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Rachel
Mason was grumpy, which was perfect. Just perfect.
“Look,” he said as we weaved through the crowded shopping district of Henry Street, shuffling forward like cattle to the slaughter, “I love playing hooky as much as the next guy. I really do. Add in a smoking-hot chick and what could be better? There’s fooling around on a blanket at St Stephen’s Green with a bottle of champagne. There’s lying in bed all day fooling around. There’s fooling around at the National Museum or the bank—”
“You’d rather be at a bank than here?” I asked.
I leaned back to avoid getting smacked in the face by an armful of shopping bags. Mason was not so lucky. He set his jaw and inhaled to steady (sort of) his breathing.
“I think you missed the common theme,” he said, looking miserably down at me.
I smiled innocently up at him. “Which is?”
Mason’s hand slipped down to squeeze my ass and he leaned down to whisper, “Fooling around, love.”
I swatted his hand away and pushed his chest back. We got off the elevator and were hit with the wafting aroma of stale pretzels circling in a heater, chain curry, and teenage hormones. I grinned.
“It’s just that I put in a favour with Rian and Conor to get today off,” Mason said as we wound through the throngs of people, all carrying more shit than the last. “And it would have been nice to know beforehand that you intended for us to do this.”
“Spending quality time together as husband and wife?” I asked.
Mason gave me a straight, unimpressed face. I smiled and tried again.
“Delving deeper into the depths of our relationship by exploring unexplored corners of domesticity?”
Mason scoffed.
Shrugging, I said, “Finding out who we are as a couple by throwing ourselves into the most high pressured of social situations to see if we fall apart or come out stronger?”
Mason rolled his eyes and pulled me away just in time so that I didn’t get a mouthful of some trashy French eau de parfum.
“Go to Jervis fecking Centre,” he said, dragging a hand over his face and groaning.
I reached down between us and intertwined my fingers with his. Mason just groaned louder when I swung our hands merrily back and forth.
“Ah! Here it is,” I said suddenly, dragging him behind me into the department store.
We were greeted with a wad of coupons and I drew them to my nose like they were flowers or money, breathing deeply.
“I really did fuck your brains out last night, didn’t I?” Mason grumbled.
I smacked him in the chest.
“This way.”
The fluorescent lights were horrible. Those long, dirty bulbs. The flickering. The unflattering tone that made everyone look sick. It was perfect. Shopping carts crowded the aisles like bumper cars. Dangerous for the fingers. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. There was everything you could have wanted: a crying baby, a crazy lady with a dog in a stroller, a shrill-voiced Karen demanding to see the manager, a misbehaving toddler knocking over a display of china, and, the pièce de résistance, a security alarm going off at the entrance to the store that wouldn’t shut off for God knows what reason. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
“Are you ready?” I asked Mason.
He looked like he was ready to puke, but I wasn’t sure whether that was the lights or he really was ready to puke. Either way, it was perfect.
“Ready for what?” Mason asked, half bored, half annoyed. One hundred percent already over it.
I did my best to hold back my laughter. I was already having so much fun.
Without warning I stopped beside a wall of kitchen towels. A whole aisle, really, of kitchen towels. All different kinds of material. All different kinds of patterns. There were stripes, there were flowers, there were kittens and duckies and for some reason little golden turkey legs. And don’t even get me started on all the printed slogans. “But First Coffee.” No, no, no: But First Fireworks!!!
Mason was waiting to continue, because of course we didn’t need kitchen towels. We didn’t have a kitchen.
