Page 54 of Rock Paper Scissors
Despite all the writer-shaped colleagues and friends in your life, in London and LA, you still cared what I thought of your work. Just like when we first met.
“I didn’t think I was still your first reader?” I said, my turn to sound petulant.
“Of course. Your opinion has always mattered most. Who do you think I’m secretly writing all these stories for?”
I tried very hard not to cry. “Me?”
“Almost always.”
That made me smile. “I’ll think about it.”
“Maybe a game of rock paper scissors would help make the decision?”
“Maybe we should play for something else?” I said, forcing myself to look you in the eye.
“Like what?”
“Like… whether or not we should still be together?”
That got your attention—even more than the hair—and neither of us was smiling then. I don’t know what I expected you to say, but it wasn’t…
“Okay. Let’s do it. A game of rock paper scissors shall decide the future of our marriage. If I lose, it’s over.”
I was no longer sure who was calling whose bluff or if that was what it was. You have always let me win whenever we played the game. My scissors would cut your paper. Every. Single. Time. I don’t know what made me want thingsto be different, but my hand formed a new shape. To my surprise, yours did too.
On the first go, we both formed a rock, and it was a tie.
But if I hadn’t changed my choice… you would have won.
On the second go, we both chose paper.
With the stakes considerably higher than normal, the third round of this child’s game felt ridiculously tense.
We played again. I chose to twist, but you decided to stick. Your paper-shaped fingers wrapped around my rock-shaped fist, and you won.
“I guess that means we stay together,” I said.
You held on to both of my hands then, and pulled me closer.
“It means sometimes life changes people, even us. We are both different versions of ourselves compared with who we were when we first met. Almost unrecognizable in some ways. But I love all the versions of you. And no matter how much we change, how I feel about you never will,” you said, and I wanted to believe you. We’ve come so far, you and I, and we did it together. That’s why I can’t let us fall apart.
We didn’t go to the pub, and we didn’t do very much to celebrate our anniversary this year, I stayed up late to read your work instead. It was good. Maybe your best. Feeling needed isn’t the same as feeling loved, but it’s close enough to remind me of who we used to be. I want to find that version of us again, and warn them not to let life change who they are too much.
I left my notes about the manuscript, along with my anniversary gift to you on the kitchen table, before leaving for work early the next day. It was a small bronze statue of a rabbit leaping into the air. You thought it was something to do withAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland—knowing that was one of my favorite books as a child—but you were wrong. Ibought it because it reminded me of a Russian proverb that an old man once taught me. I’m still rather fond of it:
If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.
You gave me a bronze compass a few days later, with the following inscription:
SO YOU CAN ALWAYS FIND YOUR WAY BACK TO ME.
I hadn’t realized that you thought I was lost.
Your wife
xx
AMELIA
