On (not) kissing your husband.

And the fanciest 7-11 in the goddamn world.

I kissed my husband in the light of the most perfect sunset and felt nothing.

Which is to say: I felt a lot of things.

Your four healthy children are literally frolicking, bathed in the same orange light. Why are they always whacking each other? There’s so much to love here…

…Just not his kiss. Fuck.

Fuck.

“The part of me that goes to seeing you is often—always—divided.” He sighs over dinner that night, just the two of us. Chile rellenos.

Now you’re crying into a dense restaurant napkin.

“They’re not tears of regret or despair,” you assure, “just anticipation that hurts like grief does. I can’t wait to know you again.”

A strange man enters the establishment. You hate his vibe because he walked up to you and stared at you and your tostada bowl for like ten seconds before forcing you to acknowledge his staring. “Can we leave?” you whisper, looking down at your husband’s plate. Eighty percent empty, meaning you have an eighty percent chance the good man will oblige.

“Yeah!”

“Wanna drive through Montecito and scope out the incredible outdoor lighting.”

“Let’s go.” He’s smiling. You are, too.

“They are fun to look at in the dark. Why do you think it’s so special?” You ask, referring to the houses nestled into the deep indigo hillside.

“It’s primal,” he replies. “Seeing something warmly lit at night is inviting. It’s also why bright, cool-white lighting is definitively and objectively wrong.” I love him.

“For me, there’s something about the inversion of negative space.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

“Say what?”

“I knew you would use the term ‘negative space’.”

How can he know?

You continue. “How during the day a house is illuminated and the windows disappear. But when it’s dark, it switches. The house disappears and the windows light up. It inverts.”

Driving through Montecito you remember a wealthy great uncle who lived on Valley Club Drive. Your memories expand and contract and the married couples of your youth begin to dance around your brain.

None of them were happy.

I have so much more than was ever modeled to me. None of us is 100% happy all the time. Most of us aren’t even 50% happy fifty percent of the time.

I am. At least today, in this moment. Gosh, I hope they were happy as much of the time as I am.

It doesn’t even come close to mattering though, because happy people spend much more time vibing than they do dissecting the lives of others. Because they’re happy.

We enter a part of town that looks completely foreign to me. It's a Main Street of some sort.

“That’s the fanciest 7-11 in the goddamn world.”

You’re thinking about how disoriented you feel. “We were always just playing in the pool…” Montecito Bank and Trust appears through the eucalyptus.

“I remember driving there in his red Viper once.” You have less than one hundred memories from your childhood, but that’s the one that stuck.

We are beginning to look more lost. You have 98 childhood memories, how could you remember which exit to take off the 101?

“You’re off the path,” I inform. His aimless wondering is beginning to make the map app feel anxious.

“There never was a path,” he says motioning to the phone clipped to the air vent. “It didn’t load directions back to your dad’s place.” Verizon is shit in the hills of Santa Barbara.

Kygo’s remix to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” comes on as you both sit in the driveway.

“The thing is, I don’t think it matters. If I enjoy kissing you or not. Because I’m ridiculously happy.”