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“Yeah, well, that’ll teach me to take magical antiques to the bar,” he said.
On Thursday, she and Decker went out in Shepherdstown and ended up at karaoke at the Devonshire, where she tried to convince him to sing a duet with her, but Decker wasn’t into it, so they just went back to her place and had drunken sex. When they showed up groggy and bleary on Friday, they both vowed that karaoke was evil incarnate and they’d never do that again.
So, then a span of time ensued in which there was no going out at all. There was some drinking of alcohol, but not very much. Decker drank beer when he watched sports sometimes. She would, too. Just beer, because she felt too lazy to make herself cocktails.
She was pretty sure that the point of going to the Mecklenburg, for her, had never been about drinking alcohol, anyway, and had always been about not feeling lonely.
With Decker around, she had companionship. But it was better than other companionship because he was easy to be around. They were already relaxed around each other. She had worried that Decker would want more from her than she could give him, but he wasn’t that way at all. She realized that Decker poured all his expectations inward. He held himself to a high standard, but he accepted her exactly the way she was. She did the same for him.
It was good, actually. Neither of them were much good at being kind to themselves, so it was nice to have someone else around who went a bit easier on them.
She didn’t get a doctor’s appointment or any ADHD meds, but she did clean out the junk room in a Red-Bull-fueled twenty-four hours that left her apartment so tidy and perfect that she didn’t want to be in it for fear of messing it up and promptly went to stay at Decker’s place for three days.
He was the one who talked her into going home, reassuring her that she would not destroy everything. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, really,” he told her, kissing the top of her head as she burrowed into the middle of his broad chest.
And then, time passed. Easy, easy time. Things felt good and she woke up happy, usually with him, either in her bed or in his. They were always together now, and that felt simple and nice and, well, settled.
She asked him to move in with her.
He liked the idea of living in Shepherdstown, but he said her apartment’s ceilings were too low.
He asked her to move in with him.
She liked his apartment but was not even remotely interested in not living within walking distance of the bar she never went to anymore.
By now, at the Tribune, they were an established couple, and no one ever acted as if there had been any worry about that at all. There weren’t any more visible bruises since she put her iron pills out next to the coffee maker in the morning. This way, she didn’t forget to take them. Everything was really fine, totally settled, but she felt a pressure, at the back of her skull, to move forward.
She started to look at real estate. There was no way they could afford to buy a house in Shepherdstown, not on two journalists’ salaries. Briars, she could barely afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment in town. So, she tried to convince herself that living just outside town could be okay. She tried to convince herself that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to get an Uber into town if she wanted to go to the Meck.
When she showed Decker the houses she was looking at, he was like, “Is this a subtle hint that I should propose or something? Because, not very subtle, Essence.”
“No, just… we want to live together, and we should do that. We’re obviously going to be together, like, forever. We’re going to be one of those super annoyingly perfect couples. It’s clear that’s happening.”
“So, you don’t want to marry me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So, you do?”
“If this is your idea of a marriage proposal—”
“You know, it’s been pointed out to me that I don’t take direction well, so if you want to explain to me how I should propose to you—”
“No, no, that’s cheating. I’m not giving you all the answers. You need to do some legwork and figure that out on your own, Mr. Some-People-Are-Lazy.”
He nodded. “Right.”
More time passed.
They did not buy a house and Decker did not propose marriage. She started spending happy hours at the Mecklenburg without him, because he was doing his thing, and she liked going out and seeing people in the afternoons. Sometimes, she didn’t even order anything alcoholic. She’d get a virgin mixed drink and sit out in the garden at a table with whoever she happened to run into. She liked it there, she realized. She did not want to move out of Shepherdstown.
“Look, what if we bought a house in one of these subdivisions,” said Decker.
“Eew, are you serious? A cookie-cutter house that looks just like all the houses near it?”
“Well, because this is cheap,” he said. “I mean, I could just buy it, right? Me. And you could keep your apartment.”
“Wait, but we’re going to move in together—”
