You Deserve Each Other

by Sarah Hogle

The truth is that I don’t think any two people both feel one hundred percent in love with each other at the same exact time, all the time. They might take turns being seventy-five, their personal high, while the other clocks in at sixty.

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

It reminds me of my mother once saying that you can’t tell men about your unfixable problems, because they’ll want to fix them and not being able to do so fries their wiring.

I try to remember what falling in love felt like and can’t recall. It must have been over with very quickly.

A sparkle of the old Naomi Westfield appears, blowing off ten months’ worth of dust. At least, I think it’s her. It’s been so long since that Naomi and I have been in the same room together that I’m not sure I’d recognize her if we passed each other on the street.

These might sound like minor traits, or even givens that I should take for granted, but I hold on to them like life preservers. I love these things about the man. But I do not love the man.

“You stopped seeing me, Naomi. You stopped wanting me. You’re going to figure out one of these days that I can tell when you’re starting to disassociate, and it’s the most heartbreaking experience I’ve ever had. It’s nonstop. It keeps on happening. I try to bring you back to me every time you go to leave, off into your own head where I’m not allowed.”

“Can I see your phone, then?” I bristle. “No. It’s private.” “Even from me? I’d let you see mine.” I don’t believe that for a minute. “So? I wouldn’t ask to see yours. Your phone is none of my business.” “I am your business.” He sits up, bringing our faces closer together. I slide off his lap immediately and insert a healthy amount of room between us. “Or I’m supposed to be.”

He nods, still stunned. He shouldn’t be this stunned by a nice gesture. It should be a given, but it’s not, and that’s my fault. I’ve been withholding nice gestures to punish him for not giving me enough nice gestures, and just look at how well that attitude’s panned out for us.

But it’s the thought I’ll remember, not the color of the flower or how pretty it is. The gesture of Nicholas seeing the flower, thinking about me, and going and getting a ladder in order to pick it is going to stay with me. Watching him drop it into my favorite blue-green drinking glass is going to stay with me.

“We made a good team back there.” “That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” he says.

I want you to tell me when you get bad news so that you’re not going through it alone.”

I’m right here. And I want to listen. Whenever you’re sad, I want to hear why. I want to know what you’re feeling, all the time, so I can share those feelings with you.”

What if I’m having a bad day and when I tell him about it, I’m not met with this sweet, empathetic variation of Nicholas but the other one? The one who turned distant when issues arose that he didn’t want to face? That Nicholas is going to come back, sooner or later, and he’s going to make me sorry for being this vulnerable with him.

It dawns on me that I haven’t seen him genuinely happy in forever. I’ve been so concentrated on my own unhappiness that I haven’t noticed his.

You are, and will always be, the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.

“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.” My mouth doesn’t work. I try to form words and let out an unintelligible squeak. He grins and leans in to kiss my temple. His lips pause at my ear, and I shiver so hard I know he feels it. “It’s a condition I’m quite familiar with myself.”

“Did it work?” I’m not sure I heard him right. “Did what work?” “The house,” he replies. “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.”

“What are you doing home?” I blink several times, waiting for him to disappear. I’m still dreaming. “You missed me.” “You came home because I missed you?”

“Relearning you has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Say you love me?” he whispers. My heart bursts in my chest, white light popping behind my lids like fireworks. “I love you,” I say, and watch it blaze through him. “Of course I love you, Nicholas.”

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to break up with me after all we’ve been through. That’s not happening.” “Isn’t that what you want?” “No.”

“You have to marry me. Not someday, and not maybe. We do this now.” I swing my arm back and am about to let it go when Nicholas catches my wrist. He plucks the invitation from my fingers, slips down off the car, and walks over to the dumpster. He very deliberately drops it inside.

“Of course I love you, Naomi. I never stopped.”

Nicholas thinks he doesn’t like bangs, which goes to show he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, since he keeps falling in love with me whenever I have bangs.