going to feel rejected. It’s one thing to be rejected by a guy you just met, it’s quite another to be rejected by your best friend.
As it turns out, Brad isn’t very messy; but every room I’ve been in looks like a tornado has hit it. I never really noticed how tidy he is in comparison. I’m hit with a sense of guilt for always looking at him like he’s some sort of pig.
I take the time to unpack as much of my stuff as I can. There’s extra space on the bookshelves in the living room, so I fill that up. With some creative reorganization I manage to fit all of my cooking utensils in the cramped galley kitchen. My pots and pans happily cohabitate with his and I’m not the least concerned with ever having to figure out what belongs to whom. When Brad left for work today, the house was his. When he comes home tonight, it will be ours. I sound like an idiot, I’m sure, but I don’t care. I’m staking my claim.
After the kitchen, I find myself even enjoying finding room for my clothes in his tiny closets and already full drawers. I shove everything over in his sock and boxer-briefs’ drawer to make room for my socks. I can’t bring myself to put my panties or bras in there just yet—not before Brad actually gets in my panties, anyway.
Unpacking doesn’t take very long and before I know it I’m on to the very last box, which just has DVDs in it. It turns out, I don’t have very much stuff; and I’m grateful that whoever packed it up was methodical and organized about it. I’m guessing it was the husband. Thinking over how neat he organizes everything—something I hadn’t realized about him before—I wonder what else I don’t know about him.
Brad’s DVDs are organized alphabetically by genre and then alphabetically within the genre as well. I had no clue he was this damn neurotic. I do my best to work within his system as I fit my DVDs in with his. Between Action and Comedy there is a lone, unmarked DVD case. For a moment I consider that it might be porn, but then I remember back in high school how he kept his porn in a rolling bin under his bed. Knowing Brad, that’s probably where he still keeps it. He truly is a creature of habit. Curiosity gets the best of me and I grab the unmarked case and open it, only to be shocked by what I find.
‘The Notebook.’
Like, the chick flick, ‘The Notebook’. I can’t believe I’ve found this here, and he’s hiding it no less. But then I remember the whole gang going to see this movie in theaters. We had only just resumed being on friendly terms without it being super awkward between us after The Heather Incident. Brad sat at the end of the row and I was next to him. I had a large supply of tissues handy because I just knew I’d cry. But I didn’t need a single one. No, Brad used them all. That’s been our little secret ever since. I hadn’t even been tempted to ever bring it up to torture him with. It just didn’t seem right since it was such a significant turning point in our friendship.
I take the DVD out of the case and flip it around. It’s covered in scratches, both deep and shallow. It’s so beat up that I doubt it’ll even play. And I have an idea! I know just how to show Brad that I want to try to make this work.
I rush to the kitchen and look for baking supplies. Of which, there are none. I can’t bring him homemade cookies at the station if I don’t have anything to make them. So, I improvise. If there’s one thing I learned from Darla, it’s how to fake being a domestic goddess. To this day, James still doesn’t know that Darla’s famous lemon squares come from the corner bakery.
THREE HOURS, ONE shower and four stores later, I’m walking into the station with a wicker basket in my hands, looking for my husband. I am so proud of myself for my forethought. I was lucky—the corner bakery had some reject chocolate chip cookies they gave to me. Old Mrs. Neilson even had an old Tupperware container for me to put them in. She wasn’t very helpful at first; that is until she found out the