You Deserve Each Other

by Sarah Hogle

I don’t want to sound desperate, but I didn’t contour a third of my body with this much highlighter to not get any of it on his shirt. If all goes according to plan, he’s going to be limping home tonight with ravaged hair and enough shimmer powder on his clothes to make him reflective to passing cars. He’s going to smell like my pheromones for a week no matter how hard he scrubs.

My shiny lip gloss was developed in a lab to magnetize the mouths of men, effective as fanning peacock feathers.

On top of all this, my left hand drapes across my seat palm-up for maximum accessibility in case he’d like to pick it up and take it home with him.

My god, this man is so handsome I’m half convinced I somehow tricked him into this.

She’s been unreasonably prickly toward me ever since I set her up with my fiancé’s friend, who turned out to be a serial cheater. She thinks Nicholas and I knew he was the cheating type from the get-go and shredded her trust in men on purpose.

All month I’ve been using the shimmery copper pan in my eye shadow palette, trying to give my eyelids the same glow of sunset gently slanting over a pumpkin patch.

My bedroom floor is a mess of soft pullover sweaters that make me feel like a sea captain, knee-high boots, and infinity scarves. Every meal contains some hint of pumpkin spice. If I’m not ingesting pumpkin, I’m breathing it in like an addict, lining every available surface of my home with candles that smell like food. Apple pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice, apple pumpkin.

I wonder if he retains this same pleasant expression when he chops people up into bits and slides their oozing remains down a cutting board into his trunk.

Offended by his assumption that I didn’t already know how to change a tire, I set him straight and informed him that I’ve known for years how to do that. I’m a modern, responsible, self-sufficient woman. I don’t need a man to help me with vehicular maintenance. The thing is, I do not actually know how to change a tire.

because no way was I going to walk home. This sweater is cashmere.

My small lie about tires got a bit out of hand when Nicholas’s dad, who has deplorably antiquated beliefs, commented that women don’t know how to change their oil. In return I said, “Excuse you! I change my oil all the time.” I said it for feminism. No one can blame me. Then I may have boasted that I once put my own shocks and brake pads on and have never needed assistance from a car mechanic, ever.

Conveniently, I am an expert mechanic only when he is at work, so he never sees me in action. I sneak into Morris Auto like a criminal and pay Dave in cash.

It’s sexist to assume I wouldn’t know how to fix leaky hoses and sanding belts and whatever else makes a car go vroom. He should assume that all of my lies are true.

“Your last name is Donuts?” I reply like a complete idiot, a split second before I realize my obvious mistake. “My last name is Duncan, Naomi.”

I want to open the door and roll out, but I resist. It’s a monsoon out there and I’ll have copper shimmer streaking down my cheeks.

The one time I need him to dote on his mother after work, and he comes straight home instead like a jackass.

Knowing that our relationship looks enviable from the outside is the only thing we’ve got going for us, since in reality what we have isn’t enviable at all.

I’ve been slowly bleeding out the Westfield parts of myself to become pre–Naomi Rose. Almost Mrs. Rose. I’ve been one half of a whole for nearly two years and lately, I don’t know if I’d even count as a half.

Whenever I do this, I like to imagine that I’m looking at him in my rearview mirror, peeling out of Morris, never to see him again.

Maybe I shouldn’t say I’m in love. There’s a difference. Being in love is frantic. Fluttery. Falling. It’s nervous sweats and pounding heartbeats and a feeling of tremendous rightness, or so I hear. I don’t have that. I love him forty percent.

I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself.

Signing up for Boyfriend Nicholas and inheriting Fiancé Nicholas later on was some legitimate bait-and-switch business, let me tell you.

I don’t let myself indulge the dark, intrusive thoughts for too long, even though I want to, because I’m afraid once I start going full Morrissey, fixing the wall with a thousand-yard stare and reflecting on what exactly makes me unhappy, it will become impossible to fold those thoughts up and put them neatly in a drawer to reexamine another day.

I think about how actress is another way of saying professional liar.

Nicholas’s sister has been told the same thing, so if we all fall in line there’s going to be a dynasty of small Deborahs someday.

I’m the uterus that will be carrying future Roses, interchangeable with Nicholas’s ex-girlfriends.

They’re vicarious dentists and lecture their friends about gum disease.

I look at Nicholas and realize I am actually marrying this man. Forty percent because I love him and sixty percent because I’m too afraid to call it off. Everyone, including his parents, said we’d never make it down the aisle. I have so much pride that I’ll do it just to prove them wrong.

Nicholas could step on every mask she owns and she’d smile and apologize for leaving them out on the walls where anybody could step on them.

He’s the thief of my joy and future father of my children. Right now I love him twenty percent.

His mother’s been nagging him to marry and give her grandchildren to rank from most to least favorite, depending on whose physical features our unfortunate progeny inherit.

He says my eyes are the color of champagne, which became his favorite drink after we met for that very reason, and I had a wonderfully bubbly, fizzy sensation course through my veins whenever he smiled at me.

I love these things about the man. But I do not love the man.

If he has a list about me, I’m sure it’s much shorter. I have no idea what I’m bringing to our relationship right now aside from the fact that I’m keeping dead Abigail’s frozen eggs at bay.

Think hard, Naomi. Anything you want to back out of?”

My engagement to Nicholas Rose is a game of chicken.

Nicholas doesn’t like bangs? Fantastic. I don’t like Nicholas.

I look like I got my hair cut by bending too close to a shredder.

I have bypassed “unseemly” and cannonballed headfirst into Deborah’s nightmare. I look exactly like her husband’s first wife, the notorious Magnolia Rose. I give myself a round of applause and send up a kiss of thanks to Magnolia Rose, my greatest hero for refusing to stop going by Mrs. Rose after the divorce even though her marriage to Harold only lasted a year and didn’t bear any fruit. She’s currently living in Key Largo with husband number five, who’s twenty years her junior and nephew of the guy who invented Marshmallow Peeps. She has fifteen parrots living in an aviary that’s the size of my bedroom and they’re all named after murderers on Law & Order. I know this because she added me as a Facebook friend, probably to needle Deborah, who has twice tried to sue Magnolia for emotional distress caused by “ruining Harold.” I want to be Magnolia Rose when I grow up.

My reflection in the mirror tips her head back and laughs like her skin is about to burst open with a hundred flying demons.

“Naomi?” She sounds uncertain. The third syllable of my name is muted; she’s pulled away from the phone to check the caller ID and make sure my voice isn’t an auditory hallucination.

“Yes,” I say brightly. “The Dump.” I burrow under trash piles like a gopher.

I twirl my villain mustache. I have never been more opposed to being a bride. They’d have to drag my unconscious body up the aisle, a ventriloquist throwing her voice to mimic my vows.

“Magnolias,” I finish. Foam gurgles from my blood-red Babadook mouth and giddiness overtakes me. It’s the closest to joy I’ve gotten in a long time. I’m going to follow this feeling straight down into hell.

No one’s ever dared to shorten her name to Deb in her life and I’m abusing the unearned privilege with foam dripping down my chin, soaking the front of my favorite Steelers hoodie.

Nicholas’s groom figure will be the knock-off Spider-Man from the dollar store, Tarantula-Boy. I’ll be represented by a half-melted pillar candle with googly eyes, and everyone Deborah knows and loves will have to see.

I’m a loyal fan of the Steelers. They’re my favorite sportsball team and I would die for them.

We’re in the car on the way to see Debberoni and Harry.

If I waited for you to want to give me flowers, I’d be getting as many then as I’m getting now. Which is none.”

Obviously I want flowers. What girl doesn’t? Can’t wait till I have an adult son so I’ll finally get some.”