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“What’s this?”
Constance spins around from her tinkering about with the coffee machine; a combination housewarming-holiday gift from Noel. It’s the expensive kind, that presses the beans and brews the espresso and supposedly brings out the “flavor notes,” whatever that means. Either way, Ocean, regrettably, has to admit he struck gold, because it’s been in use on the daily in their brand new place—Connie loves flavor notes, and she loves caffeine. It’s a win-win—but that’s not why she’s here.
Connie’s face screws up, and it might be adorable, if this weren’t a pressing matter. “What’s what?” she says, mid-brew, brow quirked high.
Ocean produces the what in question and waggles it high for her to see. “This.”
As soon as she appears to process the tiny yellow square before her, Connie giggles—delightfully infuriating as she is. “What, that?” She shrugs, like she’s perfectly innocent. “It’s just a statement of fact. I don’t see the problem.”
Ocean whips it back around, to look at it again, reliving the experience of witnessing it for the first time that morning, stuck to the wall of her side of the closet in all its glory.
“‘UR CUTE,’ angle bracket, three?” she reads, for about the seventh time. “What fact is that? What does this mean? Are you trying to tell me something? Constance, what in the world—”
“Oh, my God.” Now, Connie abandons the fancy expensive coffee machine completely, in favor of striding across the kitchen and yanking the Post-It from her grip. Maddening amusement is written all over her. “Ocean. It says, ‘you’re'”—she drags a finger beneath the UR—”'cute,’ with a”—beneath the angle bracket and the three—”heart. It’s a heart, O’Connell Rosenberg, JD.”
Ocean blinks. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Connie smirks, pretty.
“But, I, I just, I don’t— Why— Is this—”
“You are so red,” giggles Connie some more, and miserably, she’s even prettier.
“Stop that!” she squawks, only to be assaulted with a kiss on the cheek.
Constance brushes the yet unstraightened hair from her face, snakes her arms around the circumference of her waist to sway back and forth in the middle of the kitchen floor and oh, maybe it’s not all bad. “Just figured I’d try to brighten up your day a little,” she hums. “Oh, and I got a free pack of sticky notes when I was making copies at the Office Depot.”
Connie Blackwood, her best friend since Pre-K, girlfriend since grade twelve, and co-tenant on her lease since nine days ago, smiles. So bright, so perfect, so her.
How wonderful it feels to be so lucky.
“Well, that’s”—Ocean may have to clear her throat, for no particular reason—”that was very thoughtful. Um…” And again—is it dry in here? She flickers up, to meet her gaze. Everything in Ocean softens the instant she does. She always did have that terrifying power over her. “Thank you. Connie.”
Suddenly her face is quite close—when did it get there? “You’re welcome,” murmurs Constance, voice brimming and eyes glittering with something Ocean thinks is affection. A lot of it.
Slowly, she leans in for a kiss—an on the lips one, this time—and Ocean figures she doesn’t mind this arrangement.
“I have to go to work,” Ocean has to drag her voice to whisper, after a time that is both too long and way, way too short.
With one last saccharine peck planted on her cheek, Constance’s hands regretfully slip from around her. “Okay,” she says. “Just remember what I told you.”
Ocean’s lips twitch. “I’m cute?”
“That’s the one.”
After she grabs her coffee from the fancy expensive machine, straightens her hair, and collects her briefcase, halfway across the threshold Ocean steals one last glance over her shoulder, at her girlfriend—roommate—warbling a little tune as she breaks the tape on some more boxes.
Smiling, embarrassingly wide, she shuts the door behind her and makes for the station.
All day long, she does, indeed, remember what she told her; thinks of little yellow Post-It notes, and the affection two short words (and a symbol) can hold, and thoughtful spontaneity.
And then thinks she will not be beat.
*
“Where the—heck are you?” Ocean hisses, to no one in particular as she ransacks the office, living room, kitchen table at a joyous eleven o’clock at night. It’s been at least twenty minutes, and those—stupid yellow squares are nowhere to be found. Curse her, for wanting to be touchingly, soppily romantic. Naturally, just when she’d like to do something nice for her, show her it’s appreciated, one-up her mushy, perfect little note, the wretched things are nowhere to be—
The bedroom.
With flying, quiet hands, Ocean shoves everything back into its proper place, ensures no man or girlfriend would be able to tell she were ever here, and creeps back into their shared master bed. Connie is a heavy sleeper—this much is true—but foraging through the drawer of her nightstand is somewhat of a different story.
Sending up a quick prayer to whoever’s listening, Ocean slinks for her side of the bed, lowers herself to her knees, and carefully plucks the knob. Like they hear her plea, the hinges don’t whine or screech in protest as they usually do. Maybe they know it’s for a good cause, she might say, if she were insane.
She finishes extracting the drawer open to reveal a medley of miscellany; chapstick, hand lotion, tangled nest of wires for she doesn’t even know what, but then, it all but jumps out of the hardwood: a ballpoint pen and a bright golden squareful of sticky notes.
She snatches them both in her arms, jams the thing shut as quiet as humanly possible and shuffles back to the living room in a hurry. In less than ten seconds, she’s plunked on the rug, bent over the table, and flying the pen over the paper, not only to delight her best friend but to express to her appreciation for all the ways in which she delights her.
The next morning, Connie wakes up to a sunny yellow note on her favorite mug. Ocean tends to be conscious far before she is, of course, and so as she sips from her own cup and pretends to read the paper at the kitchen table, she catches from the corner of her eye the precise moment her girlfriend sees it, reads it, and finally, beams at it.
Ocean can no longer pretend to care about today’s news. Constance puts down the mug, crosses the kitchen in two strides, pulls her by the hand out of her chair and into a kiss, and Ocean happily obliges.
After the appropriate amount of time, Connie draws away, everything on her face terribly, terribly soft. She grins, again, equally wide as before.
“I love you, too, you sly dog.”
Ocean grins right back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Something in Constance’s expression melts. “That sounds about right,” she chuckles, and kisses her again.
That night, Ocean watches her fold up her ‘I love you very much <3’ and stow it in the safety of her nightstand’s drawer.
* * *
From then on, there are many, many more.
Ocean’s day is filled with a network of routines; very quickly, the notes become one of them. The Post-Its multiply; they appear in new places, every single day, as back and forth, on alternating days Ocean leaves Constance one, and Constance leaves Ocean one. The collection builds and builds in the drawers, and the third time Ocean restocks at the local Office Depot she also has to purchase laminated binders in which to start keeping them.
Eventually, they start to migrate, from just any adhesive-able surface to the condensation on the bathroom mirror after one of them takes a shower; a finger-drawn heart dripping in dew will stare back at her while she brushes her teeth, or even, on occasion, a terribly sappy XOXO and a smiley face. Others, scrawled in pen on the bottom of paper to-go cups, the back of receipts; tucked in the corners of scrap paper; keyed into unattended word documents; snapped on unguarded phones. It’s gotten to the point where Ocean will gladly make a fool of herself rummaging through her briefcase and peering on the underside of her coffee cup at work because on the most serendipitous of days, she’ll find one from last week that she managed to miss and from nine in the morning til six at night, be kept grinning like an idiot by the handwritten reminder of the one she’s chosen to love.
Several months of messages later, on one Saturday morning Ocean finds there’s a particularly important one to send.
As Connie emerges from the bedroom, stretching and yawning, Ocean nurses her cup with somewhat teetering hands and stares at the paper with unseeing eyes.
“Morning,” says Constance, padding straight for the coffee machine.
“Good morning.”
“Oh.” She peels the first note from the front of the metal, grinning. “What’s this? A scavenger hunt?”
Ocean swallows a heavy sip.
Connie squints. “‘CHECK MUG.’ Alrighty, then. Well, coffee can wait! Let’s see, here…”
She putters about the kitchen, finds the mug, unsticks the stick. Collects the next few notes, turns her back to flip them over and arrange them on the counter.
“Okay, we’ve got the complete picture, I think. Wow, you really went all-out today, huh? Wait, wait, hold on. I think it’s out of order, give me a second here. This one says ‘one’…”
Ocean rises from her seat.
“Got it, got it! Okay.”
She reaches in her pocket.
“‘WILL’… ‘YOU’…” Constance’s voice cracks. “M–marry…”
She turns around.
Ocean gets down on one knee.