You tell me to Google “It’s Negroni Season” when I tell you I’ve never had one. When I do, I find a story about a messy relationship and a drunken night of slamming Negronis, and the subsequent hangover that followed. It’s a cute story, funnier if it weren’t true, and funniest if I couldn’t relate to being that messy in my drinking and in my relationships. You say I need to have a Negroni and you set out to procure the ingredients as I am finishing my class one Tuesday night.
You show up at my apartment not with the ingredients for Negronis, but instead bring me a high-end bottle of gin and some tonic water. You’ve forgotten the lime, but the gin is a special blend, infused with botanicals and citrus and is lovely all on its own.
“We’ll have negronis next time,” you tell me as we settle onto the couch with our drinks. There is a part of me that worries there will be no next time. It’s been 5 years, but there is a small and annoying voice that tells me every now and again that one day you just won’t show up with fancy bottles and forgetting the limes. I am thinking this as we are sitting in our underwear drinking.
You snuggle up with me and listen as I go on about an essay I’m writing, how I’m researching the pop charts for the day I was born.
“The day I was born ‘Disco Lady’ by Johnnie Taylor was the number one song.”
You pull up the song on your phone and what comes out is not the upbeat heavily mixed music that I expect from disco. It is more R&B and you sway and mock-dance. You make me laugh.
And that’s what I like best—when you are relaxed and a little goofy. So many of our conversations are steeped in mundane work-day problems, and while they are important conversations, sometimes it’s just nice to see you not 100% on your game. It’s those moments that I really crave, negroni or not.
A week later, the weekend I am out of town, you text me a picture: a bottle of Writer’s Tears Whiskey. Maria found this on-line a few months ago and we set out to acquire the bottle, but we couldn’t find it in the local liquor store. I tell you this and three days later the bottle is at my door—a gift from you, “to help with the summer writing.”
“You’re too good to me,” I text you.
“Hardly,” you reply.
But you are good to me—buying me fancy crystal highball glasses for Valentine’s Day and not calling them a Valentine’s present because you know I hate the day. Buying me a violet-colored bra a few days before I defended my dissertation because you wanted me to feel pretty and confident when I walked into the room. Sending me restaurant recommendations when you know I’ll be out of town. And when the lights go out in my complex, you tell me to save the battery on my phone.
“But it’s my only flashlight,” I say.
“You should have some bottled water in the apartment and a flashlight.”
“I’m not good at this whole adulting thing,” I remind you. “I’d die in the zombie apocalypse.”
And then you are off to Amazon looking up head lamps to send me.
These little things you do make the nights when you go home to her slightly more bearable. I sit in my apartment, finishing off the gin, knowing that you care about me. Some nights that’s all I need.
Photo by Allan Francis on Unsplash
