Winter 2021 | Occasus | Issue 11.1

Loveseat

Aislynn isn’t sure if it’s the oblong coffee table with the stubby legs or the white lampshade billowing beneath a shiny metal fixture or the deep blue loveseat with one scuffed velvet armrest, but she feels like she’s home. Sinking into the downy cushions, she lets out a contented sigh and stretches out an arm.

Her hand grasps at air.

Lewis is pacing around the perimeter of the room, as he has for the last twenty minutes while Aislynn has settled into the sofa. A quiet grumble escapes his lips as he drives the tip of his boat shoe into the glossy bamboo floorboards. “This is hardly a living room.”

“Well, we’re not in Kitchens anymore,” she murmurs as she thumbs through the coffee table books, scattering bulky hardcovers like Jenga blocks on a wine night. Two still have white stickers with barcodes and bolded currencies that send her mind wandering halfway across the world.

Leave it to Lewis to get technical and bring her to an Ikea at a quarter to nine on a Saturday morning. She had envisioned her twenties spanning across continents, one grand adventure after the other—but the decorative black globe with golden details, fixed on its wayward axis, was the closest she’s gotten to the ocean all year. Not that Lewis kept it in the cart.

He comes to an abrupt stop, snapping his fingers. “We forgot the cutting board.”

She quirks her shoulders. “We’ll circle back.”

“More like a zigzag.” Lewis parks the cart next to her—half-full of bowls and mugs and cutlery—and disappears around the corner. The man who was sweet enough to keep her on this continent was, on occasion, stubborn enough to make her regret it.

Palms splayed across the buttery velvet, Aislynn watches the passersby. A few ill-fitted yellow shirts dart in and out of the aisles, but it’s mostly smiling couples because those are the only types who would visit a furniture store so early on a Saturday. She and Lewis probably looked like that when they walked through the automatic double doors and beelined for the dining area—black coffee for him; frozen yogurt for her—until they reached the living room.

After re-appearing with the cutting board gripped like a trophy, Lewis resumes his pacing.

“Look at the colour. This texture.” Aislynn appeals again, perching on the non-scuffed armrest and meeting his gaze. “What’s not to love?”

His mouth is set in a thin line. “We have two.”

She arches a brow. “They’re still wrapped.”

And it’s probably better to keep them like that until they can be rehomed. A heather-gray lawson and a vintage floral cabriole make an odd pair in a sea of cardboard boxes in what should have been the living room of their new home. It’s been three days since the move, and the already-tight space has become all but a storage unit. While Lewis set up the office, Aislynn was relegated to working on a bar stool with hairpin legs pushed against the kitchen island, strewing paints and brushes across the marble countertops.

She didn’t mind it as much as she minded the glare of sunlight from the plastic-wrapped living room. 

“We’ll unwrap them,” he concedes, “before your friends come.”
 
“The perfect time to unveil a new sofa,” she exclaims. “Have you invited anyone yet?”
 
Lewis looks at the bamboo floor as if he wishes he could dissolve into them. “The ones we have aren’t that old.”
 
“The cushions are stained,” she points out.
 
“Pete apologized,” he protests, “It was four months ago.”
 
Aislynn hasn’t seen his friends since. Despite her insistence on inviting them over to meet her friends, Lewis slipped out of the door for the pub every Friday night, declaring that the groups would mix as disastrously as Pete and tomato sauce.  “It still hasn’t washed out.” 
 
“We ran out of stain remover.” He takes a seat at the opposite end of the sofa, running a hand across the scuffed armrest. “Imagine your friends and a glass of pinot noir on this.”
 
“It’s going to have a hole,” she murmurs, “if you continue like that.”
 
“They make it looked lived-in,” he continues, “but a lived-in living room wouldn’t look like this.”
 
She breezes past him to pluck the copper wire ball off the otherwise empty middle shelf and plunks it down on the coffee table. It looks foreign—not like a souvenir, but how Lewis’s razor had when it first appeared on the brim of her sink. Then it was another toothbrush. Shaving cream. A pair of socks under the coffee table. The discoveries were amusing at first, but the promise of adventure quickly became a tedious scavenger hunt.   
 
Yet the living room hasn’t been quite the same without those wool blend socks.
 
“Your books would be everywhere,” she agrees.
 
“And these shelves wouldn’t hold them,” he decides, standing up to inspect the bookcase on the eggshell blue wall.
 
She can practically see the numbers whizzing through his thick skull as he takes out a flimsy tape measure. The geometric arrangement of thin particle boards seems to defy gravity, and that only makes Aislynn want to ignore the price tag dangling from the bottom shelf more.
 
“We wouldn’t have to decorate like this,” she murmurs.
 
“Then the room wouldn’t look like this,” he points out, frowning first at the disappearing coffee table, then the rug as if the circles and triangles have posed some unsolvable math equation, and finally, her. 
 
Her response is drowned out by a wail. A kid in four different patterned layers trespasses into the living room. His father is in hot pursuit, followed by his mother and a bewildered younger child clutching a stuffed shark to her chest. They pay no mind to the couple on the royal blue loveseat.
 
“It would look like that,” Lewis concludes, softening, “and the sofa—our sofa—should be prepared for that.”
 
He had always been so prepared, with his stick of stain remover in one hand and a Swiffer in another. “What about leather?” He points across the aisle to a sectional sitting on a square of walnut flooring.
 
“We’re not decorating a lobby,” she grumbles. “You claimed the office. I’m asking for a corner of the living room.”
 
“My first meeting’s tomorrow,” he states simply.
                                                                                     
Aislynn swallows hard, watching the family disappear around the corner of the single wall before looking down to the floor, now tracked with muddy shoeprints. How could he imagine a child running around the living room when she could barely picture the coffee table? 
 
How could he be so certain that their sofa would still be around in a few years?
 
“It’s a new place,” she muses, staring down at her slipping socks: pink with blue dinosaurs, a gift from her senior year Secret Santa. After graduation, it was as if a month disappeared every time she blinked. “A new start.”     
 
“And still the two of us,” he reminds her. When she stays silent, thinking of the apartment and his job and the cheese board she needs to prepare for next week’s wine night, he pats the spot next to him. “Remember when we picked up your sofa?”     
 
It was hard to forget. Aislynn cracks a small smile as he slides over to her end.
 
Four birthdays ago, they were still university students, renting rickety houses at opposite ends of campus. It was Lewis who saw the ad for the cabriole and helped her lug it back to her room, where it was jammed through the splintering doorframe and into a corner where they spent many long nights. The sofa was too short for his lanky frame and the cushions sagged, but they kept their bodies pressed against each other, for warmth during the winters and simply because they didn’t know how to stop when spring rolled around.   
 
Now, he presses his shoulder against hers, radiating a familiar warmth. Even though there is room for three more of him, the two of them settle against the armrest, smiling.   
 
He picks up the copper ball, shiny yet functionless. “Why don’t we start with this, and circle back?”
 
She rests her head against the crook of his neck, a spot more comforting than the softest of sofas. “Only if it’s a zigzag with you.”   

Kelly Ge is a fourth year health sciences student with a passion for narrative and storytelling in research and all forms of art.