You Deserve Each Other(2)

Instead of fastening his seat belt and driving away, he hesitates. Fiddles with the radio dials until static fuzz tunes in to an upbeat indie song called “You Say It Too.” It hits me that he’s fallen so quiet because he’s nervous, not disinterested, which surprises me because up until now he’s exhibited nothing but confidence. There’s a charge in the air and my pulse accelerates with intuition of what’s to come. The rhythm of my blood is a chant. Yes! Yes! Yes!

“You’re beautiful,” he says earnestly, turning to face me in full. His eyes are hesitant as he bites his cheek and I’m stunned that he’s the nervous one here. My heart skips as he leans toward me an inch. Then another. His lips part, gaze dropping to my mouth, and just like that I can no longer remember any other men I’ve ever dated, he’s eclipsed them all so utterly. He’s intelligent and charming and perfect, absolutely perfect for me.

My heart is now lodged firmly in my throat. His fingers stroke through my hair, tilting my head up to meet his. Nicholas leans in that final inch and lights up my world like a shooting star, anticipation and wonder and a feeling of tremendous rightness barreling through my veins. He kisses me and I’m a goner, just like I knew would happen.

What a magical, extraordinary night.





What an ugly, crappy day. Rain pelts off the windshield of my coworker’s likewise crappy car, which smells like cold McDonald’s French fries and pine trees. Leon taps his fingertips on the steering wheel, leaning forward a bit to see out. His windshield wipers are stroking back and forth with all they’ve got, but the rain is pouring like someone slit the sky down the middle and an ocean started roaring out.

“Thanks again for the ride.”

“Sure, anytime.”

I roll my lips inward and inhale a bloom of pine. Whatever he misted in here before I got in is going to follow me around for the rest of the day. I don’t know too much about Leon, so it’s fully possible there’s a corpse in the trunk and the pine spray is to cover it up.

“Raining pretty hard,” I say. Brandy couldn’t take me home because her sister picked her up early. Zach took his motorcycle today, which I bet he’s regretting. Melissa offered to give me a lift, clearly hoping I’d decline, which is why I did. I kind of hate myself for still wanting her to like me. She’s been unreasonably prickly toward me ever since I set her up with my fiancé’s friend, who turned out to be a serial cheater. She thinks Nicholas and I knew he was the cheating type from the get-go and shredded her trust in men on purpose.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to rain all week.”

“That’s too bad for the trick-or-treaters.”

Leon turns to face me for a moment, before his eyes slide back to the road. Or what he can see of it—frankly I don’t know how he’s still inching along because I can’t see a thing. We could be mowing through a field for all I know. It’s the tail end of October and forty degrees. Last week I was wearing shorts. The week before that, it was so cold that it almost snowed. Autumn in Wisconsin is a joy.

“You passing out candy?” Leon asks.

The answer should be a given. I love candy and I love kids, especially obnoxious little boys because I think they’re funny. I also love the fall. All month I’ve been using the shimmery copper pan in my eye shadow palette, trying to give my eyelids the same glow of sunset gently slanting over a pumpkin patch.

My bedroom floor is a mess of soft pullover sweaters that make me feel like a sea captain, knee-high boots, and infinity scarves. Every meal contains some hint of pumpkin spice. If I’m not ingesting pumpkin, I’m breathing it in like an addict, lining every available surface of my home with candles that smell like food. Apple pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice, apple pumpkin.

My aesthetic is aggressively, unapologetically basic. Some of it stems from a lady at a MAC counter telling me I’m an autumn, because of my amber eyes and long, stick-straight hair the color of pecans, but I know in my leaf-ogling, beanie-loving, pumpkin-gorging soul that I’d be a basic bitch even if I had neutral undertones. It’s in my DNA.

And yet I don’t feel like passing out candy on Halloween. I haven’t even decorated, which used to be one of my favorite things to do at the start of a season. I might end up spending the evening alone in sweats, watching bad TV while Nicholas is off playing Gears of War at a friend’s house, or we might turn in before nine p.m. after passing out cheap, travel-size toothbrushes and floss to disappointed children.

“Maybe,” I say at last, because I no longer care what I do. I could be riding a roller coaster or writing a grocery list and my enthusiasm level would look the same. The thought depresses me, but what depresses me more is that I’m not going to do anything about it.

“I would if I lived on a busier street,” he replies. “I don’t get any trick-or-treaters out where I live.”

There’s no such thing as a busy street in Morris. We’re so small, you’d be hard pressed to find us on a city map of Wisconsin. We only have two stoplights.

Headlights roll by, tires spitting up waves of water like Moses parting the Red Sea. If I were driving I definitely would have pulled into a parking lot forever ago and waited this out. But Leon is completely at ease. I wonder if he retains this same pleasant expression when he chops people up into bits and slides their oozing remains down a cutting board into his trunk.