By Morgan Hannah, Life & Style Editor
I am sitting here, watching you paint the trim of our first apartment together. We finally settled on cotton white with an accent wall in bead glass blue. The afternoon sun blankets you in light, softening your features, and fading your Pink Floyd T-shirt—bought new with the intention of it wrinkling and ageing over time to look just like it came from the ’80s. I remember when you bought it, you told me it’s supposed to be the t-shirt I wear in the mornings when we’re drinking coffee together, how it should just barely cover my butt. At least, that’s how they portray it in the movies, but I’m not a tiny girl and you’re not a big guy, so that wouldn’t work for us.
All our furniture has been pushed into the center of the room and the walls lined with that bright florescent green frog tape. Some ripped up plastic bags to protect the plastic floors. We’ve been here for almost half a decade, and yet we’ve only collected a blue leather reclining sofa with a small rip in the side that faces the wall, a couple of tables in varying heights, two bookshelves filled full of my books and your CD’s, my antique blue steamer chest from the ’40s, and your forty-five inch plasma TV. It’s enough. Though bare now, the walls usually hold our imaginations trapped on canvas—we’ve both got paint for blood.
I remember when we first moved into our apartment. Everything looked so clean and modern. We were about four years newer; me with my thicker thighs, curly hair, and bigger arms clinging to your side—an endless eccentricity and smile painted across my round face. And you, all pale, blond, and built like a fine drum, stuffed into graphic tees and jeans. Beside us was our competition—a family of three, originally from Czechoslovakia with sombre grey coats and drawn faces. The little girl couldn’t have been older than nine. But it was a one-bedroom, no patio, and in the end, it was your job that got us the place.
