Final y they were on their way. Isabel a wanted to drive by Boston Col ege, maybe stop in the bookstore to buy a sweatshirt. The car windows were down and the wind blowing in was such perfect fal wind that it made Isabel a happy. She put her hand outside and felt the crispness mixed with leftover summer.
“Did you have fun?” Harrison asked her, looking sideways and reaching over to put his hand on her thigh. “I’m sorry if it wasn’t exactly what you wanted to do.”
“Would you ever want to move to Boston?” she asked.
“No,” he said. He looked over at her again. “Why? Is that something you think you want to do?”
She felt immediate relief and shook her head no. She smiled at him.
“It’s a nice place to visit, a great city for col ege, but I can’t picture living here again,” he said. “It’s like a fake city, you know?”
She laughed a little, thril ed that he’d said just what she was thinking. Isabel a had flipped back and forth on Harrison so many times this weekend that she’d lost track of where she was. What did that mean, exactly? She thought it couldn’t be good.
She took his hand and kissed it, then held it in her lap. “It was great,” she said. “Real y fun.” He smiled and looked back out at the road.
“That baby’s pretty cute, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and took back his hand to turn the wheel.
As they pul ed up to the campus, Isabel a felt the same way she had when she’d returned each fal . Her stomach dropped with excitement and her throat tingled. She started looking around as though she was going to see someone she knew. Groups of girls were walking to the dining hal in pajama pants and messy ponytails. They were laughing and screaming, and Isabel a wanted to join them and eat bacon and eggs while they talked about the night before. What happened? Isabel a wanted to know. Who made out? Were there any boys there you liked?
Isabel a and Harrison walked around holding hands, and Isabel a pointed out the dorms she’d lived in and different buildings to Harrison. He was bored, she knew, and she didn’t care.
“Isn’t it pretty here?” she asked. “Isn’t it prettier than Tufts? It’s real y the prettiest campus I’ve ever seen.”
Final y he laughed and put his arm around her shoulders. “You might be a little biased, don’t you think?” he asked. He was talking to her in his
Isabel a had realized a couple of weeks ago that this was the longest relationship she had ever had. She was now twenty-nine. She could no longer compare this to crazy Wil from col ege or Ben the Stoner. Now this had turned into her “real relationship,” the one she would have to compare every other relationship to. Or not compare it to, if it was the one that would last.
In col ege, twenty-nine had seemed impossibly old. By now, she’d thought, she’d be married and have kids. But as each year went by, she didn’t feel much different than she had before. Time kept going by and she was just here, the same.
It seemed like it al happened easier for everyone else. Look at Harrison’s friends. They just got married and had kids and didn’t seem to think about it too much. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was thinking about it too much. Or maybe the fact that she was thinking about it meant it wasn’t right.
There was one morning recently when they were lounging in bed, which was unusual for Harrison. Sundays were his day to go running, and he was usual y up and out the door before she woke up. But this Sunday he didn’t go anywhere. They ordered breakfast in from the Bagelry and watched
It bothered her that he was such a go-getter on the weekend. It made her feel lazy to stay in bed when he was out running. That morning she was ready to pick a fight with him over leaving the apartment. And then, like he knew what she was thinking, he didn’t go anywhere.
“No run today?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t real y feel like it,” he said.
Isabel a had two tiny stuffed pigs that she kept on her night-stand, named Buster and Stinky. Harrison had always thought it was odd, the way she loved stuffed animals, the way she was drawn to little figurines and fuzzy things. “You’re so weird,” he said, laughing, when she made a stuffed frog ribbit at him. And she knew he meant it.
Boyfriends in her past had found this trait cute and charming. They had indulged her with little fuzzy animals as presents. Ben had even gone so far as to give them little voices (usual y when he was stoned) and march them across the bed to make her laugh.
Harrison had largely ignored Buster and Stinky, except once when he had used Buster as a Hacky Sack during a long phone cal . But that morning, Isabel a came back from the bathroom to find the two pigs in the middle of the bed in a compromising pose. She stared at them for a minute before it registered that they were in the 69 position.
She stood at the end of the bed until Harrison final y looked up.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Bunch of dirty pigs around here. They must have learned it from watching you.”
“You know,” she said, “that they are both boys, right?”
“Are you saying that two male pigs can’t be in love? Did you learn nothing from the penguins at the zoo?”
Isabel a laughed and climbed back into bed with him. For the rest of the day, anytime she left the room Harrison arranged the pigs in another dirty pose. Yes, she thought at the end of the day. Okay, I could be with him forever.
She worried that maybe they’d been dating too long to end up together. It was like when you tried to jump off
