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Paige knew her wife occasionally fished as a child. Wasn’t she grateful that Rhea didn’t want to do that now!
They tackled this date without any plan. Which made things more complicated when they stood outside the fee-free amusement park, waiting for the other to make a move.
“What did we do on our first date again?” Rhea asked.
Paige waited for a gaggle of kindergarteners to run past her. “We mostly walked around and talked. Then you offered to pay for us to ride the Ferris Wheel…” She had to think. “Was that before or after we ate out of the taco truck?”
“After. We went Dutch for dinner but then you covered the tip and I felt bad.”
“Did we buy that souvenir during that time?” Paige pictured the magnet still hanging on their fridge. “The one that came from the picture booth? Is that even still there?”
Rhea’s face softened behind her sunglasses. “Babe.”
“What?”
A shake of the head had to suffice. “That was from when we decided to get married. We got the magnet as a souvenir for that.”
“Oh, riiiight. You’ve gotta forgive me, though. That was barely a year later.”
“You were wearing that flowy yellow tank top.” Rhea leaned in, her lips right on Paige’s ear. “With the cute white denim shorts. Could see the bottom of your butt cheeks hanging out.”
Paige blushed. These days, she wore much more respectable shorts befitting a woman almost forty.Still stylish, thank you.She would never be caught dead in “mom cut” anything, but she also hated shorts that went all the way down to her knees. Unlike Rhea, who was wearing male shorts from the thrift store right now.
“What?” Rhea asked.
“Thinking about you in that red T-shirt you were wearing that day.” Paige knew how to play this game. “Had that palm tree right on your boobs. Couldn’t stop staring at them all day, because I wanted to get straight to bed with you.”
“Is that right?” Rhea’s hand disappeared behind Paige and smacked her ass. “Perv.”
“Right back at you, grab-ass.”
Paige took her wife’s hand and led her toward the boardwalk. “Maybe that’s what we should do today,” Rhea said as they strolled. “Talk.”
“About what?”
“I dunno. Things we’ve been wanting to say but never have the time? When’s the last time we chatted about nothing?”
“See, the thing about that date is that it was organic. You can’t recreate it with magic.”
“Not trying to recreate it, per se,” Rhea said. “Just trying to recapture the spirit.”
Yet they were both quiet as they slowly walked hand-in-hand along the boardwalk, the sounds of the amusement park only occasionally drowned out by the roar of the Pacific Ocean. Every so often, one of them pointed out an interesting sight, usually a child throwing a fit right on the boardwalk or another couple on what looked like a first date. The one time Rhea found a young lesbian couple canoodling in the sun, she almost lost it.
“They’re totally getting married,” she loudly whispered in Paige’s direction. “The butchy one is trying to figure out the right moment to propose.”
“How do you know it’s not the cute femme who is gonna propose?”
“Trust me, that butch already has a U-Haul rented. Scratch that. She got her CDL so they can move into the back of a semi-trailer.”
Paige looked at her as if that were the most absurd thing she ever said. Yet she still laughed, because she remembered how quickly they got married, let alone moved in together. “It was like a fantasy,” she said.
“Hm?”
Although they had been walking in the direct sunlight for a while, the cool sea breeze and the comfortable clothes they now wore in their late thirties kept the sweat from slipping between their palms. “Those first years of our relationship. I think that was the happiest time of my life.”
“What about now?”
Paige should have known her wife would ask that. “You know what I mean. Sheer jubilation that I didn’t know what to do with. We were in our mid-20s and ready to tackle the world. Things seemed to be getting better. That life our parents sold us when we were growing up seemed attainable.”
