“See? Old-fashioned.” I point at myself.
“Old-fashioned is cute,” Vin says, coming in through the door and taking his boots off. “I wouldn’t know what to do with you if you were cutting-edge.”
“Back in a jiff.” Raff scoots out the door.
“Where’s he going?”
“You’ll see.”
Tonight, I join Vin in the shower because why not? He’s my husband, after all. He’s in love with me, after all. Because somebody has to wash this day off him. Somebody has to open their arms wide for all that care, all that persistent love.
Of course, he’s the one washing me. Of course, we end up on the bed, turning the bedsheets translucent with my soaking wet hair. Of course we get back in the shower and are so hopped up on endorphins we just can’t stop smiling.
I’m smiling for another reason too.
We’re in pajamas and chopping vegetables at the counter, side by side, when there’s a noise that makes us both jump.
It’s just Raff. Rattling back through our door. He comes in with a dazed expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” Vin is bristling, stepping toward him, but I’m pretty sure I already know what’s happening.
“Nothing…” Raff says, kicking off his shoes, crossing theroom, and handing the package off to me. “I just…met someone.”
“On your errand? Jesus Christ, you can’t swing a dick without finding somebody to flirt with,” Vin says, hands on his hips.
“I think the dick-swinging might be why he meets people to flirt with,” I say, with a grin, because I know exactly what happened and I’m determined to relish every second of this.
“No, no,” Raff says, sitting down at the table. “I think I, like,reallymet someone. Someone…”
He’s run out of words to describe this someone, so I helpfully fill in some blanks. “Was he about this tall? Salt and pepper? Probably wearing some silk garment worth more than a monthly mortgage payment? French accent? Somehow made you feel like dirt and ten feet tall at the same moment?”
Vin looks from me back to Raff. “You met St. Michel?”
Raff spins in his seat. “You know him too?”
Vin shrugs. “Sure.” And then he turns to me. “What’d you have framed?”
“I’ll show you once Raff is done turning into Jell-O. This is fun.”
“I’m done, I’m done,” Raff says with a wave at me. But he’s not. He’s thinking about St. Michel with a blush in his cheeks.
I can’t help but get Raff in a headlock. “St. Michel is good at loving people in pieces,” I tell him. “He says relationships should work for the people who are in them.”
“Stop!” Raff is covering his ears and melting down toward the table. Then he’s jolting upright. “Should I ask him on a date? No, he’s way too cosmopolitan for that. I should follow his business on IG and—and—”
“Raff, I sent you over there in short shorts and a sun hat. With this mustache? And your thighs? I’msurehe’s clocked you. Play it cool for a few days. Then go back and getsomething framed. He’ll be feeding you oysters and tying you to his bed frame in no time.”
“Do I like this?” Vin asks no one in particular. “Hard to say.”
“Okay.” I unhand Raff and pick the package back up, walk it over to Vin. “You got one for me framed. And now I got one for you framed.”
He takes the package and holds it, his eyes flicking to mine. He doesn’t even have to see it yet, to confirm. My heart is in this package, he just knows it.
He pulls the paper off all at once and his eyes instantly fill. Raff comes to look over his shoulder.
It’s a drawing of a thought. Of a hope. Something I’d like to understand.
It’s the three of us, sitting around a table, maybe at a café, drinking coffee. And in this drawing, we are older. In this drawing, we are perfectly fine. In this drawing, we are living very, very normal lives. Which is to say, layered lives. Lives shot through with crimson. Lives with pillowy, inviting shadows in the corners of darkened rooms. Lives that sometimes wake us up in the night. And lives we talk about, and draw about, when we have to set them down.
