Watching

She leans in close, eyes glinting a little and teeth set with satisfaction.  I'm dizzy and the air seems thin because I've drunk to the bottom of my tea mug.  

"If I could," she stops for a moment and catches the laugh in her throat.  "If I could, I would fit you with a hidden camera and watch every second."

I'm at morning coffee with one of my beloved alpha-female friends.  This one in particular, Mama to all and way more outgoing than she believes herself to be, is the author of my current maybe-something with the single dad from school.  "OMG," she wrote one night on facebook, "I love living through you." When I prevaricate about whether this is the right time or how to go about it, she shuts me up fast. "I've worked way too hard for this," she tells me.  "Don't you go and fuck up my fun."  

The poor man, I think.  He has no idea what's hit him.  She's been working on me and waiting for a year and a half, pursing her lips and tolerating his waning attempts to save his marriage and my constant Michael upset.  He's hilarious and calming and she's absolutely right that I should be looking.  I'm just not sure if it's time yet.

We sledded with him and some other families this weekend.  He arrived in a perfectly clean car, managed his three children without apparent effort, and filled out the shoulders of his t-shirt with satisfying confidence.  When I doubled over with laughter because my kid was pouting and had face-planted in the snow with me on top of him, he didn't look at me like I was an asshole.  Right around the time he mentioned making meatballs with a melon-baller, I told him I was convinced he was on something.  Who does so much with that kind of humor and ease?

"So," my girlfriend asked me at some point during that day,"what do you think?"  I told her I didn't think he was interested.  He was friendly but not more so to me than to anyone else, and the bond between him and his children seemed to subsume him a little.  He is obviously a father first, and I wondered if he could really focus past them yet.

He emailed my friend the next day to ask if I was seeing anyone.  

I woke the next morning full of anxiety about this burgeoning interest.  I could totally fuck this up.  I could end up hated because what I have to offer, what I want, is casual fun and comfortable companionship and plenty of room to make my life my own.  What if I open him up and crush him with my unavailability?  I picture him raw and wanting on the inside and myself a needed salve.  Which is ridiculously arrogant.

The whole point of this time is to try, and be honest, and find out.  So instead of writing the story before it even begins, I'm going to wait and find out.  Because maybe he wants the same thing; maybe, like The Hick, he becomes an irreplaceable friend.  Because all the way through my bones, he feels like someone I could stand next to.