The Co-op

by Tarah DeWitt

“I fucking love these pillows” is all I say. Maybe if I show her she can count on me to have her back, she’ll open up and have mine, too. Maybe I’m an absolute sucker and I’ll get left at the end of this a lot more broken.

It’s a $95 fucking PILLOW. IT IS A SINGLE PILLOW. My vision goes blurry. I’m—is this what pillows cost? Am I having a stroke? I’m not even twenty-eight but crazier things have happened. Like pillows being $100.

I’ll want to laugh or tell him he looks ridiculous, the fan making his shirt billow around him like some dirtbag male Beyoncé … but the effect is like dropping ink in a tub of liquid—heat bleeds and spreads and curls through me.

My home, my girl, my pain in the ass, my world. That fucking force of nature. I want her on my side, that formidable, fierce woman.

What a gift it is to trust someone, I realize. To know that through every up and down, every unexpected break, they want the same thing as you in the end. Just to be together.

“You called me your husband,” I say. She laughs quietly. “Like that, did you?” “I fucking loved it.”

was just wondering what made you go with ‘love’? Is it just short for Lavigne?” I ask with a smirk. He scratches his jaw against mine and I hum happily. “I just want to say it as much as possible. Want to say it enough times to make you forget the one time I didn’t.”

“I hate that I’ve never danced with you on a proper dance floor, where everyone we love could see that you’re mine.” At that, I smile. “I wish I could say I hated that you wore black to our wedding, but the truth is, you ripped the air out of my lungs in that dress, too.” I breathe a laugh and his face sobers. “I hate that I did that to you when we were younger. I hate that we wasted any time not loving one another right. Hate that you thought I was anything less than gone for you. Because I’m so fucking gone for you, LaRynn. I’m so stupidly in love with you.”

“I hate when I have to spend my days waiting for my nights with you. Or my nights waiting for my days with you. And I’m so stupidly in love with you, too.”

I even cry for my dad when I think about how miserable and lonely he must be, how he must have let his anger fester so deeply that he has no idea how to pull himself out. How much he missed out on with his mother, me, and his life. I allow myself to feel it and let go, to be okay with the knowledge that I may never welcome that relationship back into my life, even while I feel sad for him because of it.

We blast our music—all the songs we’ve added to our life’s soundtrack so far—and we dance in our home. In our kitchen and in our beautiful kids’ rooms, on our patio and our balcony. In our bedroom, down the halls that are lined with photographs and memories, and in all the places where we’ll keep making more. Such is life.