

“Do you think-” I said.
“No,” he interrupts. “Never”.
The car is stopped at a red light and people stream past our front bumper, oblivious to our studious gazes, our assessments.
“Can you be serious for a moment?” I ask.
A long pause. “Why?”
“Because. I want to be serious for a moment.”
“Serious never ends well. Serious means one of us will probably end up walking home. And I’m driving so it doesn’t look good for you.”
A slight shake of my head and I look out my window at the flashing hand, with each repetition wondering when it will change to solid. He sighs.
“Let’s be serious,” he offers.
“Do you think you’ll ever tire of me?”
“I’m tired of you right now. No. I will never tire of you. You are as exciting and novel as you were when I met you that night at the wedding.”
“We met at work.”
“Are you sure? I thought it was at a wedding. You were wearing that yellow dress I like so much.”
“Why do you do this? Why can’t you be serious?”
The light changes and we move forward enough so that we can stop in the throng of cars queued for the next light.
“Because everything is serious. I don’t want to be serious. I want to make fun of all the people that are sitting on that patio right there. Look: there’s a guy taking a piss in the alley. It’s 8.15. Why are you on about this now? Didn’t we have a good day?”
“We had a good day.”
“Maybe you’ll tire of me.”
“No,” I say.
“I can’t win this. What is this about? Your friends splitting up? It appears that you get ample warning when something like that happens. First: I would start bleaching my teeth; then I would get expensive haircuts and a personal trainer; I would sleep with a co-worker 10 years younger; and I would get a motorcycle.”
“You work with men. And you hate motorcycles.”
“So you’ve nothing to worry about, then,” he puts his hand on my knee.
A long silence. We make the turn onto Georgia.
“It’s not enough. You want a grand gesture. A promise. Security.”
“You make it sound so transactional,” I argue.
“I can’t win. No matter what I say. You don’t look fat in those jeans. Please. I am here right now. And I have no plans to leave and I hope I can always be here and that you will always want to be here with me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
“So I don’t have to stop the car and let you out?”
“No.”
“Did you have a good day?”
“Yes. Until you inferred that these jeans possibly make me look fat.”
He laughs, the car moving freely over the bridge now so that I can look out the window at the anchored freighters, the beckoning lights on the hill.