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Vi dragged her blunt fingers over the paint color swatches, eyes wide. “I didn’t know there were gonna be so many options.” As many times as she’d come to Home Depot, she’d always focused more on the tools and hardware sections. The necessary stuff. Shit like fun paint and fancy lights had never been in her budget. Until now.
Caitlyn bent beside her with a smile. “Any of them you like in particular for our bedroom?”
“Uh…” After a long hesitation, Vi plucked a few slips—reds, blues, and greens—from their plastic compartments and thrust them toward her fiancée. “How about these?”
Caitlyn straightened and contemplated the options. “I think my favorite is this green.” She pointed to a medium-deep forest green on the third sample. “It feels like nature and safety. Like, mmm, yes, I’m deep in a forest somewhere with you, and birds are chirping, and the sun is shining through the leaves in the canopy, and everything is all right.”
Vi had never thought so much about a paint color, but when Caitlyn drew the picture, somehow it made sense. And she wanted Caitlyn to feel that good about the home they were building together. She peered at the color name. “‘Perennial Green’ it is, then.”
Caitlyn smiled like the sun, and Vi warmed from the inside.
They purchased a few samples of matte Perennial Green paint (and the shades above and below it, just in case, per Cait’s suggestion) plus a gallon of primer and headed up the highway to their new house, which stood perched in the middle of an acreage. (Vi couldn’t wait to plant a victory garden all over the massive backyard.) She hefted the paint pails inside, while Caitlyn brought in the bags of miscellaneous painting supplies. They set it all in the main bedroom and then went back to their current apartment for dinner.
It was Caitlyn’s night to cook, and she followed the printed recipe for baked ziti with adorable fervor. Vi perched on a chair at the kitchen table and just watched her, enjoying how carefully her fiancée measured everything out. Cait was so precise, and Vi was anything but. It was part of what made them such a good fit: the complement.
Vi turned on some music, stood, and approached Caitlyn from behind. She took her by the hips and swayed Cait in time with the song.
Caitlyn laughed softly. “Give me a second to get this in the oven, and then I’m all yours.”
Vi grinned. “And here I thought you were mine already. Shame.” She tapped Caitlyn’s firm butt with glee.
“You know what I m—there we go.” Caitlyn closed the oven door, set the stovetop timer, and turned to face Vi. “Now, what were you trying for?”
Vi took Cait by the waist and drew her in close. “I was trying for a moment with my future wife, if you don’t mind.” She swayed in place again, slow and steady, and Caitlyn followed her lead with a soft smile, draping her arms around Vi’s shoulders.
Vi couldn’t help but stare at her, soaking her in. The little gap in her front teeth. The sharp angles of her cheekbones. The adoration in her expression. Vi was lucky to have her, lucky to have this life she’d never expected, never even dared to say she wanted.
But she had it now, and she clung to it with both hands. The kindest, most beautiful woman in the world loved her too, and they were building a house together, and the world for the first time was the kind of place Vi wanted it to be.
Life wouldn’t always be like this. She had been through enough to know the bad times come more easily than the good ones.
But she had moments like this, and it would be enough.