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It’s Nick’s idea, but simultaneously mine. He’s just the one who executes it. Seeing me staring at the stack of scrap paper on the table where we’re sitting, he slides a piece over to me, along with a pen. I look up at him, frowning, because I don’t need him to give me the right to do what I should already be doing. He doesn’t mean it like that, but it stings all the same. It always will.
The pen feels awkward in my fingers. Heavy. I twist it open and print three words. It feels weird, uncomfortable, to write again.
Cats or dogs?
I turn the paper around and slide it back to him. He smiles as he reads it, then takes the pen and scribbles. Slides it back.
Both.
Real men like cats, I write. I have an ornament that says that.
Hallmark never lies, he replies.
My next question: Favorite color?
Anything but black. You?
Funny thing: red is supposed to be the color of confidence for women.
Someone should have googled that, he writes in his nearly illegible script, and I grin.
It’s also the awareness ribbon color for DARE. My hand starts to ache. The muscles have been out of use for so long.
DARE has been proven ineffective, Nick writes.
DARE made me want to do drugs. I wiggle the pen between my fingers for a moment, thinking. Then write again: It did make me do drugs.
He’s burned the piece of paper already by the next time I see him. I’ve got his top sheet swathed around my naked body the next time we exchange notes, and I’m lying on my stomach at the foot of his bed. I start.
Pepsi or Coke?
He sits on the edge of the mattress and takes the note to read it, then takes the pen from me. He jots his answer, using his leg as a writing surface, and hands both pen and paper back before getting up to go wash dishes. I make a face at his answer. Pepsi.
Gross, I write back. No accounting for taste.
I look up and watch him as he washes, admiring the view. He’s already redressed, T-shirt and slacks, but his feet are bare. The domesticity reminds me of being with Luke before Hannah, but it’s different.
I shove the thought away, look down at the paper as tears prick my eyes briefly, and twirl the pen. I won’t think about them. I don’t even know Nick. I know he hates black, likes Pepsi, and appreciates cats.
That’s it.
Worst high school memory?
Nick shuts off the water and dries his hands on a towel, then comes back over to me and sits back down. He takes the paper and pen. Writes for a minute. I squeeze one eye shut and arch a brow, showing him how truly awful his handwriting is.
That’s another thing I know about him.
I collect these things in my mind, and I treasure them.
Getting drunk at my buddy Tim’s party and asking out his sister from the diving board by yelling at her for everyone to hear.
That doesn’t seem like you.
What do I know?
It seems more like cheap vodka, he replies.
I grin and look up at him. There’s a hint of a smile on his usually serious face, one of those small, rare little smiles that always make me smile back.
Vodka or rum?
Whiskey, he writes back. Prefer to sleep naked or clothed?
“You should know that already,” I say, and he rolls me over onto my back before kissing me.
Favorite word? I write, because I can’t think about being pregnant with a baby the Waterfords are going to tear from me.
Antidisestablishmentarianism. Yours?
Nudibranch.
He’s not going to ask about it, and part of me wishes he would. Part of me wants to keep ignoring it. Part of me is thrilled. Part of me is terrified. There are too many parts of me.
Crest or Colgate? I write.
“June.”
He is going to ask about it.
“Fine, Aquafresh,” I say, mock annoyed. “Or Tom’s of Maine? You don’t seem like a Tom’s of Maine guy.”
“June.”
“You could brush your teeth in the river for all I know.”
He doesn’t brush his teeth in the river.
Nick puts his hand on top of my clenched fist on the sheets. His skin is warm. I look down at our piece of paper, seeing our back-and-forth. It’s deeply intimate in a really strange way. I have a sudden flash, a vision of him scribbling a note to me in his terrible scrawl: Pick up orange juice at the store.
I don’t even like orange juice.
I wish he’d write me a note to buy orange juice. It would be so normal. Then I’d pick it up at the store on my way home from work, along with a stick of Lindt truffles, and maybe some sushi, and probably a trashy magazine. I’d end up spending $25 when I went in there to spend $4. He’d like the stuff with pulp in it, and I’d make a face because so gross. So gross for something that is already gross to begin with.
Luke liked apple juice. Hannah liked grape.
I look down toward my belly. The life inside it is from Nick.
Not Luke.
I’m happy it’s Nick’s.
His hand reaches out, fingers splayed, and presses gently against my abdomen. He likes doing that. I add it to my mental catalogue of things about him.
“June,” he says again, but it’s quiet and he’s saying something different this time. I look up at him and smile.
“Favorite sport?” I ask.
“Baseball,” he says.
I kiss him gently, and his hand tightens.