‘What am I, a sixties sitcom wife? Because I can tell you right now that I’m not cooking for you.’
‘You better not. I’ve tasted your cooking.’
‘Well, fuck you too.’
‘I’ll cook. You can grow the vegetables.’
This was, I grudgingly had to admit, a pretty good deal. I loved gardening, and eight years of living with him – for all I’d tried to avoid him – had taught me that Jonah was an excellent cook.
‘We just need a few little things,’ I said. ‘Things that will suggest to people that we’re a couple without us having to make a big song and dance about it.’
‘What are you thinking, dear?’
‘That I’m not a hundred and eighty years old. Notdear.’
I tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. ‘People always over-complicate this when they do fake dating in romcoms. They over-perform. They don’t pay attention to what actual couples do in real life. Actual couples don’t go around making out in public, or dragging ‘just married’ signs and a string of tin cans behind them, or wearing ‘I’m with stupid’ and ‘I’m stupid’ T-shirts. They do little things. Holding hands, kissing each other on the cheek, those kinds of things. Things we can definitely manage.’
Jonah nodded, looking contemplatively into the middle distance.
‘But the easiest, most obvious one of all,’ I added, grabbing his wrist and pulling him into the Barbie-pink shopfront of a cheap jewellery store, ‘is rings.’
The engagement ring we chose was cubic zirconia, set in sterling silver. A green stone was surrounded by smaller faux diamonds, spiky rather than smooth, like little shards. It cost the princely sum of $27.99, which Jonah insisted on paying: ‘I’m all for radically revised gender roles in the heteronormative institution of marriage, but I should still pay for my wife’s engagement ring.’
There was that word again.Wife.
‘I’ll buy the wedding bands, then.’ I turned away, browsing through the trays. ‘Here – does this one fit you?’
He gave me his hand. I slipped a ring onto his finger, still wired to a flimsy piece of cardboard with the price tag attached.
I’d never looked properly at Jonah’s hands before. I’d seen them, of course, but I’d never reallylooked. He had the fingers of a violinist, long and slim and nimble.
I had a sudden, vivid flashback of what it had felt like, that night in the kitchen. Those fingers, wrapped around mine.
I shivered.
‘Darling,’ he said softly.
Oh no. Had I accidentally said something out loud?
‘Darling,’ he repeated. ‘As a pet name. What do you think aboutdarling?’
‘I, um… I don’t hatedarling, actually.’
I took the ring back off his finger. ‘Notdarl, though.’
‘Agreed. Neverdarl.’
‘What about the ring?’ I brandished it at him. ‘Are we agreed on this?’
‘I never really imagined my wedding ring would come in a pack of three.’
‘So much the better. You’ve got spares if you lose one. Or if the gold finish rubs off. The fact that these are three for twelve dollars doesn’t give me a lot of faith in their staying power.’
I threw the packet of rings up in the air and caught it again. ‘Not that they’ll need much staying power. Three years isn’t that long.’
‘Yes it is.’
‘We can buy two packets, if you’re worried.’
