Boxes (A Dumb Little Love Story)

This is honestly one of the dumbest things I have ever written, and for some reason I took time out of my day to finish it up and give it revisions.

No space. No breaks. It wasn’t exactly a life for one who wanted to be open with their world. She was sad, broken and hindered from what she wanted to do, and the most exciting her day could have possibly been was during her job as a secretary in the city.

All day it seemed to be nothing but staples, paper, filing, telephone calls and other such activities. And as stated before, it was not the life of girl who wanted everything but had nothing. And it seemed that there was always something inside her that wanted more. Wanted more adventure and excitement in something that wasn’t required for her life.

Mediocre would be the word to describe her situation. She lived in a mediocre apartment from her mediocre job, with a mediocre phone and mediocre clothes. The only thing that seemed to be outstanding with her life was her looks; her beauty. Over the years, she felt the need to compensate for her off-putting personality with beauty, though it always seemed to be there, waiting for her to unlock.

Today was a lazy day, and though she was at work, those who had seen her would say she looked simply disheveled. Her hair was slightly astray, yet every other day it was in perfect condition and her clothes had a slight ruffle to them despite being designer. The glasses she wore were askew and it looked as if she had simply rolled out of bed and tumbled down the street to get to work. Her boss said nothing about this, though, as he valued her as a secretary far too much. Despite her distant love for adventure, it was true that this woman was quite avid at her secretarial duties. Every file was always in its place, every sticky note always on the correct paperwork. There were never stray staples, as it seemed she always hit her mark on every account. Her voice was smooth and perfect for taking phone calls in the place of her boss, who merely sat a few rooms away in a desk twice the size of hers.

Yes, she was good at her job. And sometimes she wished it weren’t true. Almost as if she was born to be a secretary and yet she just couldn’t stand the thought.

It was cloudy that day, all the buildings appeared to be made of granite in the dull glow of the pale sky. The sun would have made her look more appealing, most certainly, even though she never needed help when it came to attracting men.

This girl had long black hair that was perfectly straight on all accounts. She possessed a small and angular mouth that could only open wide when she was angry, and that emotion so rarely invaded her features. Her eyes were the perfect shade of green, like an apple tree on the top of a sunny hill. Her skin was pale and smooth, almost completely hairless. By all accounts this woman was completely angelic in her own twisted way.

Till the day she had gotten the job as a secretary she couldn’t quite figure out why she had turned down so many men, as many were quite acceptable in facial features and personality. Some of them had just suggested being friends after meeting her and yet she pushed them all away. It was confusing, her necessity to be alone. There was never a time when she had brought friends, even in school. But she could scarcely remember her school years, and until recently had never thought of them as times of any pleasure other than learning. And even in that aspect she had done the most minimal amount of flaunting.

She figured the only way to hide from the prying fingers of men was to look like a homeless person. In her bag, that currently rested around the back of her swivel chair behind her desk was a small sweatshirt; torn in almost every area and stained with bleach from the time she had bleached her hair in seventh grade. Underneath this sweatshirt was a pair of muddy jeans from the time she had gone hiking on a whim a few years before. She had yet to wash them, and treasured the earthy scent. And beneath those was a pair of old sneakers, blackened from a fire she had inadvertently started when she was sixteen.

These were her choices of equipment for wearing out in public. Even her glasses could be reverted to a form of sunglasses if she switched the lenses, though she had lost those a few days before.

The day had been going for a while now, and she had been at work for a good two hours, sorting papers that had been delivered to the office and stapling them together when it was necessary. A few of them required a signature from her boss before they could be sorted and mailed out.

She had never read these papers, and even upon working as a secretary for the same company for over three years, she couldn’t quite remember exactly what the company did in terms of services to people of the city and possible beyond, as the building itself was tall and coated in black glass.

“Tamada? Can you bring the blue file?” She heard a squeaky voice from down the hall as her boss stuck his head out of his office door and stared at her with his wide eyes.

“Yes, sir.” She stood up and snatched up a blue folder from the right of her desk. She had not yet to file this one completely and also bent to pick up the stray papers from the file that she had just stapled together. She slid from behind her chair and desk before listening to her shoes clack on the glossy floor underneath as she made her way down the hallway.

“Ah. Thank you. There will be no need to file the rest of it, dear.” He smiled in his devious way before shutting his door in her face. This was her boss. Mr. Mach. He was a short man and rarely came out of his office due to his proportions. He had gotten the curse of his family and obtained a very round belly with dark skin and short legs, and when he sat down on his chair, which needed to be rose up off the ground so he could reach his desk, he looked quite similar to a basketball.

His face was slightly twisted, and he looked as if in a perpetual state of frustration, as every time he struggled to get off his chair and walk to his door his face took on a strong crimson. His smile always seemed evil, as if he was planning his enemy’s demise every moment of every day. But despite these unfavorable qualities, Mr. Mach was a friendly man, and greatly respected Tamada for the work she did around the office.

Tamada was now at her desk and had begun to answer company emails, as the phone hadn’t rang for the past hour. It was a slow day, and only two walk-in customers had come through the big glass doors. Tamada was quite relieved, and only understood how difficult it was for her to work under her current state of mind and fatigue.

“Tamada, dear?” An older woman wearing a skirt far too tight for her thighs stepped loudly up to Tamada’s desk and put a piece of paper down. This woman was Mrs. Faust, and she seemed to be in an increased state of paranoia, as usual. She shifted the paper on the desk to make it straight, the title facing Tamada and she smiled nervously. “I need this to be filed under F-G-H. The client isn’t quite happy with his shipment and it needs to be redone.” She shivered as she seemed to recall an angry phone call from a very loud man. “I just don’t want to cause anymore inconvenience.

“Oh, sure.” Tamada put on her fake smile and wheeled her chair around to the filing cabinets behind her desk, taking the sheet of paper and opening up the F-G-H drawer. The name was Richard Greene, and he had apparently ordered a shipment of…

“Dear, please be careful with that page. It needs to stay in pristine condition for Mr. Greene.” Mrs. Faust shivered once more as Tamada carefully placed the page inside the drawer and gingerly slid it shut.

“No problem, then.” She turned back and smiled at Mrs. Faust as a look of relief came over her face as if some kind of frightening experience had just passed over her head.

“Thank you, dear.” She turned on her heel and clicked her way back down the hallway, her thighs making an unsettling squelching noise from behind the skintight skirt.

Mrs. Faust was a nice lady, always in an unending state of nervousness and irritation, like the roof was about to fall on her head at all times of the day. She often didn’t take very well to being yelled at, and every call she screwed up, she was faced with one of her great fears. And she seemed to screw up at least three times a week.

Tamada was grateful now that she was down the hall and back in her office, and she began to head back to the computer to answer more office emails. It was only when she looked up at the clock an hour later that she realized she only had another thirty minutes left in work, and the thought brought an excitable jolt to the base of her stomach.

Now she could go home and sit back on her fancy couch and eat her microwavable dinner and watch her shows before falling asleep at exactly 11:00 on the couch recliner to wake up the next day at 8:00. She had her days carefully planned, each time something was out of order, it was like someone had died. That was single paranoia she shared with Mrs. Faust: the fear that something would go wrong. Despite hating her job, secretarial duties suited her overheated OCD, and if her routines were ever messed with, she would get increasingly anxious and irritable to the point where she would make sure everything was done with perfection every thirty seconds. It was all very tiring, though, and it took a toll on her well-being.

It was time now, the clock struck 6:00 and she closed her computer out, locked the files behind her, straightened the stray papers on her desk and put them beside the printer, placed her stapler and pencil in a drawer to the left of her desk, and grabbed her coat and purse. She crossed the room and pressed a small button on the bottom of a keypad with a small card at the bottom. She signed out at 6:01 and left the building after calling a swift goodbye to Mr. Mach before shoving the glass door open and out onto the slightly damp city streets to walk home a few blocks away.

Tamada had a car, but almost never used it, as all the destinations she had ever needed to go were all within walking distance from her apartment twenty stories up. Her heels made light clicking noises on the ground as small droplets of the previous morning’s rain splashed upward, dampening the back of her heel.

It was always a short walk, and in just a few minutes she had reached the lobby of her apartment building, a large and orange-tinged marble room that looked similar to Grand Central Station. Up on the walls were small figures of cherubs and such holding little scrolls and writing names down, not bothering to cover up the obvious private parts that bothered Tamada greatly. Her heels clicked loudly on this floor, and the man behind the desk smiled at her as she passed. She pressed a small button on the bottom of the elevator buttons to signal which floor she needed to be taken to and she immediately stepped in through the grates and onto the metal floor of the elevator.

Below she could see clearly the floor of the elevator, ugly and metallic and painful to look at. The ceiling of the elevator, however, was dimly yellow with a small light in the middle that hid the hatch to lead upward to the cords. She pressed one more button and up she went, watching the numbers fly upward to twenty.

Never be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which was something she lived by, though she was often put in a place where it was broken. One of these times was now, as the elevator doors slid open she saw a man standing there with a set of books in his hand. Altogether this man was mildly attractive, his hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail and he was tall with slim features. This was Tamada’s neighbor from across the hall. And he was the only man to never express outright interest in Tamada. For some reason, this deeply frightened her.

His name was Dave, and besides passing smiles or nods in the hallway, he had never advanced on Tamada. He had never moved forward to get into her pants or show any interest in her life like any other man that had crossed her path. At one point she considered that he may have been gay. She had accepted this during a time, and had gone through the hallways of her building perfectly content with this assumption.

But one day Tamada saw Dave with a girl, their fingers entangled in the other’s and saw them kissing vigorously as they made their way to his door. That crossed out her comforting theory. And now Tamada was stuck knowing that a straight man lived across from her and hadn’t attempted an advance. In one way she appreciated this, in another it irked her greatly.

Dave smiled his sideways smile that he usually greeted her with before stepping into the elevator as she stepped out, glaring at herself and trying to figure out what part of her wasn’t good enough for a mediocre man like Dave. To her knowledge, he wasn’t in a relationship, and had seen the woman leave the next morning, the perfect case of a one night stand.

She smiled back and turned her head slightly to see him rifling through his pile of books rather than staring at her a*s, which was something many men had taken to doing when she passed. Tamada couldn’t figure it out. It was simply one of the mysteries in life that made her attempt to rethink her life and the direction it was headed.

The elevator door closed and she took a right down the hallway to her room. She paused and looked at Dave’s door in frustration before slamming the key into her own, twisting with vigorous anger before shutting the door loudly behind her.

Her apartment had the feeling of deep serenity and cleanliness. Though Tamada never had guests, her home always had the feeling as if it had been recently freshened up to welcome visitors. Her walls were a cream color and the carpet was stark white with a small rectangular rug underneath a glass coffee table in front of the eggshell couch. The couch was curved at one end and snaked along the wall to face the large black-framed television set that was mounted on the wall above the fireplace. To the right of the fireplace was a sliding glass door that led to a balcony, where Tamada frequently went to sit outside and read her books.

In the corner of the room, behind the couch and hidden from view seemed to be the only part of the apartment that was unkempt. A pile of boxes rested there, unlabeled and not marked in any way. Tamada had always forgotten to open these boxes, and never failed to simply leave them there like a dark spot on her perfect room. There was some kind of mental blockage that prevented her from fixing this small problem, like a little voice in her mind that told her not to mess with the boxes.

She stepped inside and moved to the side, placing her purse on the little table beside her front door. She hung up her keys on the little rack and placed her coat on an umbrella that was propped up in the corner. Kicking off her shoes, she moved over to the other side of the room and crossed down the hallway to get to her bedroom door, which was now wide open, though she had closed it when she left.

But she seemed unperturbed by this, and brushed it off, just the same as she brushed out her slightly damp hair when she walked into the bathroom to be greeted by her cat, who was curled up in the sink.

“Midas!” She looked at her cat, a beautiful bright orange and yellow tabby with long and slender legs and tall, widened ears. His eyes were the purest blue that blue could ever go.

He made a soft mew and stood up from the sink, stretching his legs, his body slightly shivering as he stood up to his fullest height to stretch his back and legs. He looked at Tamada and stared for a moment before leaning over and nibbling on her index finger lovingly.

This cat was the only creature on earth that could make Tamada happy and since the day she found him wandering, alone and broken on the streets below her apartment building, she had immediately fallen in love.

He made another mew and jumped off the counter and onto the floor and began to snake between Tamada’s legs with a loud purr every step he took. “I still don’t understand how you figured out how to open my door.” She shook her head and smiled at Midas, a sincere and warm smile, a smile that rarely came over her expression. So little she smiled in this way that her cheeks had begun to hurt with the strain. She brushed out the rest of her hair and placed the comb down on the counter before turning back to the bedroom to undress and get into her more comfortable home attire, all of which involved gray sweatpants and sweatshirts and a pair of sky blue slippers.

It took her merely a moment to dig up her leisure clothes before she stepped back down the hallway with Midas following closely at her heel, purring all the way. She rounded a corner and turned to the kitchen, where there rested a small cupboard with a box of vanilla cookies. This was to be her pre-dinner snack. Dinner, which was waiting in the freezer, was to be small microwaveable lasagna, her favorite in the frozen dinner department.

She then sat down on the couch noiselessly and picked up the remote which was now rested perfectly on the arm of the couch.

This was Tamada’s night. This was her routine, the way she went about her day, every day, for the past couple years. Some would consider it monotonous; others would call it smart, as she was financially stable despite her ordinary job. But this was how she was content for the worthwhile. This is how she remained calm even in the voice and urges inside her told her that she needed more adventure. Even as she smiled in happiness as Midas crawled onto her lap.

For hours she sat there, waiting for the clock to strike 11:00 so she could curl herself up on the couch with Midas in the middle of her torso to await the next day’s events. These events were always similar, always repetitive, never exciting.

 

The next day was sunnier than before, and she awoke to the golden rays of light slashing at her eyeballs and her forehead. It was 7:30. Half an hour before she normally woke up, but this she simply assumed was the sunlight on her face. Midas was no longer curled up beside her, but was now standing next to the window and staring outward at the dreary streets, now completely clear of the previous night’s rain.

“Good morning, Midas.” She sat up and stretched, looking at the cat as he turned and mewed before prancing in her direction. The lights were no longer on, as she drearily remembered standing up to turn them off. The TV wasn’t on anymore, but was hanging on a blue screen with a little label at the bottom that said, “No Connection Found”.

“Did you sit on the remote again?” She chuckled at the cat as he hopped up onto the couch and nudged the side of her face with his nose. “I’m assuming that’s a yes?” She smiled brightly at the cat before lifting him gently off the couch and putting him on the floor. It had been over a day since she last showered, and she figured it was time to wash off some of the dirt that had no doubt accumulated in her hair.

For some reason, she woke on this day with a feeling of strange elation. It may have been the sun; it may have been Midas’ greeting. But she felt it was one of those days when she would dress her best. And so she did.

She took a shower, put on light amounts of makeup, and wore her best shoes and clothes, pinning her little nametag from the office directly to her chest. She walked into the kitchen and brought down a small breakfast bar, one that she devoured quickly and hungrily before turning to Midas and pouring him some of his cat food into a small bowl in the crook of the counter.

“I’ll be home in a little while, sweetie.” She said as she opened the door and turned to walk down the hallway. And if there was one thing that could ruin her day as it stood, almost in waiting across the hall, it was Dave. He was dressed smartly, but casually in a button-up shirt, a gray jacket draped over his arm, and a pair of jeans. There was a small chain hanging from his belt loop into his right jeans pocket, which Tamada knew was his silver pocket watch. She had seen him pulling it out during elevator rides. She had always found it quite idiotic, as almost everyone nowadays had some sort of digital means of checking the time, and she found it very old-fashioned of him to be carrying a pocket watch of all things. But nonetheless, he brought it everywhere.

He smiled his sideways smile at her like every single time they passed each other and turned back to his door to lock it up, just the same as Tamada.

“You know. I hear you talking to someone in there every morning. But I’ve never seen anyone leave.” Dave, for the first time since the time she had moved in, had talked to Tamada.

She was so taken aback for the moment that she nearly forgot how to speak, and simply stood there for a solid ten seconds with an expression of pure and utter shock on her face, her mouth hanging slight agape. “I…” She looked up and down the hallway to see if anyone else had heard him speak. “I… just say goodbye to my cat in the morning.” She smiled at the thought of Midas and immediately looked away as Dave checked the time on his little dumb pocket watch. The watch itself looked to be pure silver with a small engraving on the front lid, a rose surrounded by bristles. The numbers were labeled in roman numerals and the hands were carved to look like straight stalks of thorns.

It was, actually, a very pretty watch. But it didn’t change her mentality that it was idiotic and a very archaic fashion, especially in America, to carry a pocket watch.

“A cat, huh?” Dave smiled and put the watch back in his pocket before beginning to walk down the hall toward the elevator. “I love cats.” He chuckled and smiled as he pressed the DOWN button on the elevator call.

“Me, too. I actually found him on the streets about a year ago. He was almost dead.” She spoke in a slight monotone, almost like she was reciting the story for the thousandth time even though she had never told anyone, ever.

“That’s nice of you. Not many would be willing to just take a cat off the streets in this city. Most of them are feral.” Dave suddenly took on a look of concern, as if he had begun to think of every abandoned cat in the world all at once.

“Yes, well. He was still just a kitten, so he hadn’t been subjected to the wild for very long.” She stared at the elevator. “He’s actually the sweetest creature you could ever come across.” She smiled to herself as she thought of Midas and how he had grown as an animal of the streets to a house pet with incredible ease.

The elevator came and made a small chime sound as they both stepped inside. Dave, closest to the buttons, pressed the lobby button and stepped back, beside Tamada. “You’re looking nice today. What’s the occasion?” He looked at Tamada for a moment, keeping his eyes purely on hers, no motive to even move them slightly lower to an area that many men were drawn to almost immediately.

“I’m not sure.” Tamada thought for a moment. “I suppose I’m just in a good mood.” She thought about the implication she was sure he was making at the rarity of her dress code, but thought not to comment on it. If this was to be the first in a long line of conversations with Dave, then she didn’t quite want to scare him off.

Dave chuckled. “It doesn’t quite sound like it.” He looked down to his shoes, long boot-like things, maybe a full foot in length with black laces. He knew that Tamada was never happy to see him, though he couldn’t quite figure out why. Maybe it was the way he portrayed himself. Maybe it was the time she had seen him and Mindy kissing in the hallway. Maybe she was just upset that he had never made an advance on her and was offended in some way.

“Why do you dislike me?” Dave turned suddenly and looked at Tamada, who was so startled by the question that she jumped slightly. Dave had always been one to speak his mind, and never hesitated to ask a question that he thought needed to be asked. If he wanted a question answered, he would have it answered.

“I don’t.” Tamada almost immediately said.

“I love when people lie to me. It gives me more of a perspective on the human brain.”

“I’m not lying.” Tamada turned and looked sincerely over to Dave, at his face and his long dirty-blonde hair that fell down to the middle of his back in the ponytail. She looked at his eyes, dark and brown and his nose, curved slightly downward. His teeth, canines pointed at a strange angle. But that smile. There was something about his smile that always made Tamada feel slightly warm inside.

“Well. I think you are.” He chuckled once more before stepping off the elevator suddenly. Tamada hadn’t even noticed the stop; she was too busy analyzing every aspect of this man.

“Well. I’m not.” She smiled as Dave laughed, his teeth showing. Despite being a little odd in the front, he had a very cute smile.

“I’m sure.” He smiled once more and turned to go. “I’ll see you later, little liar.” He waved his hand behind his head before parting the building through a side door, leaving Tamada to stand there in stunned silence. She laughed out loud once more and began to think. Was that the advance she was always after? Was that the confirmation that she needed to let her know that Dave was just like every other guy?

No. That was no advance, Tamada was sure. He had spoken to her like she was some kind of old friend. He hadn’t even once looked down to her cleavage, and he spoke politely, without even the slightest hint of a perverted tone. Dave was actually quite nice, even if she didn’t quite approve of his hair.

 

She arrived at the office quickly, an extra spring in her step now that she had just experienced something she secretly wished she would experience for a long time. She had talked to Dave. And for some reason, that was enough to make her feel like she had just won a race.

Arriving at work was a quick process. She strode through the front doors and turned on the lights that would signal to people on the outside that the facility was open before sliding behind her desk and raising her chair, as it always seemed to lower overnight.

“Good morning, Tamada.” Mr. Mach ambled over to her desk and stared at her for a moment as she replied with a happy good morning greeting. “Always to work on time.” Mr. Mach chuckled loudly and turned away before leaning back up with a teal file in his hand. “I’ll need every document in this file to be separated by last name and filed in the correct place. If there are any last names that start with the letter ‘Z’, I want you to bring them to me.”

Tamada was never puzzled by odd requests like these, as she never felt the need to ask why. But today she seemed that she was desperately curious to know why the names with the letter “Z” would be separated from the rest of the file. Besides being uncommon, names with the letter “Z” at the start were often quite unique.

“Alright then.” She took the file without another word and opened it up, watching Mr. Mach smile happily and lumber away to his office. She looked at the pile of papers in slight sorrow as she realized that they weren’t alphabetized to begin with, and that would make her job even harder. It was a thick stack of papers, maybe one-hundred different pages, all with various names that she would need to sort.

In about twenty minutes she had separated the file pages into twenty-five stacks, the twenty-sixth at the side to be taken off to Mr. Mach. There were only two pages in the entire file that contained last names starting with the letter “Z”, which wasn’t surprising to Tamada at all.

She looked down to the pages and sighed triumphantly as she wheeled her chair around to the file cabinets with the “A” pages and began to sort them. It was tedious, no doubt, and Tamada’s fingers had begun to hurt with all the sorting and flipping. But eventually she had made it down to the final stack of papers. The “Y” pages, of which there were only four. She turned around after shutting the file cabinets all at once and looked at the “Z” pages. Each of them was strange, their first names matching their last names in oddness. Tamada naturally assumed that they were from other countries, and swiped them up off the desk with a flourish to bring them down the Mr. Mach’s office.

She knocked on the door and heard a grunt that meant to come in. As she turned the door handle she couldn’t help but wonder once more what the purpose of separating the “Z” documents was, and she wasn’t sure if she planned to ask him or not.

“Mr. Mach. I have the ‘Z’ pages for you.” Tamada set them down on the desk and awaited a response from Mr. Mach, who had his back turned to the door and had his face stuffed in a magazine about finance of some sort.

“Yes, yes. Thank you, Tamada.” He waved his hand and barely turned his chair as he continued to read. She thought it wouldn’t be best to interrupt him when so deep in reading. Instead she made a small noise of confirmation in the back of her throat before shutting the door and heading back to her desk where a man stood, looking confused.

Tamada shook her head and sat back down, not looking at the man as she set off into her recitation of her greeting to guests. “Hello. My name is Tamada and I am the receptionist here. What can I do for you?” Her voice was steely and robotic, as if it came from a machine.

“Yes. I know your name, Tamada.” Tamada froze as she recognized the voice, slightly happy, slightly confused.

“Excuse me…?” She looked up, and the question caught in her throat. There was Dave, standing like he had been in the building a hundred times before as he looked down at Tamada in her seat. He smiled as he noted her stunned silence.

“I said I already know exactly who you are, neighbor.” He smiled widely, adorably in Tamada’s perspective. She had never really appreciated how cute he really was.

“Dave.” She said his name as if it were some kind of little known fact. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was fluttery, and it was quite obvious that she was nervous and excited at the same time. How is it possible for one person to have this effect? Just this morning she had wrote him off as the neighbor who had no interest in her. All it took was just a few sentences exchanged in the elevator for her to realize that maybe…

Maybe the reason she was so distraught and angered whenever she passed by Dave was because…she liked him. Maybe it was a crush, maybe it was something more, but there was something about Dave that made her feel as if she were about to fly away.

“I’m not sure.” He smiled subtly and looked down at the floor. He was wearing his laced boots today, the ones that made loud clunking sounds whenever they stepped on the floor, even on carpet.

How did Tamada know this about these boots? How did she also know that Dave was wearing his “ABC” jacket, one that he had obtained in College as English major? How is it possible that she knew about his dark jeans, ones that were torn at both knees when Dave had fallen down the stairs and shattered both of his shins? How did she know all of these things? Because she had overhead everything, all of these facts. She knew Dave as if he was an old friend.

Tamada smiled brightly as she began to realize what was happening in her brain. A small little tick whenever he smiled, the slightest of flutters, like a bird had just taken wing in her stomach, whenever he tilted his head and spoke quietly. It was these little things that brought Tamada to a startling conclusion, one that she had been denying, even to herself, since the day Dave had moved in.

They exchanged glances a bit more before it happened. Not sure what was possibly happening, one implication or another, it wasn’t even some kind of reflex reaction. It was natural, what happened. It was almost as if the event was planned by some unseen force, one who had just taken the backs of each of their heads and pushed them forward. But in one moment, Dave and Tamada were in an embrace. It wasn’t drawn out, in wasn’t sloppy. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that makes everyone around uncomfortable. It was the kind of kiss that you share with someone you know you could love. Someone you know that you could possibly spend most of your time with.

The rest of the day, Dave stayed in the office. He sat there with Tamada, staring at her face, just her face, as he read his books, waiting for the clock to turn so they could go home. That was Dave and Tamada’s story. And in the future, two years into the future, they would be married. Another two years they would have a daughter that they would name Leah.

There was a time in Tamada’s life when she would never have considered the possibility of love. She shunned the idea and put her nose to the sky when a man walked by. But it was this exact behavior that brought her the man that she had been waiting for. Someone with flaws that she could tolerate. Someone with features that she could love. These were the days that followed their initial relationship.

Dave’s pocket watch was given to him by his mother before she passed away. Something Tamada understood, yet she couldn’t relate. It seemed all belongings and memories that were contained in her head seemed to be missing.

That was, until, she remembered the boxes. Boxes behind her couch that had been there since the beginning of time, it seemed. This was the most major change in Tamada. A change that brought her to finally open the boxes that contained everything she had forgotten about her old life. An old Halloween costume, complete with angel wings and a halo. A baseball cap that her father had given to her on her ninth birthday. A plastic bracelet that she had made for her mother the day before she graduated from elementary school. All these things awakened her nostalgia. All these things broadened her mind in ways that she hadn’t experienced in many long years. It seemed not only the physical boxes of her home had been opened, but so the same had her mental boxes opened as well.

And all these things were because of Dave.