FICTION: You and I

2220 Words

You and I

by Wil Dalton

(3rd draft, May 2022)

Heavy thunderstorms in Dallas delayed my parents’ flight by a day, so after telling him I couldn’t attend at the office, I end up at Tommy’s birthday party after all. Most of the eighth floor is there and friends of Tommy’s from his AmeriCorps days. Hendricks brought his kid. I bring him a pint and ask about Amanda. 

“Home. Headache,” he says. “Thanks. Next one’s on me.”

I tell him not to worry. O’Halloran’s serves half-price pints until the streetlights come on, so I’m drinking double my usual already. Plus, the platter of birthday shots keeps coming around. My cheeks tingle. I see concrete below me, but my feet move like treading through sand. Hendricks offers me his game tokens to hold his kid.

“No way,” I say.

Cheers erupt across the bar as a bachelorette party enters. Hendricks gives me his tokens anyway. They are smooth, shiny, and cold with a star design on both sides. I order another pint and score the best skee-ball game in my life. I win a coupon for a free appetizer and order some fries and a water. I’m beginning to feel like there is a little me inside my head controlling the bigger me everyone is waving at and talking to. O’Halloran’s mixes the cakes for Tommy and Vanessa - the bride-to-be, so our parties end up together in the same area of the bar. 

I sit down. I eat. I look up and see my future-wife sitting down across from me. She smiles. 

I snap back, fully behind my eyes. 

She hasn’t addressed me yet, but my hearing rushes forward, like when you pop your ears as the airplane descends. I haven’t said hello yet, but she looks entertained, like I’m the most interesting man in the world. My lips quiver as I consider the best greeting. I can’t look away from her eyes. It’s like jumping into a cold plunge pool after a long workout and sauna. All my senses buzz high alert. She waves. I notice her rings and bracelets, reflecting the red and greens of the neon beer signs behind the bar. I could win a hundred yard sprint. I could spar politics with my uncle and bully him speechless. 

Every event that led me to this seat at this table at this bar across from this girl feels destined. There is nowhere else I could have been. There is nothing else I could have been doing. 

My future-wife starts to speak. 

“Hi, I’m…” and the band begins to play, drowning out her words.

High hats and bass drum and pre-set organ keyboards. Horns and backing vocals, fat low-end electric bass and reggae guitar downstroked on the off-beat. 

My future-wife laughs. It is the prettiest sound I have ever not been able to hear. 

I grab one of the short trivia-night pencils in the container by the salt and pepper and flip over my paper table-mat. 

I write, “Hi! I’m Mark.”

She takes the pencil from my hand and rotates the paper to read. My fingers throb electric from her fingers nearly touching them. 

She smiles.

She writes, “Hi Mark. I’m Alyssa. Cousin of the bride-to-be.”

She writes, “Can I have a fry?”

I nod. I charade that she should blow on them before biting.

She grins and writes, “Thanks. You’re the best.”

Her index finger touches my thumb when she returns the short pencil. My heart does a set of jumping jacks. 

I write, “I’m with the birthday party.” 

She nods, takes another fry, and gives me a thumbs-up.

We write back and forth until we empty the basket. 

I write, “Should I order more fries?”

“No,” she writes. 

“Should we step outside?” I write.

She points to herself and then to her cousin’s bridesmaids and friends and pantomimes a big hug.

“It’s a nice night,” I write. “We could walk through the park.”

“You want me to leave my cousin?” she writes and underlines it three times. 

Her eyes widen in playful shock.

I have one game token left. I pull it out of my pocket and show her one side. 

I write, “Let’s flip a coin. If it lands on star, we leave.”

She bites her lower lip, hesitates, then writes, “Okay.”

I flip the token. It lands star-side up. She smiles. She shrugs. She stands. She waves good-bye to her cousin. She picks up the token and when she gives it back to me, she holds tight onto my hand and pulls me after her.

We thread through a crowd of people near the door and exit. After passing through the huddle of smokers by the entrance, the night air hits me and I hear her voice for the first time.

“I want you to know that I knew that token had a star on both sides,” she says and squeezes my hand.

My delighted grin widens and hand in hand, we cross the street and walk towards the park. The music fades. A car horn honks. Someone yells. But in this moment, all I want to hear is whatever Alyssa wants to say. 

Above the streetlights and the tree line, I see the stars, happy and full of hope, smiling brightly in the night sky.

* * *

Tommy and Clarissa share a smoke under the pavilion in front of the Bow Bridge. Two mallards swim past. Tommy gives Clarissa the cigarette and pops up when he sees me. 

“Mark,” he says. “I’m ready. You ready?”

“I left my metro card on my dresser. Should have missed the train, but this old man swiped me in. Had an extra card, he said. Found it this morning and held onto it because something told him it’d be needed. Then walking here? Every crosswalk turned green right as I reached the street.”

Tommy rolls his eyes. In the ship of life, Tommy’s always preferred the role of captain to stowaway. He supports me, always, but thinks I talk too much about fate and good omens. 

“Love is a choice, “ he says. “Love takes effort. Hard work.”

Love is a mystery. The solution is find your soul-mate. Like I found Alyssa. 

This morning, my horoscope read, “Do not be afraid to make a big change in your life.” Her horoscope read, “Say yes to a stranger’s request and discover adventure.” To be fair, I’m definitely not a stranger to Alyssa, but you know, the spirit of the text always shines brighter than its literal meaning. 

I’m nervous. I got Elvis legs. My fingers waver. 

Alyssa and me, we’ve talked about marriage. She wants to live in the city. I want to live in the city. We listen to the same music. We both avoid factory meat. We each detest IPAs. We each prefer the evening service at Redeemer when they play the hymns on jazz instruments. We volunteer. She wants three cats. I want her happy. 

“Shouldn’t she be here already?” Tommy asks.

I stretch out my fingers and then press the tips of them against the palms of my hands. I repeat. 

Before she met me, Alyssa said she planned to never marry. Her mom married too often. She doubted love endured. Then she met me. Now, she says God designed us for one another. Now, she says the universe conspired to bring us together. Alyssa focuses on details; I see the big picture. She worries about what could go wrong; I assume everything will work out.

“I’ve never known two people so destined for each other,” Clarissa says, reading my mind.

“Don’t stress him out,” Tommy says.

“Oh look,” Clarissa says.

But I already saw her walking on the other side of the water. In this park of thousands enjoying the yellowing and reddening of leaves, we always find each other. I rush to catch Alyssa at the center of the bridge.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says.

“You look amazing.”

“Are we shooting a movie?” she asks and flicks something off my shoulder.

Couples row by beneath us. The lamplights flicker on. In the distance, a park performer strums his guitar and sings a love song.

“We should,” I say and kiss her. 

She squeezes me tight and runs her hand up the back of my head and into my hair. I lose focus whenever she does that. I feel weightless, like I’m floating in space. She releases me and I steady myself on the wood beams of the bridge. I look into her expectant eyes. I stare into a million happy mornings, a billion ecstatic nights.

“Hey, you two,” Tommy says, beside us.

“Adorable,” he says and pulling out his phone, “Smile.” 

Clarissa rests her head on his shoulder and squeezes his arm.

Alyssa points her chin at Tommy’s phone and grins, squeezing me.

Tommy takes the shot and like we planned, says, “One more.”

Alyssa adjusts her angles and smiles. This shot is video. 

I look at her face and push a lock of hair behind her ear. I pull a shiny, silver coin out of my pocket.

“Remember this,” I say, conspiratorially.

Alyssa’s eyes narrow. Then she recognizes the coin as the token from the night we met. She gasps.

“I love you,” I say. “There is no one else in the world I could ever love as much as I love you.”

I close my fingers around the coin.

“Everything about you is magic. You know how much I love magic,” I say and rotate my fist and hold it out to her so she sees my fingers pressed against my palm.

“I want it to last forever,” I say and open my hand so Alyssa sees the ring in my palm.

She laughs and looks up from where the coin should be into my eyes. Before I can say, “Marry me,” Alyssa puts her finger against my opening lips and tracing slowly, soft and warm and big so I cannot mistake a single letter, under my nose, touching my cheeks, touching my chin, she writes, “Y-E-S.”

Above the lake, past the penthouse towers, I see the stars, planning our future, twinkling optimistically in the wide, open night sky.

* * *

Alyssa loads the dishwasher. I scrape nibbled chicken nuggets, fries, and snap-pea shells into the trash. The kids sleep upstairs, showered and story told. The air conditioning kicks on, its blowing hum a small comfort after the chaos of dinner.

Scrolling on her phone, Alyssa asks, “You’ll talk to Nick’s teacher?”

I nod. 

“Yes?” she says. “You have more free time in the day.”

“Yes,” I say. 

“I got a work thing Thursday.”

Thursday is Tommy’s game night. The Lonely Hearts Club. Ever since Clarissa left him, he’s held a weekly get together for the guys. Only half are single. I suspect the other half aren’t any less lonely.

“How long is it?” I ask. “Tommy’s thing is at eight.”

Alyssa groans. 

“Still?” she asks. “Do you even like Tommy’s friends?”

She wipes down the counter and tosses the cloth at the wash machine. She misses and hits the wall. The cloth falls behind the machine. 

“Fuck my life,” she says and walks to the bedroom. 

As she passes, I stare at the wall. I feel her hand cut through the room, nowhere near my own. I stand in the kitchen and listen. I hear her toss her work clothes into the hamper, pull on pajamas, and settle onto our bed. Pages turn. She sighs. Her phone dings. Her book hits the dresser.  She laughs. To the whooshing sound of her reply, I walk to the laundry room. 

I tug the wash machine away from the wall. The washcloth lies folded over on the floor, covered in lint and grey fuzz. Beside it, a toy xylophone stick pokes out from under the machine. I pull it out and a shiny, silver coin slides across the dust-covered gap. I pick up the cold token and feel the smooth star shape on either side.

I snap a picture of the coin in my fingers and text it to Tommy. 

He replies immediately, “LOL! Deep cut.”

He texts, “Told you, man. The universe loves you most.”

He texts, ‘What’d Alyssa say when she saw it?”

I roll the coin over the middle of each of my fingers before closing my hand to make it disappear. In my open palm, nothing. Then, relaxing my ring and middle finger, I drop the coin back onto the floor. It clinks and I push the washing machine back over it. I throw the washcloth into the machine and return to the kitchen.

I take a beer out of the refrigerator. Anymore, if Alyssa is home, I prefer to pre-drowse myself before getting ready for bed. I tilt the chalice to reduce its foam. After a few sips, I look back at the washing machine. I pour my beer down the drain and toss the glass into the trash.

The sound of shattering prompts Alyssa to shout my name from our bedroom in the same tone she uses to curse.

“What’d you break this time?”

I don’t answer.

Through the small window by the table, I see the stars resent their promise to twinkle, up high past the tree line, trapped in the dark, quiet sky.