Page 24 of For the Record

“We’re married. You should probably move in,” I reaffirmed.

The switch from her disheartened state to the sputtering that came out of her mouth as her eyes grew wide was cute. “I—you. We. Move in—” she scoffed. “We don’t even really, well. I mean, we do. We did, anyway. I don’t think—”

“If we’re going to be married, it’s best if we live in the same house. It would be suspicious otherwise, right?”

Her head dipped back and forth, like her brain was doing a mental game of table tennis as she weighed the pros and cons. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“You’d save on bills there too—”

She shook her head and lifted a hand to my lips to shush me. “No, no, no. I might be desperate enough to take the government’s money, but I will not be taking yours. We are splitting everything right down the middle.”

We wouldn’t. I would make sure of that. The point of this deal was for her to save money for her dad’s care. The difference between her rent and my mortgage would eat all of that up.

“We will settle on something. You can…pay the water bill.”

She pointed a finger at me, her nail inches from my eyeball. “Stop that. I don’t want the tiny bills. You said yourself that you needed the money too. You have to have some kind of debt you’re struggling with too.”

I cracked my knuckles one by one.

The difference was my debt was unexplainable to her. She would find out soon. I was sure of it. I needed the right time. A four-hour plane ride where we were stuck together didn’t seem like the ideal setting.

“It’s not unmanageable. It would just be nice to tackle it head-on.” That was the best I could come up with for the time being.

During take-off, we argued back and forth, haggling over every small bill, until I finally got her to agree on a seventy-five/twenty-five split. She wasn’t happy about it, and neither was I, so it worked well enough.

As the plane steadied its course, Rachel pulled out her earbuds, and her shoulders relaxed. She leaned into the seat with a small grin on her lips. Like she’d been reunited with her best friend. Other than me. On the way here, one flight attendant had said she was going to have to confiscate her AirPods if she didn’t take them out for the safety presentation. I thought Rachel was going to come apart at the seams.

Connecting her AirPods to her phone, she handed me the left one, and I smirked. I was working slowly on music education. I still had a way to go, but I wanted to understand her in these songs. Understand a deeper meaning of who she was, how she felt.

As I placed the device in my ear, I leaned back in my chair, ignoring the kicking against it by some kid behind us. A slow thrumming played over us, and I looked down to see her phone lighting up in her lap, showing Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

A few moments later, her head dropped to my shoulder and her breathing steadied into a slow rhythm that matched the music’s tempo. I planted a small kiss on the top of her head as I felt her drifting to sleep against me, her hand with my ring on it lying right next to mine.

Currently Playing: I Say A Little Prayer by Aretha Franklin

***

Rachel: Have you listened to my playlist yet?

I have not.

Rachel: Rude.

Hard to find time at work.

Rachel: Between the shark attacks and helicopter rides over the sunset, right?

Rachel: I feel like you’re in a…U2 mood currently.

What does that even mean?

Rachel: Moody, heartfelt, thinking.

You don’t know me that well.

Rachel: Or I know you very well.

How does U2 match with Stevie Wonder?

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