Asking For Space

She met the mailman at the doorstep, wearing a colorful floral dress she always remarked was her favorite. The lush green grass was bright thanks to the cloudless blue skies above. Birds chirped and danced on branches of nearby trees, leading the sounds of summer in a lovely way.

“Expecting something,” asked the mailman, already knowing the answer. He handed over the brown package and was met with a smile from ear to ear.

“I wish I knew what was inside here that would give you a smile like that,”he remarked.

“Well if ya did that you’d be breaking the law,” she said as she turned and walked towards the door, taking one last glance at the outside before stepping through the door. The light aluminum screen door latched shut behind her on its own as she tapped over to the kitchen table.

She looked down at the package that was addressed to her in sloppy black ink. “Sarah Atchinson,” followed by her physical address. She picked at her lunch before reaching for the scissors, opening the package very gently, as if there were rare historical documents inside.

When she pawed through it, she immediately clutched a shirt and brought it to her nose, inhaling deeply. Sarah placed the first one neatly over the kitchen chair and dug through the rest of the package. Inside was a letter and another t shirt. The first shirt was the polar opposite of the first. The first was red and soft as velvet, the second navy blue.

It was the first package she’d ever received from him. She adored how he would go out of his way to make her happy. The small things were the biggest, and cliches were cliches for a reason. As she walked the now empty brown paper packaging to the trash can to toss it out, something else dropped on the floor in front of her feet.

As life would have it, it rolled beyond the trash can and turned into more of a project than a surprise. It was becoming a task now to move the can, search around kitchen counters and scope out near the refrigerator before clutching it with two fingers.

She looked at it and chuckled, not knowing the meaning behind it. The situation ended up turning into a semi-difficult surprise, worth it in the end. She walked back over to the table and spread open the note with each end bending a corner of it, with the eyeball finger puppet on her index knuckle.

She scanned the note before reading it in detail, searching for a meaning to the small gift. As she reached the end she noticed something underlined at the bottom, jumping her eyes to it immediately.

“PS, I included a set of Oobie eyeballs for the times I can’t look out for you.

ALWAYS GOT MY BASES COVERED”

Grabbing for her phone, she unlocked it and text him smiling emoji’s, adding how funny it was. His sense of humor was always so charming, it was a big reason she was felt the way she did about him. A small calico cat rubbed up against her legs, perhaps telling her that he was fresh out of food. She looked over to his food area by the pantry and noticed that he had both food and water. As she stepped out of the backdoor, she kicked her shoes off and walked barefoot to her backyard tree house. The feeling of walking barefoot through the soft blades of grass was like heaven to her. It just felt so freeing.

She reached for the first 2x4 rung and placed her weight on it, which wasn’t much, and climbed up one by one. When she crawled into the nest, she scooched over to her corner, as she called it, and opened a book. As she was flipping through the pages of Warm Bodies, she felt her phone vibrate and checked it with excitement, but it was only an email notification.

She had read this book before, many times over, but it was the only book up here. She picked up her phone from between her legs, still wearing the Oobie eyeballs. Sarah put her finger on top of the book and snapped a picture and sent it to him. The fact that he hadn’t read the previous messages yet wasn’t too concerning, as he was at work for another twenty minutes.

Sprawling out on the queen sized bed in the middle of the tree house, she thumbed to a favorite part of the book. After reading for a few minutes she became tired and laid it down beside her.

She woke up thirty minutes later and reached for her phone.

No notifications.

Odder still, the messages remained unread.

She climbed down the wooden ladder and towards her shoes and eventually into the vintage stone house. Shutting the sliding screen door behind her, she again walked over to the letter. In her rush to send a text that was never read, she had forgotten to read the rest of it besides the silly punchline.

Starting from the beginning, she read each word until she reached the middle of the page. She stepped back a bit and read through it again. Re-reading the fucking sentence over and over again.

“I’m no good for you, I wish you’d see that.” Finally, she allowed herself to continue further.

“You’ve been asking for space without saying a word.”

She walked over to the kitchen chair and then into her bedroom, removing her dress. She tossed on the red shirt and stepped outside, barefoot and towards the tree house.