The Cohabitants 12

The next weekend in August they went to a resort on the Oregon Coast where he booked their stay in a friend’s beachfront condo. The location was his idea. After being with her at her apartment, he saw the difference in their lifestyles and he seemed to want to make a point of being with her in a very nice place. They walked Moon on the beach and snuggled on a sofa facing windows open to the ocean where they could see the waves and watch the sunset. Between long kisses, she quizzed him methodically about his past, his marriage, and his girlfriends. He didn’t seem to mind. 

In a quiet voice he described how he met his ex-wife, their wedding and building his dream house. A tear slid down his cheek as he explained how he was blindsided by their divorce. Sympathetic with his regrets, she caught his tear on her fingertip. Of course, she had her own similar story about a broken marriage and the end of a relationship she once thought would be forever. Now those events were decades behind both of them, but the impermanence still shaped their plans for the future. They knew this time around wasn’t forever, it was for now, however long now lasted.

No doubt there would be a time in their future when life sucked again. Cold hearted math sat front and center. Years, money, living expenses, these were calculations they skipped over in the first few decades of life, and suffered through in the next few. Now she was doing math between kisses. The lease on her apartment was up for renewal in October, and she had received an offer of one month’s free rent if she renewed before September 1^st. That was a week away and she didn’t want to leave any money on the table if this romantic sojourn was a flop. So, it was time to talk turkey about the topic they had been dancing around since they first met two months ago. 

“While we’re being honest with each other—” She launched herself at him like a turd with wings. “I need to talk about your health. Death is a thing for me. It’s in my thoughts every day. You’re significantly overweight. I’m not signing up to be a caregiver if you’re going to kill yourself with food.”

He was amused. “I can lose weight.”

She poked harder. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’ll lose weight. What else?” 

“Writing is the most important thing to me. My whole life is organized around writing. I need that.”

“I need to fish. I fish on the weekends.”

“What are you saying?” She still didn’t think of fishing as a serious pursuit.

“Weekends are short. I work all week so I can fish on the weekends.”

His motivation was a mystery. “Do they give cash prizes for fishing?”

“Yes.”

“No shit… So, if we’re going to be together and live a hundred miles apart, we can see each other on the weekends you don’t fish. Is that what you want?” 

He harpooned her. “I want you to move into my house and be my girlfriend.”

It took a moment for that sentence to fully penetrate. Then she called his bluff. 

“I need to be in a place where I can write.”

“We can change whatever you want.” In case she had missed the clues, he really didn’t care about his house.

“I need silence.”

“I can do silence.”

“Seriously, I need complete silence.”

“I’ll be at work all week and you’ll be home alone. And I’ll be gone on weekends during fishing season.”

That was enough for her. They kissed to seal the deal and took Moon for a long walk on the beach.

On the day of their departure, maybe he did it for the shock value, or maybe, impossibly, this was his habit. When it came time to check out of the resort, he started cleaning up the condo in a way he had not done at his own home. She slowed her physical movements to watch from the corner of her eye while she emptied the refrigerator into their cooler. He was vacuuming up the beach sand in the hallway. He knew how to use a vacuum cleaner! Then he stripped their bed, piled up the dirty sheets and towels on the washing machine and gathered up the breakfast dishes on the coffee table and put them in the sink.

She had written a story about him in her head that explained his disassociation from his home, his lack of care for his living space, his disrespect for textiles, his estrangement from healthy food, his failure to keep up with dirty dishes and the hair in the sink. It was a long, long story about a sad, sad man who could only be cured by the love of a woman who saw beyond his bad habits, like a princess kissing a frog. She knew it was a worn trope, but it seemed to fit. Now the frog was using a vacuum cleaner and gathering laundry. Her formative assumptions about him were gender fiction. The contradictions gave her whiplash. He said, it’s so nice to have a woman in the kitchen again. She said, he never helps around the house. 

Stop! She didn’t want to live like that. He was making a choice not to clean his house. Weird, but true. Why was it such a huge deal for her to accept that? She could see herself slipping into the trope of nagging wife. For her own self-esteem a radical re-think was in order. Out of respect for herself, she had to let go of him. Living with him was not going to be about keeping score. She wasn’t going to expect him to clean, or ask him to clean, or want him to clean, or need him to clean. She intended to exclude him from that part of her life. She would not want his help. She would do things for herself as she always had. Their cohabitation was not an occasion for dependence. She refused to need him. Would not depend on him. That was the plan.

Instead of moving her possessions into his mancave on the hill, she intended to rent a storage space in town. Partly because an 8×10 storage space would be cleaner and better organized than his home. Partly because his home was already jam packed with stuff. And partly because she recognized the greater than zero probability of a shitstorm ruining her life. If a quick departure became necessary, her home furnishings would be waiting for her in a tidy cinderblock room just across town. 

On the last day of August, she told her apartment building manager that she would not be renewing her lease for another year. When he asked why, she said, “I’m moving in with my boyfriend.” She hadn’t planned to say that. The words just fell out of her mouth. When she saw the look of surprise on his face, she realized her terminology seemed incongruous. The word boyfriend was conspicuous. Fun. Adventurous. Also, an accurate description of their temporary level of commitment. It was her signal to herself to think differently. They were going to be housemates. Cohabitants. That’s all. Just two grown people living together during the pandemic for the convenience of it. No guarantees, no lease agreement, no prenup. Just a kiss on the couch. That’s all. The future was born unwise. Still, she was going to take the leap.