By SallyMn

It wasn't just the room, honestly.

After all, I said it was one week. One week. And I meant it... well, more or less. I'd've been out of Jim's follicle-challenged hair on the night if I'd thought he expected it. I would've. But one week slid by, and then another... and he didn't say anything.

But what he did...

Like I said, it wasn't just the room. The bed - well, that was already there. Dunno why, 'cause I don't think anyone's used it for years, but being a Sentinel and all, Jim kept the mattress aired. The pillows and sheets he said he had spare, and who am I to argue? We brought what was left of my furniture in three trips, Jim cheerfully bitching (which ain't easy, but man, he's good at it) the whole way there and back. And he made the shelves - hey, I offered to pay, but Jim loves handyman stuff like that (I think the primitive part of his brain is hooked on the smell of sawdust)

And it wasn't the fact that, when my stuff started moving into the other rooms, he didn't throw a fit - in fact, you'd think he hadn't noticed the Haitian baskets, Ugandan candleholders, zuni fetish dolls, Polynesian ceremonial bowls in fourteen sizes, and even the thirty-two pachamamas Mom sent me last year. And the books that spilled out into every spare shelf.

(The Monbuttu drums and the incense candles he still isn't so keen on... but I'm wearing him down. I think.)

But that wasn't it either. Yeah, it all meant something - a lot of something - I guessed he might not mind if I stayed, and man, by the end of that first week I wanted to stay. But I wasn't sure, and I said one week, and I meant it. I'd've been gone, I would've...

But then, on Day... Ten, I think... he brought it home. Six plastic bags (so okay, I'm still working on his environmental consciousness, it's the thought that counts) filled with... With...

Tupperware. Brand new Tupperware. In all shapes and sizes. Enough to last years. And it all came with blue lids for him... and red for me. I couldn't believe it. Only Jim could take such a crazy, tortuous, territorial, anal-retentive even, way to tell me - without a word - that I was staying long enough to need them all...

Fin

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