"A five year old Chinese native speaks better Mandarin than I do. But I guess it's better than my written Mandarin," he said, waving the fork a little as he talked. "If I didn't love you as much as I do, I would have given this language up a long time ago. Probably would have stuck to improving my Spanish. Make my mother happy."
Jon's mother hailed from Mexico, complete with authentic Mexican cooking, and authentic Mexican attitude. She hated the fact that her son chose to use English when he spoke to her. Granted, he understood the language just fine, and spoke it decently. Mandarin with a Spanish accent was interesting to say the least. He'd pulled that a couple of times.
Springville is boring, she'd said. Yep. This conversation was not going to end well. He set the fork down on his plate, and pushed it aside. His appetite was gone.
"This," he went on, motioning with his head as well. "Is just too much for me. I can't handle the hustle and bustle and expend the energy needed just to live with it day in and day out."
He sighed, leaning back into his chair and crossing his legs under the table and arms across his chest. "I guess I've always pictured living off on a beach somewhere, secluded from the majority of the rest of the world. Somewhere where I can think and not have to fight with construction or music from someone else's car for five minutes."
A beat.
"It's so much easier to grade papers when you don't have typical New Yorkers shouting typical New York obscenities at each other."
Maybe Jon was the only one that noticed the noise? Maybe everyone else was so damned used to it that they just didn't care. This was the major difference between Jon and Lulu. She thrived on the city that never slept. He had grown tired of it. Hell, even Poughkeepsie was a little too much for him, always had been.
"I don't like leaving you here either," Jon frowned, his lips pursing a bit and his eyebrows furrowing. "I never thought I'd hate being alone in my own place, but I do."
He sighed again. "I've got to last out at least this school year, unless something else crops up." That was his current contract. He was just filling a spot until one of the other teachers returned from maternity leave. But the administration had told him they might need him for the following year as well.
After that, he'd be free to go wherever it was Lulu wanted. But he didn't think she wanted to hear that, so it remained unvoiced. He really didn't want to fight. She was so much prettier when she was happy and bubbly and smiling.
He leaned in and took a hold of her hand, tracing over her pointer finger gently with his thumb.
Yes, he'd failed to carry on the talk of dress colors because she could have worn the very un-traditional, probably controversial, black, and he'd still marry her. He thought she was beautiful. He told her all the time. Hell, she could have put him in orange and he wouldn't complain. And orange was his least favorite color. But he'd wear it if it'd make her happy.
He was sure they'd had that conversation already. Hadn't they?