"Hey! Isn't that my towel?"
Judy finished folding the article in question and glared back at John. "Of course it's not!" she snapped. "When we moved in together we agreed that all we were going to share was the rent and food. 'Strictly a business deal' we said. I've certainly kept my half of the bargain."
"Are you saying that I haven't?"
"No, but it sure sounded like you were accusing me!"
"Well I wasn't at all, I was just...," John hesitated. "That just looked like my towel is all," he finished lamely.
"I told you it isn't. That should be good enough," said Judy.
"Oh, it is, it is! It's just that, well my uncle gave me a towel just like that for Christmas three years ago," John said uncertainly. "At least it looked pretty similar, and I haven't seen it for a couple days."
Judy pulled a sock from the laundry basket, examined it, then began to search for its mate. "Well," she said, "The state your room's always in it could be underneath anything."
"So I'm a slob now, is that it?"
"Hey, I didn't say it, you did!" Judy didn't look at him as she found the matching sock and meticulously folded the pair together. John watched the process, then snorted.
"That looks so neurotic!" he laughed. "Why don't you just do this?" John grabbed a couple of socks from her basket, checked to make sure that the colors were pretty close, rolled them together and stretched the top of the outermost one over the whole bundle. "There," he said, "That way they stay together in the drawer, and they're always matched."
Judy snatched the socks from him and flipped them apart. "Leave my stuff alone!" she said. "When you do that they take up more room in the drawer. "Besides," she added, "It ruins the elastic."
"Oh, saw-ree! I didn't realize that elastic was so important when you wear them shoved down around your ankles all the time!"
"Listen!" Judy cried, "Just because we share an apartment doesn't mean you have the right to criticize the way I dress!"
"You complain about my cooking!"
"Macaroni and cheese and tacos is not my idea of an elegant meal!"
"I never said I was a cordon bleu! What do you want from me?"
"Nothing! I don't want anything from you!"
There was an awkward silence. They glared at one another.
"It still looks like my towel," said John eventually.
"Here! Take the damn thing if that's all you care about!" she shrieked, throwing the towel at him. It struck him in the chest and flopped to the floor like a dead thing, its neat folds billowing into chaos.
Astounded, it took John a moment to find his voice. "Hey, look--" he began.
She cut him off. "I don't want to hear it. Why don't you just leave me alone! Why don't you just leave!" she screamed. Then she turned her back to him and put her face in her hands.
John was horrified to see that she was crying. Instinctively he put a hand gently on her shoulder, and was somehow shocked when, instead of shaking it off as he would have expected, Judy hesitantly put her own hand on top of his.
The tableau held for a moment, his hand on her shoulder; her hand on his; the laundry half-folded on the couch; the towel at his feet, while John asked himself the ageless questions about the behavior of women with which men plague themselves. He found no more answers than had any man from prehistory to that second.
Then suddenly he realized with utter certainty what was wrong.
"I love you," he said softly before the thought was more than a glimmer in his mind.
"I know," she replied, so softly that he was sure he had imagined it, "I love you too."
Then the tableau broke. With a sniff she was in his arms, and it seemed to him that there had been no transition. For an eternal instant they kissed.
After a moment or an hour they returned to a light embrace, all tension between them gone. Judy was still crying, but now her smile illuminated a place deep inside John. He wiped away a tear with his fingertip, then bent down and retrieved the towel.
"Here," he said offering it to her, I'll help you fold." Her smile twitched upward at one corner as she pushed the towel back at him. "Keep it," she said. "It's yours anyway."