Trey was coming to terms with the fact that his Significant Other was all-surface. A hollow chocolate egg of a soulmate. A lifemate, rather— Trey didn’t believe in souls, and S.O. certainly didn’t have one.
The Significant Other, S.O., had depthless grey eyes. They discoursed dispassionately about the rain beating on the window. They wore their hair like a child sprung out of a cornfield, eschewed fashion, ate Pop Tarts without toasting them.
Carelessly, S.O. knocked a glass goblet off the kitchen counter last Spring, and Trey was still finding pieces, winking at him in between the tiles, catching on snags in his socks. S.O.’s carelessness haunted the both of them. “I’m sorry,” S.O. was always saying. “I’m sorry.” Too many sorries to keep up with or make sense of.
They enjoyed Trey’s company, they said. Unironically, carelessly, superficially. No signs to read in S.O ’s face. “What did I do to deserve you?” They asked him. They embraced him with an upright spine, bit his earlobe, smiled.
Then it was Spring again, and it was the anniversary of the goblet, and it was the anniversary of their partnership, their Significant Otherdom. S.O. wanted to ride the ferry, though it was still too cold. The waves splashed out of a neoclassical painting depicting the briny deep, the sublimity of black oceans, white figures with idealized proportions fighting against unseen jaws, hoping to reemerge, to cry out, and failing. Trey told S.O. about the painting in his head, which the ferry made him see. S.O. nodded.
They arrived at the island. A dozen other couples were with them, a few kids. Some of them were smart enough to bring ponchos.
S.O.’s bangs were plastered to their forehead with seawater. They ogled at him with their grey eyes. Undeterred by mud, he and they trudged up the slope to the lighthouse. Climbed the staircase. Stood at the window. Watched the waves, microscopic now. Watched the rain.
They were alone. It was what passed as intimacy for them.
S.O. said, “I’m sorry again about the broken glass.”