Breathing Slowly Never Worked For Me

It was almost nine o’clock that same night when Ronnie finally got home. “Where have you been?” I asked, dropping the book I was reading and getting up off the sofa, “I’ve been trying to call you. I had a day off today.”

“I know,” Ronnie sighed, holding two plastic bags in front of his face.

“What is that? What are you doing?” I said as I tried to look past the bags at him.

“Sorry food,” he mumbled. I couldn’t help it as a sly smile caused my lips to part slightly.

“Sorry food?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest, “What’s sorry food?” Ronnie continued to use the bags to shield his face. I wasn’t even angry with him; I had just wanted to know where he was.

“Well, usually it’s pizza but tonight it’s Chinese.” I had to bite down on my lip to keep myself from laughing at him.

“You’re such a dork,” I smiled as I walked towards him, pushing the bags out of the way and cupping his face in my hands. I quickly pressed my lips to his. He stepped back slightly in surprise but when he realized what was happening, he was quick to return the kiss dropping the bags to the floor.

“I love you,” he murmured against my lips.

“Ronnie, don’t!” I squealed as he lifted me up, “Your ‘sorry food’ is going to go cold!”

“Then let it go cold,” he smirked.

An hour later and we were lying beside one another in our bed. I had my head pressed to Ronnie’s chest and he let his arm fall lazily around my shoulders as he lit a cigarette. There would usually be traffic buzzing past our apartment building, the noise drifting up through our bedroom window, which we hadn’t been able to close since we moved in. Tonight, however, it was quiet and still, and I savoured how alone I felt in that room with Ronnie, as if the rest of the world no longer existed or, perhaps, had never existed at all.

“We start recording next week,” he muttered, burying his nose in my hair. I looked up at him and he let his hand brush across my face.

“Next week?” I asked. He nodded in reply and finished his cigarette.

“You’re going to come in, right?” I watched, fascinated, as he stubbed his smoke out in the glass ashtray beside our bed. It was chipped around the edge and had a huge crack running through its centre where I’d knocked it off the bathroom sink once. Ashes would fall into the break so, no matter how often you would wash it, it would never come clean. We hardly washed it though. Every now and then, when the ashes and cigarette butts would finally spill over the edge, we would dump it in the wastepaper basket in the bathroom and, occasionally, out of the bedroom window. We had an ashtray in almost every room in our apartment, which wasn’t difficult, sometimes two. My favorite was the one we kept in the kitchen beside the phone, which was never connected. It was made of tarnished silver and shaped to look like an elephant.

“Come in?” I queried, propping myself up on my elbow to look at him, “Into the studio?” He nodded and placed two cigarettes between his lips, lighting them, and handed one to me. “I can’t,” I replied, “I’ve got work all week. Besides, I’ll just get in the way.”

“No you won’t,” he whined, “Please come, Linds. It’ll be shit without you.”

“I told you, I’ve got work,” I giggled as he ran his nose along my neck.

“Ugh,” he groaned loudly, rolling onto his back, “Can’t you just quit?” He ran his hands over his face and hair. I noticed the circles beneath his eyes, the kind he would get when he hadn’t slept for days. Max was wrong about us. I did know Ronnie. Maybe not as well as I knew Max. Maybe not as well as I knew my family. But I knew him. Sometimes better than I knew myself.

“Yeah and how would we pay our rent?” I replied, wrapping a sheet around myself as I sat up and leant back against the headboard. Ronnie answered with a dissatisfied growl before dropping his head into my lap. I finished my cigarette and leant across him to stub it out. “Okay,” I sighed in defeat, knowing Ronnie would only continue to sulk until I gave him the answer he wanted. He perked up as soon as he heard this and let it register.

“What?” he asked, a goofy grin already spreading across his face telling me he’d heard what I’d said just fine.

“I said ‘okay’. I’ll try and get a couple days off work,” I laughed, messing up his hair.

“You’re incredible,” he mumbled and wrapped his arms around me tightly.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I pushed him off and climbed out of bed, quickly slipping one of his old black t-shirts over my head and leaving the room.

“Where are you going?” he shouted and I heard him scrambling to keep up with me.

“I’m hungry,” I called back, “I’m going to heat up some ‘sorry food’.”