“I remain partial to the Rae-bae scramblette.”
But Ellen was already dozing off, head propped against the tile wall.
Sitting down on the shower mat, Rae hoped that she wouldn’t have a meltdown at her own bachelorette party, but she was oddly comforted nonetheless, that even as they entered a more grown-up life stage, she and Ellen still needed one another to bail each other out of bathroom stall crises.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
RELATIONSHIP VALUE APPRECIATION
“Spot a poem,” Rae said, lying next to Stu in the bed of his pickup truck, named Marlene, one Friday night in late July, on the side of a cornfield-straddled back road. The engine light and taillights were off, the scene snug in a darkness that set off the stars, which were starting to pop out of the earth’s navy-black roof, two by two.
Wishing on New York lights seemed far away and futile. Rae once again preferred the reliability of stars, how no one could turn them off. Crickets chirped rhythmically, noisy but not imposing.
“What do you mean?” Stu asked. He fixed a blanket over her, tucking the fabric around her arms to protect her from mosquitoes, which were outnumbering the fireflies four to one. Rae was a little too warm but didn’t mind.
They’d gone to a bonfire at Stu’s married friends’ house outside the city (all his friends were married) and were taking the scenic route back. Rae hadn’t even critiqued him for driving under the speed limit.
“It’s a game Ellen and I used to play,” Rae half lied, with a pang she attributed to natural nostalgia. “You look around and find something ordinary that reminds you of poetry.”
“That’s easy,” Stu said. “The stars.”
Rae tilted her head on Stu’s sweatshirt-turned-pillow and looked at him, his face so close that it was exempt from the surrounding shadows. She kissed his scruffy cheek, which never scratched. “And what about them makes them poetry?”
“How bright they are.”
Rae stopped herself before she pressed for something deeper. Her version of poetry didn’t have to match his. “I spot that wispy cloud over there,” Rae said. “It looks like a wedding veil. Maybe that star right next to it is getting married to that one over there.” She pointed across an imaginary aisle. “And she’s racing to meet her fiancé, even though their parents”—she indicated a cluster of four stern-looking stars—“think their love is just going to burn out. But intergalaxy gravity is pulling the starry-eyed couple together, and nothing can stop them.”
Stu let out a sound between a whistle and a laugh. “That’s a bit of a stretch to me. But is this your way of asking me to marry you?”
“You know me so well,” Rae deadpanned.
“I do, don’t I?” Stu said, grinning his glow-in-the-dark smile. He kissed her forehead, then her lips, then her collarbone, where T-shirt met blanket. “Well, I’m ready when you are.”
Rae had the feeling he was one-third kidding, two-thirds not, and she liked how he wasn’t afraid to show how firmly committed he was. She wasn’t going to abuse the security he gave her, but it was nice not to have to walk on eggshells worrying she might say the wrong thing and poke the bear.
They’d been back together only a couple months, but they’d picked up right where they’d left off, and Rae noticed how the slow pace of life here accelerated relationships. They got to spend most evenings together—sunsets and happy hours, not just midnights and late-night pizzas—and given how close both their families lived, they traded off Sunday night dinners (as expected, their moms were over the moon with smug satisfaction).
Last week Rae and Stu had even gotten together with her dad, who’d had a layover at the Indianapolis airport and taken them out to dinner at the Terminal A bistro. Stu knew her dad from years back, of course, but he’d told Rae it felt like meeting a stranger. Rae had half hoped for some kind of fatherly interrogation from her dad—asking about Stu’s intentions or threatening to show up with a shotgun if he ever broke her heart—but they’d just talked about cars and football and swapped burger-grilling advice as Stu “played nice” (his words) and Rae had crammed in a few words about the deals she was working on, unable to keep from seeking her dad’s approval despite telling herself she didn’t care. His flight had started boarding before the entrées arrived, cutting the evening short, but he’d picked up the tab and texted Rae afterward—Love Stu!! Great u reconnected. See u soon kiddo.
“I’ll never forgive him for what he did to you and your mom,” Stu had fumed on their drive back, as Rae sat in the passenger seat, hugging the takeout boxes on her lap so they wouldn’t jostle. “Wish I’d pissed in his boat when I’d had the chance.”
Her relationship with her dad seemed to have stalled out in a place where he thought it was pretty good and she thought it was pretty grim. It felt like they were going through the right motions but not actually moving forward.
Now under the blanket in the back of the truck, Rae nudged Stu’s bare feet with her socks. “Your turn again,” she said. “Spot another poem.”
Stu stared at the sky, concentrating hard, and then turned to look at Rae. “Your eyes,” he said triumphantly. “Prettier than any star.”
Rae felt a letdown at the cliché, but it quickly fell away at the feeling of his hands running under her shirt, needing no lantern to find their way. Her body folded gratefully into his, determined not to pick a fight over a compliment.
Maybe love was always cliché, and anything too original just meant you were overcomplicating some knockoff to convince yourself it was true.
She’d already attempted to sabotage the relationship multiple times, first by forcing the “What are we?” conversation after the third date (he’d responded by asking if she’d be his girlfriend, to which she’d said no but then changed her mind the next day). Then there had been the time he hadn’t replied to her text in eight hours, and convinced he was ghosting her, she’d deleted all their messages, only to receive a call from a different number saying his phone had broken and he was at the store getting a new one. Stu had felt so badly for making her question his feelings that he’d shown up at her apartment that night with two dozen roses.
“Raelynn?” Stu said now. He always called her Raelynn, like everyone out here did, and it felt like getting some part of her back, a part of her she hadn’t wanted but now saw she needed.
“Yeah?” Her nose was itchy with leftover bonfire smoke.
“I love you, if you haven’t figured that out by now.”
