by Roan Parrish
“So … ice skating. Is that … that’s a thing? Like a … date thing or whatever?”
“Oh, I dunno, I just saw it in this movie once.”
“Okay … I don’t know how to ice skate, so that’s probably a no go. But, um … well, Rafe likes to run. And he likes … Uh, we went on a picnic once. Shut up,” I said immediately, as Daniel laughed.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m not laughing at your sweet picnic. I just accidentally clicked on this … whoa! Jesus, sorry, that went in an unexpected direction.” Porno music started pouring through phone. “Ahh! Fuck. Okay, sorry. Jesus, I’m in my office,” he muttered, as if scolding the computer. “I clicked on a link that said ‘Valentine’s Wood’ and I thought it was, like, uh, woodworking stuff but. It was not.”
I snorted. Only someone with their mind firmly on hearts and flowers and their boyfriend’s love of woodworking could have interpreted it that way.
“We’re both screwed.”
“Yeah, basically,” Daniel said, and I thought I heard the sound of a laptop slamming shut. “Fuuuuuck.”
I sipped at my now lukewarm coffee and ran through my options. I could do nothing. But then what if I got home tonight and Rafe had gotten me something? I’d feel like a total dick. Besides … Rafe was always so understanding and patient with my shit. Wouldn’t it be nice to show him that I appreciated him?
Or would he think it was stupid and clichéd and that if I wanted to show I appreciated him then I should be doing it on any regular day, not just the day elementary school kids shoved valentines in each other’s cubby hole mailboxes and Hallmark raked in the GNP of a small country.
But even if it was a cliché, would Rafe like it anyway? Shit.
“You still there, bro?” Daniel asked.
“Yup. Okay, I think … I think I should get Rafe something. Or do something. Cuz Jesus fucking Christ, the man puts up with all my shit and still seems not to hate me, so.”
I could feel the heat rising in my face. Talking to anyone about Rafe still made me self-conscious as hell, to say nothing of highlighting the ways that I had messed everything up multiple times when we were getting together. And, uh, sometimes after.
“Yes, good plan,” Daniel said. “Now we just need, like, actual ideas. I mean, it’s my office hours. Usually students come to get my help on writing their papers; I’ll be goddamned if I can come up with a dozen sample thesis statements but can’t even think of two Valentine’s Day gifts.” He paused for a minute. “They should be different, I guess?”
“Dude, are you essentially trying to cheat by writing the same paper for two classes?” I teased.
“Look at you, remembering shit I say about my job.”
“I still don’t get why it’s not allowed. If the paper is relevant to two different classes,” I said.
“Because it’s—never mind; I already explained all this the first time. Agree to disagree.”
The sound of a text came through and I told Daniel to hang on a second.
X had finally responded, saying: Um YES it’s a thing you should do, what’s wrong with you? Jesus, how do you still even HAVE a boyfriend. 100% yes, make your man know he’s appreciated. Then he’d added an eye-rolling emoji, an emoji of a gift, and an emoji of a winky face.
“Uh, X agrees that we should do stuff for Valentine’s Day,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, he’s married, right? I guess … he’d know?”
“That was my thinking.”
We both sighed at the same time. I knew the things people got: cards, flowers, candy, stuffed animals. But it all seemed impersonal. No card was going to be able to express to Rafe how much I—uh, how I—well, anything about our relationship. Flowers? I didn’t think he’d care about them much. Plus they died in like five seconds, and that was depressing. Chocolate? He liked sweet stuff, but I’d never seen him eat actual chocolates so I had no idea if he liked them. And I’d saw my own leg off before I’d buy him a stuffed animal.
“Oh! I know what we should do.”
“Thank fuck. What?”
“Oh, uh, sorry, not about the gifts.”
“What the hell, man?”
“No, no, we should call Ginger. She’s good at ideas for presents and stuff.”
Ginger was Daniel’s best friend, so she’d hated me for basically the entire tenure of their relationship. Well, recently she seemed okay with me, but I still had … issues with her. I was desperate, though.
“Okay, sure.”
“Kay, I think I can, like, do a thing where I three-way call her? Hang on, let me just … Or maybe … Wait, I wonder if I—”
The line went dead. I shook my head. Daniel was hella bad at technology and he was a particular menace with a phone. I shot a quick text back to X while I waited for Daniel to call back: Yeah, yeah, yeah, thx, working on it, don’t hurt yrself.
My phone rang with an unfamiliar number and when I answered it I heard a loud laugh that I recognized as Ginger’s.
“You guys are hilarious and I fucking dare you to get Rex and Rafe the same V-day present and see if they tell each other. Aren’t they legit besties now?”
“Hi,” I interjected.
“Oh, hey, sorry. I cut it off when I tried to do the thing, but then I got it on my office phone.”
I rolled my eyes at the evidence that Daniel could conference call on a phone from the nineties but not operate an iPhone.
“I told Ginger we need gift assistance,” Daniel said, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, I’m happy to help brainstorm, but I one hundred percent forgot it was today too.”
“Even though I reminded her!” a voice called from Ginger’s line. Christopher, Ginger’s boyfriend, owned a café around the corner from Ginger’s tattoo shop, and though I wasn’t totally sold on Ginger, he had revealed himself to be a really cool guy over the last year. He was laid back and interesting, and he liked that Ginger was weird, but also loved to fight with her.
“It’s true,” she said. “He told me last week, then he—hey, gimme my phone!”
“I put a post-it note on her bathroom mirror, guys,” Christopher said, clearly having grabbed Ginger’s phone. He had a low, chill voice, so it was funny to hear him say, “It said V-Day is in four days. Get me a cute and cheesy present! Then I put one on the next day that said V-Day is in three days, et cetera, all the way up to today, where the post-it said Did you forget that V-Day is today???.”
“Which I had,” Ginger said. Speakerphone, then.
“Which she had. But! The day is young and you still have plenty of time to get me my cute and cheesy present. Have I mentioned that I like the chocolates from that fancy place in Reading Terminal Market? You guys, have you had these? They have these chocolate covered potato chips that are phenomenal. Also they have a chocolate covered onion.”
“Who the fuck would want a chocolate covered onion?” I asked, at the same time Daniel made a noncommittal noise.
“Oh, man,” Christopher said. “Not chocolate fans. Well, okay. Here’s the thing. Daniel—sorry, bud—Daniel thinks Ginger is good at this stuff because she’s marginally better at it than he is. But that’s really not saying much, to be honest.” Ginger made a sound of protest in the background. “Uh, no, love, I’m gonna stop you right there. You and Daniel used to give each other presents you got out of the trash or stole from the lost-and-found. And don’t even get me started on my birthday.” Daniel and Ginger huffed.
“Anyway,” Christopher went on, “I’ll get out of your hair if you guys want to brainstorm or whatever you’re doing, but I’m just saying, I’ve got a lot of Valentine’s Days under my belt, and I’m available for consult.”
“No, stay,” I said. I was not liking the sound of dumpster diving gifts, no matter the scenario.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Daniel said.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” Ginger said. “You know the phrase ‘the cat that got the cream?’ Seriously, there’ll be no living with him now.”
�
�About that—” Christopher said, but Ginger quickly interrupted.
“Anyway! If you’re such a gift-giving mastermind, prove it.”
“No problem.” Christopher’s calm certainty immediately calmed me, and I realized I’d been pacing around the shop as I talked to Daniel. I dumped out my cold coffee, got a fresh cup, and sat down in my office.
“Okay, Daniel, let’s start with you. What does Rex like? Give me some keywords.”
“Uh,” Daniel said. Then he said it about twenty more times, in various tones of uncertainty, fondness, embarrassment, and finally hopelessness.
“All … right, then,” Christopher said. When he spoke again it was softer, pitched to Ginger. “Should I ask yes or no questions or something? Okay, Daniel, I know Rex likes to cook. Has he mentioned anything lately about wanting new stuff for the kitchen?”
There was a charged silence in which I could almost hear the intensity of Daniel’s thoughts, running through every recent encounter he’d had with Rex.
“He said … yes. He talked about a … I forget what it’s called. A … like you make pasta in.”
“Uh, a pot?” Christopher said.
“Yeah.”
Ginger started cracking up.
“I know the word for pot!” Daniel said. “But it’s a kind of pot. Never mind, I have no clue. I got him this cookie cutter that I thought was just a Christmas ornament last year. It’s a hammer. He liked it, I think? He made hammer cookies, anyway.”
“Okay, do you think he’d want more cookie cutters?” Christopher asked.
“I … how many cookie cutters does someone really need?”
“None,” I said, and Ginger snorted.
Christopher proceeded to run through a shockingly thorough list of things that Rex liked.
“Damn, son, you’ve got Rex on lock,” Ginger said. “Obviously you should just take over Valentine’s Day gifts for all of us for the foreseeable future. Why let those of us who aren’t any good at it ruin it for those of you who like it?”
“Clearly my post-it should’ve been more detailed. It’s not about getting the right gift. It’s just about showing your person that you care. Rex and Rafe won’t actually give a shit about what you get, only why you chose it.”
Daniel grumbled something incoherent, then said, “Oh shit!”
“Got a student?” I asked.
“Uh, no. Um, Ginge, maybe I’ll just text you …”
“What? No fair!” I said. “Did you figure it out?”
“I—yeah, I—well, yes.”
“Ohhhh,” Ginger said. “Yessss, do it. Hot. Come to the shop after class.”
“What are you gonna buy him?” I demanded. Ginger and Daniel had this psychic mind-reading shit down cold but I never had any clue what they were on about.
“Uh, it’s not relevant to you,” Daniel said.
“Not relev—shut up, what are you doing?”
Daniel sighed. “Fine. A tattoo. For Rex.”
“Oh. Shit.”
That was intense. And extreme.
And part of me really wanted to do it.
When Rafe had moved in with me, at first it hadn’t felt that different. After all, he’d been spending a hell of a lot of time there even when he had his own place. Then, one morning, a month or so after he’d moved in, I woke up, took a shower, and it hit me: Rafe was here now. He was just … here. With me. Always. The realization had hit me so hard, I’d started sobbing in the shower. I had no clue where that reaction came from, but it was like something I’d been sure I’d never have was just … taken care of. The reality of it hadn’t quite caught up to me until that moment. That I was done. That Rafe was it for me. Not just the only person I wanted, but the thing that made everything else in my life worth it.
Sure, I’d already known that I loved the crap out of him. I’d already known he’d … well, okay, he’d basically saved my sorry ass from myself. But it was one thing to identify the feeling, and another to see that this was what my life was now. Different. Better. Permanently.
Rafe had made my house our home. The home of our relationship. I was crap at telling him stuff like that. What it meant to me to have him there. To know that he wasn’t going to up and disappear in the middle of the night. That for some damn reason he felt confident enough in his feelings for me that he assumed they’d last.
Now, all these months later, and I was suddenly flush with notion that I could do something permanent for him too.
I cleared my throat but my voice still sounded choked.
“What will you get?”
“Well, Rex really likes that song, ‘My Funny Valentine’—you know?”
“Uh, kinda,” I said, and Ginger said, “Fuck, yes.”
“So maybe a line from that … Like, uh, ‘You make me smile with my heart’? Wait, no, that’s awful.”
“Hmm, what about just the word smile over your heart. Near the keychain? Since it’s already a heart?”
I wasn’t sure what tattoo they were talking about—Daniel was basically covered in them—but he said, “Ooh, yes, great.”
“Done,” Ginger said.
I let Christopher run through a few questions about Rafe, trying to figure out a gift for me, but my mind was a thousand miles away.
“Ginger,” I said, probably interrupting Christopher. “I want to do it. A tattoo. For Rafe.”
“Uh. Yeah, sure, Colin. What do you want to get?”
“I … I don’t know yet.”
“Okay,” she said brightly. “Well, figure it out and we’ll do it. Do you want to come after work? As long as it’s something small, I can do it in like an hour. Colin, you still there?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay, thanks.”
She, Daniel, and Christopher started talking about something else, but my mind was already far away, imagining what tattoo I should get. If a Hallmark card had no chance of communicating to Rafe how I felt, would I be able to think of a tattoo that would?
* * *
I walked in the door to the smell of something delicious. I was later than I usually would’ve been, and I’d texted Rafe that I’d be a little late, but I hadn’t told him why. He’d texted while I was at Ginger’s tattoo shop, asking if anything was wrong but I hadn’t responded. I’d spent the whole time Ginger was tattooing me wishing I were home with Rafe, but the second I’d gotten in the car and fought traffic to get home, I’d been a ball of anxiety, my sweaty palms sliding on the steering wheel and my stupid breathing thing making me feel like I couldn’t quite get a full breath even though, logically, I knew I could.
I took a second to go through the routine Rafe and I had figured out helped me relax. Well, Rafe had figured it out. I closed the door behind me quietly, kicked off my shoes, and closed my eyes, leaning back against the door. You’re home, I reminded myself. You’re fine. Rafe’s here. That was it. The mantra. I’d probably said it to myself a hundred times, and it always helped at least a little. Yeah, it made me feel kind of pathetic that I need to be reminded at all, but … I did, so.
When I opened my eyes, after running through those three simple sentences more times than I usually had to, Rafe was standing a few steps away. My heartbeat sped with excitement at the same time my breath came easier with relief. Two different parts of myself, both responding to him in opposite ways.
“Hey,” I said, and the second he heard the roughness in my voice, he frowned.
“Hi.”
He was in front of me in two long strides, cupping my face and looking into my eyes, his gaze that mixture of searching and in control that never failed to get to me.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” I said, patting his shoulder. “Dinner smells good.”
I started to move past him into the kitchen. His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t call my bluff. I’d made him a promise, months ago, and I’d kept it: I could say I didn’t want to talk about something, but I would never again lie about whether I was okay. In return, Rafe had promised not to
leave, even if I wasn’t.
“Hey,” he said, tipping my chin up before I could get far. “Happy Valentine’s Day. My Valentine.” He smirked at that last and I smiled.
“Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“I didn’t know if you wanted to celebrate. I was going to ask you this morning, but you were out of here pretty early.”
He was clearly leaving me an opening to tell him what I wanted, even though it was after the fact, but I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him. He was so fucking beautiful that I couldn’t believe he wanted me. Even after all these months, sometimes I woke in a cold sweat and turned on the bedside lamp to look at him sleeping beside me. To look at the evidence that he’d chosen to stay with me, even when everything would’ve suggested it was in his best interest to leave.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
I kissed him softly.
“I promise.”
“Okay. I trust you. But you’re freaked about something, I can tell.”
“Yeah. But I’m okay.”
“All right,” he said slowly. It was killing him not to drag it out of me, but he was getting better about letting me get to things in my own time, too. In turn, I was getting better about actually getting to them.
Rafe had made some kind of lasagna with things I couldn’t identify but that tasted amazing. After we ate, he led me into the living room and sat me on the couch.
“I have to get your present, okay? Just sit tight a minute.”
“You got me a present?”
“I did. It’s okay if you didn’t get me anything, though. We didn’t talk about it.”
I nodded and he went into the bedroom. I heard rustling and a swear word or two, but I was preoccupied with running a finger over my tattoo and wondering if I’d made a total idiot of myself.
I was startled out of it by Rafe’s voice saying, “Go to Colin, Shelby. Go to Colin. Oh, dammit, Shelby.”
I laughed. “Dude, she’s not a dog. Cats don’t do shit you tell them to do. What are you—oh.”
Something landed on the cushion next to me and then Shelby streaked out of the bedroom and onto the couch, pawing at it furiously. When she crunched something, I realized Rafe had tossed a treat.