Terms Of Endearment

"When it's right, it's right," my girlfriend's mother told her (bless her soul).

She's lying not far from me now - my girlfriend, not her mother - eyes closed, pressing close into a pillow that is not me.

Hell, it's easy to tell what's not right. Just look at the names they give you! The "hun"s and "pookie"s and "bayybee"s of the world.

In eleventh grade, Mary Hotchkins called me "sugarbear." Last year, Sam Reshlin said I was her "teddy boy." A stripper once called me "hunk face" - didn't need mom's advice for that one.

The words crawl out of their mouths like tarantula legs. The hairy feel of "hey babe" sticking to their lips. "Hun." Like ash on the tongue.

But when it's right, it fits you like a warm blanket. "Babe" settles down around you with that too-close-but-not-close-enough feel of lips that taste like honey instead of ash. Instead of wild berry lip gloss.

When it's right, you wear it like she wears your eighth grade track hoodie. You swim in it, a plush bath of just-right in a space that is 100 percent agreeable with itself.

"Babe," she says gently. I can feel her body turning toward me in the dark. "Babe, come back to bed."

Softer than cotton.

Story by:

Justin J. Brouckaert

jjbrouck@svsu.edu

submitted at 2:24am

20 January 2012

Justin J. Brouckaert's web:

www.justinbrouckaert.blogspot.com