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There’s no way to explain Sasha and Connie. They met in a bar with metal license plates from random states nailed to the walls, and Connie loved her as soon as she sat down in the booth next to Jean, glanced at the Michigan plate above his head that spelled out ‘C00LIO,’ and declared that she liked it.
And then she smiled at him.
There’s no way to explain Sasha, except that Connie thought of a hundred ways in the span of those five hours. And that was nuts, because Con was never good with words. He would have thought up even more, but the cheap beer and the cigarette smoke hazing in the bar made him dizzy.
He just kept thinking, ‘beautiful.’ And ‘funny.’ He thought ‘wow’ a couple times. Yeah, those words are trite and overused, but Connie just kept talking — whatever dumb shit came to mind — and Sasha kept smiling, and you know what? Beautiful and funny and wow are underrated. Simple.
Maybe the best way to fall in love with someone is simply.
Like when their five hours in that bar was up, and Sasha couldn’t take her eyes off the guy who was a little short, who kept his dark hair buzzed because he felt like a nerd when it grew out all wavy, who smiled slowly, from the corner of his mouth. Then all at once.
She liked the way he talked about his work. She liked the way he wanted to make someone a home. She liked the way he talked with his hands, even half-drunk as they stood outside the bar at 1 AM, his eyes warm in the dark.
She had pulled them toward her once that night, teasing him for the callouses on his palms and the sawdust under his nails. Her long thin fingers curled around his so easy, so unassuming, so warm.
Maybe the best way to fall in love with someone is with their hands.
But it was Jean’s hand, raised in a wave and catching Sasha a cab. It was his hand that pulled the car door open for her. And he raised it again, waving goodbye, calling “see ya, Baby” as the cab pulled away.
And Con shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, falling silent as he and his buddy walked back to their apartment.
There’s no way to explain the next two years, except by phone calls. Sasha catching Connie on his way out of the apartment, asking if he and Jean could come over that night. Connie, calling Sasha as soon as he’d gotten the job offer in Vermont. They were friends. The greatest of friends.
The kind of friends you look for when you struggle with your relationship. The kind of friends you call in the middle of the night, when it’s cold in Vermont and you’re not sure you made the right decision.
Friends. Even when Jean lost touch with Connie, even with Jean lost touch with Sasha in his own way, fading and silent and taking showers twice a day. They talked about that, too.
There’s no way to explain how Con felt about Sasha, except to point out that when she called him crying, it killed him. But if staying with Jean was what she wanted, if that was what made her happy, then that’s what he told her to do.
There’s no way to explain how Sasha felt about Connie, except to point out that when she and Jean got into a disgustingly bad fight right before Christmas, she told Jean she was heading to her parents’ in Vermont. But she went to Connie’s house instead, standing on the front porch of this beautiful, half destroyed farmhouse that he’d bought to fix up himself.
It was the night that she got there, when she was crying and sitting on Connie’s shitty unmade futon bed, trying not to cry. It was when Con handed her a paintbrush and gave her one of his old college t-shirts. It was when he told her to shut up and help him paint his living room.
That was when she fell in love with him. When his t-shirt billowed out wide from her shoulders, and she could feel where his body had worn it through. When they painted his living room at one in the morning, a colour called ‘Island Blue.’ He liked it because he said it sounded sturdy, like it wouldn’t fade. When Sasha sneezed from all the sawdust of the half-renovated house, and got paint on her nose. When Connie wiped it off, and his smile was slow, then all at once.
That was when she fell in love with him.
But Con had loved her all this time, from the minute that she’d said she liked the shitty license plate in that bar. From the minute she’d showed him that she didn’t care if everyone else thought something was bad. She could find the good.
He said it badly. In a stammer. I— S— Sash, I love you.
It was one in the morning.
Sasha started crying, and Connie panicked, because holy fuck Springer, you’ve done it again— and then she kissed his cheek, and then his other cheek, and then his forehead, and then right smack on the top of his buzzed head.
Because she couldn’t kiss him on the lips yet. She had to tell Jean first. She didn’t want anything to take away from this boy.
There’s no way to explain Connie and Sasha, except that Con waited. He waited for Sasha to find the words to leave Jean, because that was the least he could do. He waited, because he knew it was the right thing to do, because he remembered a New Years Eve a few years ago, when Jean got drunk enough to admit he was in love with a man.
But Connie wasn’t the kind of guy to throw that around, so he waited for Sasha to either find out herself, or leave before it hurt her.
There’s no way to explain Connie and Sasha, except that Sasha showed up on his front porch again three weeks after Christmas.
And she kissed him on the lips.
And damn, she tasted good. Like lip balm and Dr. Pepper. Like an ice cube in your mouth in the middle of summer.
You could say they were fast. What was Connie thinking, asking her to marry him on the plane flight to Vegas? But Sasha had asked the flight attendant if they kept the good food hidden for the first class passengers, and Con literally could not imagine living the rest of his life without her.
Sasha smiled and said yes and kissed him and when you find someone going the same speed as you, all you can do is hold their hand and run a little faster. Feel the wind in your hair. Except Connie didn’t have much, but that was funny to her.
You could say they were too fast. That when Sasha got up late one morning and ran all the way from their shitty futon bed to the kitchen sink and threw up, it would have scared the shit out of anyone else. She bought the home pregnancy tests from a random Chinese food market just because she was so scared, she kept driving past her normal store. But that was even scarier, because what if the Chinese place had defective ones? So she bought four, just in case.
You could say they were crazy. Because when Connie got home from work, covered in dirt and still sweaty from working outside all day, he took one look at Sasha. Sitting there in the middle of their Island Blue living room, with those creepy looking pee sticks in front of her. And God, the look on her face when she saw him in the doorway.
Connie smiled. Slowly, then all at once.
There’s no way to explain the Springers, except that Sasha gave up active duty on the job for a few months, even though she loved it; except that Connie had the sonogram of his son in the pocket of his shirt at all times, and when the doctor compared him to the size of a peanut, the name stuck.
Connie called the baby Peanut even when he wasn’t the size of a peanut anymore, and Sasha looked so funny and beautiful with her belly like that in his t-shirts. He called his son Peanut even when he was born and they named him Henry Jean, for Connie’s father and the guy who’d introduced them. Hell, Con called Henry Peanut even when he graduated from college.
They were like that, Sasha and Connie.
They’d always been like that. From the minute that Jean had sat back in his seat and grinned, and said, “Sasha, this is my bro Connie.”
And then she’d smiled at him.