“How can you not know this?”
“Because . . . !”
Because it’s just our thing, like he said, and it’s gone on for so long now, it’s just what we do.
I don’t think I ever even connected it to that date. I’d pretty much forgotten all about that, actually—and I’m surprised Zach remembers it so clearly.
He sighs, and then lifts the iPad again, his whole demeanor shifting in an instant.
All right, this is definitely worse than the fury. His sadness is palpable, and this time I know it really is all my fault. He’s not even a little bit to blame for this one. He sinks onto the edge of the bed, setting my iPad down gently next to him, and his glasses, too, and hunches forward over his knees, covering his face with his hands for a long, long moment before sighing and dragging his face back up to peer at me.
“Where did we go so wrong, Serena?”
Where did we go so wrong?
Oh, I wish I knew. These last few days, I’ve asked myself that a lot. Where did we go so wrong, because how long ago could I have known all this stuff, or how long have I gone without asking it and when was the right time to have asked it? When did this whole thing become work? When did being snippy with each other become so normal I forgot we were ever any other way?
Where did we go so wrong?
Zach rubs his knuckles to his eyes before putting his glasses back on. I feel like I’m on the back foot, but I don’t even know why, and I dither for a second, wringing my sweaty hands before deciding there’s only one thing to do right now.
I move beside him, pick up the iPad, and sit down on the bed next to him.
I rest the iPad in my lap and lean sideways until my head rests on his shoulder. I can smell Zach’s aftershave on his shirt, and close my eyes for a second, drinking it in. I love the smell of his aftershave. I’ve always loved it.
I love how easy it’s always been to just be with him. I used to dread a time when Friday nights in with a boyfriend would be catching up on Gogglebox and eating pasta bake on the sofa, instead of making plans to go out somewhere and do something, but it had never felt mundane with Zach. It was part of the reason I was so happy to say yes when he suggested we look for a place to move in together, after not even being together for a year. It was part of the reason I got a new job nearer him, so eager to start our life together. Because if even the boring bits were that good, just think how incredible the good parts could be.
Zach’s head tips to rest against mine.
“What happened the other morning, Serena?” he asks me softly.
“You called me a bitch and said you should leave,” I say. It comes out quiet and wobbly, which I really wasn’t expecting, and then I find myself sniffling. I gulp, not sure when this lump appeared in my throat.
“Rena . . . ”
I sniffle again, scrubbing the heel of my hand across my face before he can realize I’m crying. God, I know we have to at least talk about this, even if it’s all over, and maybe now he’s finally going to listen.
So I say, “You ordered pineapple pizza. That’s what happened, Zach.”
It hangs in the air between us for a while, the silence stretching out, pressing down around us.
Until, eventually, Zach laughs.
He pulls away from me so that he can look at me better. I refuse to raise my face to his, but out of the corner of my eye I can see the incredulous look on his face, the nervousness in his eyes when he laughs again.
“What?”
I tell him again, my voice a little more steady this time, “You ordered pineapple pizza.”
“Um . . . yes?”
I sigh, and meet his gaze this time to give him a deadpan look.
“I’m sorry,” he says, still laughing, though I know he’s trying so very hard not to, “did it offend you? I wasn’t aware you had such strong and intense opinions on the topic.”
“It’s not that.” I’m not yelling this time, just . . . hopeless. Helpless. I take a deep breath to steady myself, and explain, “It’s that we’ve been together for four years, Zach. We own an apartment together, for Christ’s sake! And I don’t even know what kind of pizza toppings you like, or where you stand on something like pineapple on pizza. And it just made me wonder, what else don’t we know about each other?”
“Wait. Wait.”
Zach stands up, pushing me back from him when my hand automatically reaches for his arm, and he stands across the room from me, his hands pressed over his mouth. He frowns at the floor for the longest moment before looking at me, one thick, dark eyebrow quirked up.
“That’s why you started that whole thing about kids and houses and getting married? That’s why you went off on one?”
“I went off on one because you called me a bitch, and you didn’t even have an opinion on any of those things,” I tell him, my teeth already grinding again.
Zach scoffs, but it’s not the angry, exasperated sort of noise I heard the other morning. If anything, he just sounds tired. “All right, I shouldn’t have called you a bitch. I am genuinely sorry about that. But you were . . . ” He catches himself and whatever he was about to say, swallowing it back down and offering instead, “acting very out of character. I mean, jeez, I wake up and you’re sulking out there on the balcony, and suddenly start yelling at me about how we should have a three-bedroom house out in the suburbs like Matty and Alex, and about how your body clock is ticking—”
“All right, I definitely never said that.”
Zach cringes. “Well, you know. Words to that effect.”
I grunt, but give it to him.
“It’s not that I don’t have an opinion on whether I want to marry you, or have kids, or whatever. I just figured it wasn’t time, yet.”
“But what if you didn’t want kids? Or what if you did, and I really didn’t? You don’t think that would be worth us breaking up over?
How long would we have been together before we realized all that?”
Zach’s face crumples, and I see him finally get it.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
I get up now, too, standing in front of him.
“I’m not saying this should’ve been first-date conversation, or that we should’ve been on our third or even thirtieth date talking about where we’d live that was close enough to family but had great schools for the however many kids we’d decided we wanted to have, or that we should’ve been settling on if we wanted to get married one day or both just wanted to spend the money on a few nice holidays before we moved in together but . . . Four years, Zach. It just made me realize that maybe, at some point during all that time, we should have talked about some of these things.”
“And you realized all of this . . . because I ordered a pineapple pizza.”
Zach looks at me with such gravity, such a serious pout, no hint of amusement anywhere on his face or in his voice now.
And we both erupt into laughter.
Zach bends forward to clutch a stitch in his side, hooting loudly, and I col apse onto the floor, hunched over my knees and wheezing.
“Over pineapple on pizza,” he repeats, and sets us both off laughing again.
He’s right.
It is properly and completely bonkers.
And what else can we do right now, having already spent days yelling ourselves hoarse over it, except laugh?