Discomfort in the Second Person

It’s always an awkward thing, standing in the living room of someone you barely know while they do something else in the other room. And if that person happens to be the one you love more than any other in your life (but still barely know, as who can really ever know anyone?), it’s all the worse. You look around, hands in your pockets, and maybe sweat a bit as you wonder what’s taking so very long. Then maybe you’ll take one hand out of your pocket and wipe it off on your pant leg before reaching out to pick up an ash tray off the coffee table, wondering why it’s here (she doesn’t smoke, after all), then look closely to see if there’s any ash, blowing to see if your breath can scare up a sign your eye missed. You hear a noise from the next room, and almost drop the ashtray as you hurry to put it back, hands shaking, before she catches you and thinks you’re some kind of clingy paranoid freak. But you’re not, really. You’re just curious.
When she doesn’t come through the arched doorway separating the hall from the living room, you take a couple steps toward the wall, and look at the little figures on the shelf. These you know from experience you shouldn’t touch. They’re very breakable. But one, that one little frog, sticks out to you. You’ve never seen that little frog before. Its green skin jumping out at you from between the little music box you found at the antique store and the little mirror that was Grandma’s. You wonder where that little frog came from. Not from you. Maybe from her mom? Didn’t she just get back from a trip or something? You’re not sure. But then you remember that her friend Tyler, a guy she knew in high school or something like that, you remember he just got back from a trip to Jamaica or the Bahamas or one of those islands where they wear sunglasses and flip-flops and sit out on the beach all day. Just like the cute little sunglasses and funny little flip flops the little green frog is wearing. You look around and make sure she’s not standing back there behind you, and then hurry to reach out and pick up the little green frog, turning him over to see if he says where he’s from and knocking over that picture of the two of you at Christmas three years ago. Florida. That’s what the pale underside of the little green frog says. Florida. Where was it that that Taylor guy had gone again? Key West? Yea, that sounds right. Key West is in Florida.
You decide to shove the little frog back on the shelf as you shove the thoughts that had just popped into your head to the backside of your brain. But the picture on the shelf of the two of you so happy together is still leaning over, and so is the one in your mind. The couch looks comfy, and safe, so you turn and walk over quickly as dare and it down, thinking as soon as you do so that you should have been more careful because you wrinkled your new suit. Trying to smooth the wrinkle from your pants, you notice another wrinkle on the soft cushion of couch. That’s odd, you think, you know she only ever sits in her favourite old blue faded armchair under the reading lamp. Why would she sit over here? She certainly wouldn't ever sit here by herself. So she must have had someone over she wanted to sit with. That was the only thing that made sense. No other reason she would sit here. You lean close to the wrinkled spot. Is that sand? Or bread crumbs? There aren’t any beaches nearby. But there are in Jamaica. What’s that smell? Lotion? Sunscreen? She never wears sunscreen. But you bet they do in the Bahamas.
“You ready?’
You jump up in your seat.
“Of course.”