You Deserve Each Other

by Sarah Hogle

It’s adorable how he assumes I’m in here making myself pretty instead of smearing a pentagram on the floor in my own blood and casting hexes on him.

“How about you go iron your socks like a complete psychopath?

Real Nicholas hasn’t said any of this. But Imaginary Nicholas is an amalgamation of realistic predictions based on callous things he’s said to me in the past, so I easily hear his voice shape those words. It’s not fair to be hurt or angry over something he didn’t even say, especially since the words I put into my own head are all true, but knowing he potentially could say it—and probably will—is enough to make me sink into a dark silence that I don’t rise from for the rest of the ride home.

Something that sucks about being part of a couple: Your partner has veto power and you don’t get to just flow wherever the wind takes you.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the prospect of ticking him off I’d probably be steeped in a deep depression right now.

“This is over the line, Naomi.” “This is the line? I think taking someone’s pet home with me was worse than this, to be honest.”

He crashes into the shower, where I and all the ghosts who live here listen to one half of an argument he probably thinks he’s winning. Some of the points he makes are valid, but I holler back anyway.

“Clean the lint trap or I will seriously, literally murder you,” I threaten. “With an axe. Your blood will spray the walls. There are a million places to hide a dead body out here.” “Oh my god, please do,” he responds. “Kill me and put me out of my misery.”

I hope it’s a parallel universe with a parallel Nicholas and Naomi. I want to torture him with two of me.

He rolls us, but I’m scrappy and I’ve been storing up my energy all day with bonbons and Real Housewives. He’s stressed. His mother has called his office fifty times. I’ve got an edge on him.

His eyes are so black, I think I can see hell in them. For someone whose gaze has the power to compress souls into diamonds and diamonds into dust, I know he’d taste like spun sugar if I licked across his tongue. He’s the poster boy for high-fructose corn syrup and I want to take a bite out of him. Peel off his shiny wrapper. Count how many of my teeth marks I find beneath.

It feels like he’s always leaving right when I want him to stay. When I need him here and he leaves, I lose something every time, over and over. He takes it from me when he goes. Always going. He’s never going to belong to me. He’s never going to want to stay with me. I’m never going to be enough.

“Oh my god.” “Yes?” He raises his eyebrows questioningly, like I just spoke his name. He often says this when I talk to a deity. He knows I hate it, and I think this gives him life. I’m adding minutes to his life span with my annoyance.

People who wake up looking glamorous can’t be trusted.

“Are you trying to bury me?” “Shut up and stop breathing.”

It’s a self-appointed martyr’s answer. It ensures that the issue goes unresolved, and that I suffer all by myself. What do I get out of saying nothing?

He calls it his office or his study and in my head I still call it the drawing room, because in a past life I was a duchess and I’ve never quite gotten over being reborn as a commoner in this age.

It’s never been so obvious that he can see right through me. The question is: how long has he been looking?

I am behind the wheel of Nicholas’s Jeep that he bought without telling me and have entirely too much time alone with the disturbing revelation that I’m an asshole.

Not today, dickheads! Today you’re getting a substitute who’s incompetent at best when it comes to manual labor, and you can just deal.

It’s frankly amazing that he has any goodwill left in his heart toward his parents. I want to drag them outside and bury them with my shovel.

It occurs to me that if I come back again next time it snows and do another piss-poor job, Nicholas will be off the hook. Mr. and Mrs. Rose will beg me to stop. They’ll hire a snowplow guy.

Her horror is invigorating. I want to have it made into perfume. Clothing. Bath bombs.

“If nobody showed up to shovel their driveway, your mom might be forced to do it herself. Deborah’s Gucci pantsuits? In this snow?”

I have no positive opinions about snow at the moment. Screw snow. I wish global warming would hurry up and abolish the whole season.

He’s sprinkling some kind of witchcraft on me to make it hard to think straight.

I’d planned on telling him only when I received good news, which may never happen.

Right. Eat your veggies, kids! Quite rich, coming from this man. His breath is a Twizzler.

“Actually, I haven’t had time. Been pretty busy.” “Doing what? You don’t have a job.” “Maybe we’re having lots of sex,” Nicholas cuts in, annoyed. “Maybe we lose track of the days because we can’t stop banging.”

“You two are assholes!” she calls back. “You deserve each other.”

“You’re allowed to defend yourself when people hurt your feelings. You deserve to be around people who are good to you.”

I shovel gobs of mashed potatoes in my mouth. I’m a lady. I have manners. No one can expect me to talk with my mouth full.

“I can’t let her eat cake!” she exclaims. Even the torso of the Marie Antoinette she so admires rolls in her grave, like, Girl, I wouldn’t.

“I am not leaving until I see my son!” She pauses, voice dropping to a suspicious tone. “What have you done with him?” “Nicholas?” I reply questioningly. “I haven’t seen him in days. And that’s the story I’m giving the police.”

“This whole time, he was never real. All along, it was . . . Shia LaBeouf! Method acting!”

“You’ve corrupted my sweet boy! I know this is your fault, Naomi!” I take a bow.

I think touching him now would feel like plucking a flower from the barn and dropping it inside a blue-green drinking glass next to your breakfast plate. He would feel like blue spruce and wood smoke. Moonlight and glittering clouds. Pine, my new favorite scent. He’s chinks of sunlight falling over a woven rug, warm to the touch, lazy as an afternoon kiss. Bare, tangled legs, napping together on the couch.

He’ll be a thick wedding band of solid silver, the only place on his hand that doesn’t tan in the summer. He’ll feel like two old trees growing together, branches plaiting into an embrace.

He cradles my jaw in his hands. His gaze is molten and he looks almost like he could love me. I think about all the times I almost walked away and it’s terrifying. I would have missed out on this.

“I think you’re lovesick,” he says with a curving mouth. My stomach flips. My tongue is tied in at least three knots. I can’t think of a response, so he steps even closer, until our bodies are just barely touching. “You are. Trust me, I know all the signs.”

“Nicholas told me it was going to save you. She’s worth the pain of trying, is how he put it. Worth the risk of failing.”

He is the most beautiful man who ever lived, and at one time I couldn’t have said with any certainty what color eyes he had. He was no more memorable than a picture hanging on the wall that I’d long gotten used to. How many times did my gaze pass right over him, not realizing he was looking back at me? Always watching. Listening. Waiting.

I’m thankful that you stayed put until I found you again.

How we met is insignificant in light of how we met again.

“This is the first birthday I’ve been alive that I haven’t blown out a candle and made a wish,” he says, taking one deliberate step closer. All the oxygen in the building starts to evaporate, leaving me two insufficient gasps for each lung. “But you walked in here today, anyway. You ended up in the lane right next to mine, and you started talking to me, initiating conversation. What are the chances? Two people from Morris, meeting in Eau Claire? And the very one I wanted to meet.”

“For the first time,” he finishes, “I’ve gotten my wish.”

These past few weeks of sleeping apart have probably been a mercy for him in this way, but too bad; his nights of rest and relaxation are over. I miss having someone to kick.

“Your heart is mine,” he says.

“I’m not leaving you and me up to chance.”

There’s no one else I want to torture but you.”