Page 65 of Caution Tape

“Or a marriage. Ha ha, just kidding, lol,“ was her follow-up text.

We strolled among cans of soup, dodging shopping carts steered by old women and gum-chomping power dads determined to be the absolute best at shopping smart and Getting Deals™. She had a paper list detailing some pasta recipe, and took forever meandering around, looking at all the colorful products like a child gawking at the giraffes in a zoo.

I couldn’t handle it.

I was having one of those lethal days where the air makes my skin itch. The lights are too bright; colors seem harsh on my eyes. There’s a smell that seems to leak off of people; human existence, soap and sweat and all the desperation of being alive.

Plucking the list from her grasp I led her through the store, throwing the items into the cart without saying a word to her.

Later, in the car home, she asked what that was all about.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just really hate grocery stores.”

“Thankyou! They’re the worst! The aisles are too small! Why do they put the milk in thebackof the store? And they never hire enough cashiers, so there’s always a line. Ihategrocery shopping.”

She reached over and squeezed my thigh. “It was very hot the way you took the list from me.”

I liked Natalie a little bit that day. Even if it was just the pleasant afterglow of hating something together. She wouldn’t understand the urge to tear my own face off and scream in the middle of Aisle 9, but relationships were built on compromise, right?

Cora is…

Well, something else entirely.

I haven’t bought her flowers or had to go grocery shopping or to a farmer’s market with her. I haven’t had to smile giddily as she hands me a cup of foul-smelling tea, listening to how “it’s so much better than coffee, right?”

The face paint is irritating, though.

She becomes excited, sitting on the counter of Michael’s bathroom and smearing paint on my face with her fingers. Blackening my eyes, she cakes it onto my eyelids which in return makes it difficult to blink. She draws a lopsided clown smile in white around my mouth, grinning at me before sticking her paint covered finger in my mouth, and laughing when I spit the paint back at her.

It’s the first time I have seen her loosen up and smile; the strained, tight expression on her face dropping and revealing someone who could laugh and joke around.

That’s when it hits me.

I am making her… happy.

When it’s time for me to paint her face, I grip the back of her head and paint rough, jester lines vertically through her eyebrows and down her cheeks, then apply red to her nose. I end up giving her a droopy, sad frown in black and white, before painting spirals to the sides of her face.

“We should dye our hair,” she exclaims. “Green? Purple?”

“Cora, we’re going to spend longer getting ready than we are killing these people.”

“Ohhh, I’m Nolan,” she mocks, “I don’t like anything! I just want to wrap people in plastic and eat them.”

“Knock it off.”

“Make me.”

Gripping her thigh roughly, I lean forward, my lips nearly brushing hers. “We do not have time. If you want to do this, then we need to focus.”

“We followed them home from the movies. We know where they live. We have a plan. We’re fine.”

“Cora,” I snap, eyes wide.

She huffs. “Fine.” Her smile broadens, working against the clown dismay I’ve painted on her. “Let’s go to the garage. I want to pick out a weapon.”

Now, I’m lurking in a car, face painted up as Cora seethes beside me.

We’ve combined two fantasies. Finding a couple by chance at the theater, wrong place, wrong time. Just like picking a random name out of a phone book.

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