WE FOUND LOVE IN A TRADER JOE’S

1 watermelon. 
“If you swallow the seed, a watermelon will grow in your belly,” the boy next door said, “and you’ll have a belly as big as my mom’s.” (She’s pregnant, with his baby sister.) I got scared for a second, but then I bit into a slice with my mouth wide, my two baby teeth nibbling into the flesh. When my tongue found a seed, I squished it around. I’m going to swallow it… any second now… We laughed our way through the sweet, sweet watermelons. The next day, we went to Trader Joe’s and raced down the aisles. He won, so I let him kiss me next to the pile of bananas. 

A pack of jelly beans.
The boy sitting in front of me in middle school algebra came into the classroom every morning with a bag of jelly beans. “They had a new flavor,” he would turn and smile at me. But I thought more of the jelly beans melting in my mouth than his smile.  

Milk.
I poured milk into my bowl before cereal — always. That was my secret to getting so tall. I got into an argument with the boy I started dating in high school about this one night. Not the type of argument that would make you scream into your pillow and question every decision you’d ever made. But the type that you know you’re only having because you’re falling in love for the first time, and the biggest disagreement you think you’d ever have was why he put cereal before milk. Later that week, we made out in the backseat of his car, and my mind fogged up like his car window. I forgot about the jelly beans and how much I miss the convenience store that had the good flavors near our old school. I forgot about my parents who thought I was studying at the library. It was in the same car, a month later, where I laid in his lap, tears soaking through his shirt from my dream college’s rejection.

1 box of strawberries.
Oh, how the sky fell the day we picnicked in the park. Strawberry juice on dewy grass. Auburn leaves in the windless air. At high noon, his skin is the color of dipped roses and mine warm, wildflower honey. I stopped drinking milk since I left, and we now argue about more serious things, like how long-distance sucks (he stayed home) and how I’m too busy for him (he thought). 

1 lb of bananas.
My first apartment in the college I ended up attending was one with high ceilings and best friends who bought bananas every week but never finished them. It was a game we liked to play — how brown could they get until flies surrounded them, and we either 1) throw it away, or 2) bake banana bread? That fall, we made a lot of banana bread. Our recipe stuck with us months later when we all went home, and the flowers started blooming, and people started dying from this mysterious disease. 

A bouquet of baby’s breath.
Died alone in our empty apartment. 

Cauliflower crust cheese pizza.
Frozen food aisle. There wasn’t much those days. The more deaths on TV, the less there were on the shelf, it seemed. Yet my grocery list somehow got longer and longer with all the pizza varieties I could think of. At least we’re in the same city now, I told him, my head bumping into his as we laid on his rooftop at dusk. Between us, the pizza box we managed to snag. 

A pack of Ozarka water.
My roommate thanked me for the Ozarka I got, when our state’s winter storm hit and all hell froze over. No problem, I told her over the phone, laying on the bed I drove down 165 miles for, not long after we returned to college. She said she could hear his voice in the background, playing some video game with the ounce of electricity we still had left. 

When he finished, I jumped into his arms and kissed him and didn’t notice the wind whirling outside or the mess around us or the unopened book I gave him for Christmas collecting dust in the corner. We fell asleep tangled in each other and woke up at 3 A.M. to amber alerts, loud sirens, and the glinting darkness. I tried to tell him the groceries I got for us — the strawberries, eggs, juice, broccoli, meat — would rot as he packed our stuff and pulled me towards the door. He said It doesn’t matter, look at the storm outside, we can’t stay here anymore. 

Canned soup.
Day 5 of storm isolation at his parent’s place. There was less disease in the air, but the city was still frozen. This time, he said it: at least we’re together.

2 pregnancy tests.
I thought our kids would be tall and doe-eyed. Father’s height, mother’s eyes. Maybe one would grow up playing basketball. Or chess. Either way, we’d raise them in New York — I was halfway through convincing him. He’d be the fun parent, I was sure, with his penchant for ordering milk tea at 100% sugar and loads of rainbow jelly. By then, we would have already eloped to a stone castle in Scotland, and when people asked about our story, we’d point to the wall with our Edinburgh sketches. Next to them, an old printed screenshot from our friend’s Snapchat — the two of us at that cafe near our school. Me in his swim team hoodie holding up my European History notes, and him on his phone laughing about something. Can you believe that was us, we’d say to our kids. 

But that’d be years from now. As I walked to CVS at 7 A.M. trying to avoid eye contact with the homeless man on the street, I’d rather birth a watermelon than a baby. 

I didn’t do the peeing-on-the-stick part correctly. Instead, I cried and sank down to the floor of my restroom (one tile at a time, so I don’t wake my roommate) and cried harder when I stared at his ceiling over FaceTime and realized he wasn’t crying with me. How am I supposed to help, he mumbled a moment too late. It was when I picked myself up, breath by breath, that I told myself he was only silent because he loved me. He didn’t want both of us to panic, so he was calm. I could be calm, too. I made out a faint negative line through the blur. We were okay. 

Boxes of fruit, 1 bottle of rosé,1 bouquet of baby’s breath (new), Carrot cake,1 blanket.
I set up a picnic on the sunkissed rooftop of my apartment where we were meeting to celebrate his 21st. The rosé glimmered under the fading light, atop the now melting ice. He was late, probably stopped by Buc-ee’s on the long drive here. I used the extra time to finish writing his birthday card, hastily signing it off with “miss you endlessly” because I knew we’ll be apart soon, and I always missed him even when he’s with me. 

Earlier that week, I texted his mom asking for a frame recommendation. She was always telling me how our generation relies too much on social media for permanency, and I imagined the photo I got of us inside the new townhouse his parents gifted him. It’d be the start of a photo wall, or maybe he’d ask me to move in with him soon. 

As my phone call to him rang, I hoped it wasn’t the latter. I still had graduate school, a career I was dreaming of, roommates I loved, and parents who’d freak out. I remember gasping at his anniversary present, this gorgeous Tiffany necklace that I could only afford after another decade.

He answered after the fifth ring — I realized he was still home, 165 miles away. 

Ibuprofen.
Why aren’t you here? 
I think we should break up.  
HUH? 
We’re just not working out. Come on. Think about it. We stayed together during quarantine, the storm, and all that because we were forced to. Isolate together, I mean. When we’re apart, it just wasn’t healthy for me. I don’t understand you— 
—What don’t you understand? 
Like, how you want to leave and save the world or whatever. You know I hate long drives. I wanted you here. I like it here. I’m comfortable. Anyways, I can’t hold you back. 
Why are you telling me this right now? Is this a discussion? I can’t believe you’re doing this now and after all this time. Over the phone, too. 
No. I’m sorry. I think I decided. We were always straightforward with each other. Honest.
We can make this work. I know we can. You can’t just decide without me. Just come. We’ll talk it out. 
Maybe. But I don’t want to. I can’t do this anymore. 

... 

I said more after that, but it felt like a moot point. We were dancing in circles around our own grave. 

Beauty is terror. I think I finally understood Tartt when I picked at the edge of the picnic tablecloth until its threads tore, the ice melted, and the sun faded over the horizon. Any residual I-love-you’s in my heart boiled over into me saving a birthday card that would never be opened. 

For weeks after, I could only muster enough energy to shove ibuprofen down my throat. Healing, I thought, as my skin crawled from the anger that I’d once spent so much time stocking his fridge.  

1 peach.
Have you been eating enough fruit? my mom texted, along with other reminders, like, Don’t go home too late! and Call your dad! But I hadn’t touched my fridge in weeks. I thought of the last peach I cut, the morning of our godforsaken picnic. How perfectly equal the six slices were. How I still took the seed out and blew a kiss before tossing it. How the hollow peach had probably shriveled up, along with the lemons, berries, flowers — my gift to him, that photo of us, the most transient of them all. 

He never understood why we couldn’t live off of Cane’s. He didn’t know my mom brought me cut-up fruit every time she visited me, in airtight containers I’d accumulated in my kitchen drawer over time.

Kimchi.
An old friend heard what happened and took me out to eat. We caught up over soup (the chef gave us extra kimchi), and I asked about his crush — She joined a Korean cult, he said with his palm cupping his chin as if it was his fault. I laughed because it’s so ridiculous that it’s all the same. They leave, join a cult, stop you from loving them. I’m so sorry, I said, but you dodged a bullet.

3-4 lemons.
The girl I lived with after college drank exclusively lemon water. In the early morning light, I’d sometimes hear the water kettle, which we named Gina, stir. She’d chop lemons to the tune of “Here Comes the Sun,” and I’d know it was a good day for her. I’d roll to the other side of my bed, reaching for my phone. I didn’t wait for his notifications anymore, but I checked the weather. A cloudless blue. 

Moon cake 
I went to Trader Joe’s with her to buy moon cake for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Under the store’s fluorescent light, she told me the Chinese legend of how the beautiful Chang’e drank an immortal elixir to save her human lover, only to be banished forever to the moon as a lonely goddess. When she weeps, the heavens pour. But what do you think of this one? She said in the same breath, putting a strawberry snow skin moon cake in our cart. 

I think I kind of love her. Not a too fast, too weird kind of love. Just enough to adore her Midas touch for spinning everything she comes across into the stuff of dreams. What Homer sings, what poets lament, what artists die for — she understands in a language of her own, one that I’m lucky enough to share. 

Trader Joe’s at the cusp of autumn was always packed with the frenzy of college students getting groceries on their own, discovering Everything but the Bagel Seasoning and their robust frozen food aisle for the first time. As for us, we returned to our studio in East Village at nightfall, our hands full with the moon cake, flowers, shared groceries for the week, and my box of cut-up watermelons. 

I stopped believing that boy next door from all those years ago, but I still picked the box with the fewest seeds. Growing a watermelon in your belly is easier than growing out of love.

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction.