Jessie Lovett
For years, you’ll live alone in a small, glorious house—your weird art on every wall. Sometimes, you’ll eat Frosted Flakes for dinner. The lawn will be tiny, almost nothing to mow.
This man will come like a tiny meteorite, a surprise arc in your peripheral vision. But he will not crash through your roof. You’ll give it a go, and the three-hour drive to his town will become an electric ritual of music and black coffee and one quick touch up of eyeliner at the last truck stop. His house will have stacks of papers on the kitchen table, threadbare towels, dust bunnies in corners. Quirky and charming—because it’s not yours.
You’ll stay with each other, a few days here, a week there, stashing extra toiletries in a drawer at the other’s place. But even during these together-times you’ll start to spin your new spheres. You’ll hole up on your laptop in your favorite corner of his town’s public library; he’ll solo-hike the trails in your town.
You’ll argue, of course. When to meet each other’s kids. How much texting or calling or fucking makes you both feel safe, loved, free. What is being independent versus being emotionally disengaged. Whether getting hitched would ever make sense, just like a courthouse thing, no of course not a huge ridiculous ceremony.
Sometimes you’ll watch movies on your couch and debate the characters and symbolism. He’ll slice up a mango, thin how you like it, bring it into the living room. You’ll lay your head on his lap, he’ll gently rake your hair with his fingers. Your ear, pressed on his thigh, will start to ache and throb. You’ll keep your head there anyway.
Together you’ll hit up coffee shops and dive bars, start conversations with workers, hear stories about the craziest customers they’ve ever had. One bartender tells you about the regular she calls the stare-master because all he does is ogle creepy at the women. This’ll become one of your stupid inside jokes—if either of you looks dazed or distracted, you’ll call each other a stare-master.
And just once, when you’re both swamped with the bullshit of jobs and life, and there’s no time for a proper visit, you’ll meet at a truck stop halfway between your homes. You’ll wear a skirt, park in the shadows, and straddle his lap in the passenger seat as the vents blow hot air at your neck. Late that night as you brush your teeth in the mirror, you’ll see the smudged lipstick and smirk. You’ll crawl into your bed, alone but full.
But you’ll break up. Time to grow up and find someone serious about you, your sister will say. You can’t deal with this long-distance shit forever, your friend will say. And you and this man will think they have a point. After the split, you’re OK—truly—but there’ll be a throbbing hole of grief in your chest that stings most at night. This separation will last four whole months before neither of you can articulate why the distance troubled you in the first place. He’ll appear on your porch. You’ll spend three days at your home together, half-dressed and ordering takeout. You’ll make space again in the drawer.
Yet he will not be your universe, your world, nor your village. Because you already had a village, and so did he. Of work friends and open mics and grown kids and fandoms and old college buddies. Yes, he’ll be a cool part of the village. OK the coolest. But your two villages will be a Venn diagram, a smidge overlapped. Two circles linked up into a janky figure-eight mega village.
You’ll still argue, of course. When to schedule that appointment with the specialist. Who is nagging who. What is drinking socially versus self-medicating. Whether to travel together for the holidays, no of course this isn’t a goddamn Hallmark movie.
You’ll grocery shop, late at night when it’s not as busy and the shelf-stockers crank the music a touch louder. When “Peaceful Easy Feeling” plays on the speaker, you’ll say I fuckin’ hate The Eagles, man, and he’ll roll his eyes and grab your hand. You’ll push the cart through the glistening slush of the parking lot. He’ll brush the snow off the windshield.
Sometimes, you’ll take days off work and drive each other to colonoscopies, stress tests, MRIs. You both have local friends who could help too, but you’ll want to do this for each other. At dawn one winter morning, you’ll sit together in a medical office parking lot, slow-drinking your gas station coffee, listening to NPR Morning Edition, not talking. The frost on the side mirror will punch you with its beauty. On this day, you’ll have been together nine years.
And he’ll need to go in the hospital for a bit. A nasty infection that needs an IV. You’ll sit near the edge of the bed and hold his cold foot through the sheet while he floats in and out of sleep. You’ll text his kids, tell them it’s OK, it’s going to be fine. Later, on a good day, you’ll hold his dick. He’ll tell you to stop—the nurses could arrive at any moment—but at the same time he’ll smile and press your hand in place.
When you drive him home and your designated drawer feels too small, he’ll give you a whole closet at his place. At 3am, when the existential terror hits, you’ll choke awake together in the same bed. In the dim kitchen light, you’ll brew decaf and make him cinnamon toast. Together you’ll stare out the window into the black night.
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Jessie Lovett teaches English at North Platte Community College in western Nebraska. Recent work appears in Maudlin House, Los Angeles Review, Best Small Fictions, and Milk Candy Review.