They met at a Halloween party. She fancied herself a brunette Kate Moss. He was Dracula-clad, sporting plastic canines, faux blood dripping from his mouth, a cape around his neck. She nested herself in a leopard print coat as she lounged in a far corner for the night, holding court over the many who made their way over.
The apartment smelled of testosteronic must and cheap incense. It was quintessentially Recent Grad, leftover college furniture spread unevenly throughout the living room and poster prints of Picassos and Boteros quilting the walls, projecting artistic inclination, if not yet a specific taste. Loose tobacco and bits of weed littered any available rolling surface.
Suggestions of a more refined aesthetic lurked in corners, a new lamp, a house plant, but the early-20s maintained their grip on the night’s host, the name of whom neither of them could now place.
She was a natural in this environment, at ease when talking, drinking, smoking joints with her friends. Ben wasn't necessarily awkward, but he wasn't the most forward when surrounded by people he didn't know. She had noticed him earlier from across the room, chuckled as she wondered if he looked more like a middle schooler or a dad in his chosen getup.
After watching him painfully slink away from another round of small talk, she threw him a bone. She beckoned him over with a half smile when she caught his eye. Dutifully, he made his way over to her, this queen in her threadbare corduroy throne.
“Your makeup’s smeared,” she said. “Here.”
She licked her thumb, wiped the supermarket blood off his face.
“Better,” she smiled. “Haven’t seen you around here before. I’m Caleb.”
“Ben,” he said, reflexively wiping his mouth where she just had.
He took a seat adjacent to her, noticed what must have been nine rings on her hands. Two with intricately woven silver, one with a blue stone, one made out of wood. The rest he couldn't make out.
“I like your costume,” he said. “Especially the rings.”
It would be a week later on their first date that he realized the rings weren’t part of any costume, just how she dressed. Lots of earrings, three or four necklaces, and she had a belly button ring, too, but it would be a couple weeks before he discovered that one.
***
She was cold toward him in their final days. He felt her distance through the hardness in her eyes, the wall of self protection she crawled behind in her loneliness. He should have seen it coming.
After the years they spent growing up together, he felt bound to her. He understood himself as a part of her, she a part of him, a pair in every sense of the word. Their marriage embodied the essence of what he valued, and leaving her never crossed his mind. She was his path, and he saw no other.
But she saw it differently. She had no model for stability, and she frequently weighed the direction of her moral compass against her lust for self-discovery separate from him. There was much left to be desired in her life. Her world, small. He, small. Even with a marriage and a child, the vague dreams she had left unpursued still tugged at her. In her eyes he represented more baggage than possibility, his emotional dependence dragging them through their days.
***
He awoke at dawn, feeling loneliness in his stomach. He recognized the tug of it settling swiftly upon him as he reemerged from sleep. A sudden transition from the escape of a dream back to the bed where he lay, sweaty under the sheets.
He rolled onto his side and propped himself onto the edge of the bed, put his hands to his face, rubbed his eyes. His alarm still buzzed innocuously as the sun peered softly through the blinds. He stole a glance at the other side of the bed just to be sure she wasn't there. He rose to his feet and breathed in deeply through his nose before heading to the shower.
The carpet was soft on his bare toes. It was early spring when they had gone to pick it out so many years ago. She liked the off-white. He agreed, even though he preferred the olive green. It had browned with age, but he smiled softly at the unsightly color.
Fresh air swirled through the bathroom window and he breathed in deeply again and hung his head in the shower. Steam slowly filled the room, fogged the mirror, fogged his mind. He wandered back to last Christmas, when he watched as she did her hair, studying herself in the mirror.
They went downtown that night, took a cab to allow themselves an extra glass of wine. She treated him to steak with baked potatoes and greens, splurging on a bottle of red. He laughed as she forked the bits of potato off his plate that he was too full to eat. They walked along the water after they finished, listened as the low tide lapped at the rocks beneath the pier. He kept his hands in his jacket pockets, but she slipped hers in to join him, holding tight against the breeze. They stopped to take in the flickering bridge, watching the ships pass silently toward the pier.
He didn't remember much else from that night, though he wished he did. He wished he could remember everything, every time he smelled her, saw her, knew her. But his pain said no, steadily working to bury her under the weight of her absence.
He kept his eyes shut, letting the hot water stream down his face. The muscles in his face relaxed, his jaw unclenched, his brow unfurrowed. He washed himself, rinsed and grabbed a towel, drying off then wrapping it around his waist. He paced into the kitchen and soaked in the flood of the sunrise. The bigger the window there, the better, she said.
Their house was modest, much smaller than the rest of the neighborhood. They both had humble upbringings, their families bouncing around rentals, forced to move each time the landlord raised the rent or decided to move back in. Neither had ever had pets and didn't bother with plants. The house was something to call their own.
They ate breakfast in the living room every morning. She had spent a long while deciding which color to paint the walls, wanting people to feel welcome when they walked through the front door into their home. They settled on a soft yellow somewhere between sunflower and pastel.
She finally decided on the color after a sleepless night, sitting cross-legged on the carpet as morning light dutifully filled the room. They had peppered the walls with sample colors the prior afternoon, hues of greens, yellows, and blues, doing more to confuse than clarify. For hours they challenged each other on the merits of a deeper shade of green versus an ocean blue, or, maybe, why hadn’t they considered any reds?
A shrug and a suggestion of a beer ended the conversation and sent them to bed, where they spent the night turning, trading glances of wakeful frustration. She broke first, finding herself in the middle of the living room floor to witness one of the yellows as it radiated in the first light of the day. By dusk, the new coat was dry.
Every morning they sat and ate in that room, sometimes chatting, sometimes silent. He often caught her gazing in admiration of the aesthetic she had so carefully crafted. He appreciated her eye for detail yet marveled at how selective she could be with her attention. She was intensely detail-oriented when it mattered to her; absent, elsewhere, when it didn’t.
It was a trivial thing, but he was bothered that she never noticed when he bought her flowers, always taking time to spread the bunch in vases throughout the house, tending to them until they withered, then trying again a couple weeks later. Her mind was sharp, and it consumed her, sometimes to his detriment.
He fried two eggs and ate them with toast. When they got married she convinced him to stop drinking coffee, but he was considering starting again. He could feel the weight of his eyelids.
He halved one of the eggs but the yolk didn't run. He pondered it, disappointed. It was cooked just how he liked it, but instead of eating it while it steamed on his plate, he had lost himself in the emptiness of his home. The yolk became gelatinous, halfway hardened. He put it on a piece of bread, folded it, ate it all together.