Sometimes my girlfriend is outside my house for half an hour, even an hour, before she texts to say she’s here. By then, I already know. I keep my windows open, and I can hear her car arrive.
I’m 30 and she’s 25. These are visits to see me, but there’s this stretch between her getting here and coming inside that I don’t understand. Physically, she has arrived. As far as the visit is concerned, apparently she hasn’t.
When she parks across the street, I can sometimes see her on her phone. Other times she puts her hand to her face or shakes her head. She doesn’t look happy. I can describe those gestures, but I can’t tell what caused them. That’s the frustrating part: there’s enough to notice and nowhere near enough to explain it.
If I ask why she’s late, she says traffic or gives another explanation. Traffic would explain time spent getting here. It doesn’t explain the time after the car has stopped outside. So an ordinary question about when she arrived leaves me with another question I haven’t really had answered.
I don’t think she’s cheating. I’m not sitting here trying to identify someone on the other end of her phone. What bothers me is the possibility that coming in to see me is something she needs to prepare herself for. I don’t know that it is. But when the person you want to spend time with is so close, that possibility is hard to ignore.
She might be finishing a conversation, having a difficult day, or simply wanting some time alone before being with anyone. The pause could have something to do with us, too. None of those explanations has been confirmed, and a hand over her face doesn’t choose one for me.
Then she comes inside, and I feel tension. That’s my impression of those first moments together, not something she has explained. For a while, the mood I noticed outside seems to have come through the door with her.
Later, her mood changes and she seems fine. That part matters as much as the waiting. The whole visit isn’t unhappy. We get past those tense beginnings, which makes the next long pause in the car harder to place. If I only described how she is later, I would leave out the part that unsettles me. If I only described the car, I would leave out how she changes once she’s here.
I want to understand the difference between needing a little time to yourself and not wanting to walk into your boyfriend’s house. From inside, those can look exactly the same. The message says she’s here. By then, she has been here for a while.
