My Only Friend La Croix - Chapter 2

Dee unloaded the contents of her pink suitcase onto the carpet of my sparse walk-in closet. We met during the last month of the lease of our East Phoenix house and she and I had been texting and talking throughout the time that I was in Spain. She had come to stay with me for a week or two before her anticipated move to Los Angeles.

She placed her nicer things on my sparse collection of hangers and stacked her jeans into the corner of the closet, then shut the suitcase. The orange light of the early evening poured in from the glass door to the balcony and all the lights were off in my apartment.

I looked at the painting that I had finished in the days leading up to her arrival. The light strokes circled around the top of the white and tan piece, but it was clear that I became overeager with the application of paint at the bottom. It didn’t seem as finished as it could be, although I had to trust my gut on when to call it. Pecking away at something forever doesn’t improve it, past a certain point—it makes more sense to close it, to wrap it up, and start something new.

Dee stood up to meet me in the threshold of the closet.

“All set?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said. I held her by the waist and kissed her.

“Do you want to go get stuff for dinner?” I said.

“Yes, Sprouts?” she asked.

We left the apartment and drove the few miles down to Sprouts, where we lazily shopped for supplies for the week. Dee picked out most of the produce except for the fruit and I grabbed another case of Tangerine La Croix with my handful of mangos and oranges and green apples.

We drove back home and laid out all of the ingredients of our feast on the white countertop next to the coil stove. I pulled out a cutting board and started cutting up some toast while Dee washed the cucumber. How unique to me was this time! These rituals were bliss: to slowly and deliberately choose ingredients for a healthy meal with this woman who I had become so comfortable, knowing that we would later peacefully sleep together in the same bed in my first solo apartment showed a glimpse of a sustainable way of living in tandem with another. This was foreign to me yet delightful. Still, there was no pretense that this would last, as I knew that she was moving to Los Angeles and she knew that I was moving to San Francisco, but we enjoyed what we had.

“Ok, go, go,” Dee said to me, as she took the knife and cucumber on the cutting board. “Wait, where are the sesame seeds?”

I opened the drawer and pulled them from the other spices.

“Here you go,” I said.

“Thank you,” said Dee.

I went into the bathroom and started to draw us a hot bath, sprinkling some orange blossom salt into the tub as the water level was still low. I stripped off my shirt and pants and watched the water for a moment more, then went back out into the kitchen.

The next day we walked down to a place on 3^rd Street for a single drink—a casual Friday night. Dee and I made eye contact while I watched her sip her orange cocktail in the booth. I had just finished my Radler.

“Feeling ready to go?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

I took my hand from hers and kicked my legs from the booth and stood up, waiting for her to follow. We navigated through the dark room which was not much bigger than a shipping container. I paid for our two drinks and she stood next to me and I held her by the waist. I signed the check and grabbed her hand and walked with her out to the courtyard.

We took a moment to watch the wedding party at the long banquet table in the adjacent venue. String lights illuminated the scene between rows of Palo Verde trees. I was feeling good with the warmth of the desert air and the alcohol and the feeling of the radiant woman beside me. I squeezed Dee’s hand a little and played with her fingers and kicked off towards the road. We started to walk north on 3^rd Street.

“What time do you want to drive up tomorrow? But what are we doing for coffee?” said Dee.

“I will make you coffee,” I said to her. I squeezed her hand and kissed it. “We can leave at any time that we feel like.”

“And then we will get more coffee,” she said.

“Of course.”

We came to the turn on Fairmont and went east. I swung her hand around and looked at the low Phoenix homes with their chain link fences and sparse grass on the south side of the street.

“Look! Rabbits!” Dee said in a whisper. We both stopped walking. I spotted two tan rabbits and a dark one in the yard just south of us.

“What! Who do you think they belong to?” I asked.

“I have no idea, do you think they’re wild? I didn’t think there would be wild rabbits around here.”

“I have to imagine that they are,” I said. “It seems unlikely that they’d just stay in this person’s yard with their fence like that.”

“Yes, how strange.”