A/N: Okay, sooo this is just a teensy little drabblish thing I somehow got inspired to write tonight, even though my muse is currently out of town. Ahem. Anyway, read, review, tell me if you want a sequel…all that good stuff :) Forewarning: it ends in an angsty place. Apologies.
P.S. – this is for Audrey.
It started with three words.
Rememberthelaundry!
Her neat handwriting was scrawled out across a small piece of scrap paper and taped to his bedroom door. Post-its weren't quite on the market yet, so she made do with what they had. At first, the notes had driven him crazy. Damned woman, bossin' him around.
Please don't leave your towels on the floor (taped to the corner of the bathroom mirror)
Put me back down (taped to the underside of the toilet seat)
Don't eat this! It's for Amy (annoyingly attached to the cake Juliet had baked for her new island buddy).
Soon, though, they became more endearing…
Don't worry about dinner, I'll cook tonight (taped onto the fridge)
Read me (taped to the cover of books she thought he'd like and left on his nightstand)
I've still got your back (left on his pillow after a particularly rotten day).
He began looking forward to them. As they spent more time together and grew closer, he began thinking of those notes as little pieces of her. Tiny shards from the mosaic that had become their life…their crazy, mixed-up, completely wonderful 1970's life.
As time passed, the notes became less frequent, but they never ceased completely.
Dinner at Amy and Horace's tonight. Be ready by 6!
Happy birthday, James. I'll be home early to help you celebrate.
I love you.
He never wrote any for her, but she never said a word about it. She understood how he felt, and he expressed himself better with actions, anyway. He held on to those notes like they were precious jewels. He kept them in a box beneath the floorboards; a box that also housed an actual precious jewel – one that he planned on giving to her very soon.
x x x
One day, the notes stopped coming. She was no longer there to write them, and the jewel he'd been waiting to present her with remained buried in that box, along with the first and only note he'd ever written for her.
It ended with three words.
Marry me, Juliet.