I met Val when he was a pharmacy student at St. John’s in Queens.  We were at a party thrown by my friend, who was his classmate.  “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure was playing. From across the room, he stood out, with his well-fitting clothing and his dark silky hair, slightly longer than most of the other men’s. He came over to talk to me and my best friend, Claudia. “Hey, how are you doing?” he said.  Up close, I noticed that he was muscular and handsome, and he had a nice voice. Later, Claudia told me she thought he was my type, and she knew me better than anyone. 

The next day Val got my number from the hostess and asked me out.  I said no, that I wasn’t available. We were different religions. Although I was nonpracticing and he was also secular, I felt it would be too complicated for me, and probably for my family as well.  Besides, he was two-and-a-half years younger than I. So we became friends.  Every now and then he would ask why I wouldn’t be his girlfriend, and I explained again that I didn’t see how it could work.

Soon Val and I were part of a group of six friends who managed to be together a lot.  We would meet in the city, have drinks at a cheap trattoria, meander the streets of Soho or the West Village, and end up at Florent for a bite in the deserted meatpacking district. We went on ski trips and to countless parties and dinners. We were flirtatious; even when I met Val’s dates, I felt that he still wanted me above everyone. But nothing changed: I still had no intention of being with him.

Four years passed.  One night, seated together after dinner, when our friends had dwindled away and it was just the two of us, he took my hand. “Why can’t we be together?” he said.  I had no answer.  “Don’t you find me a little attractive?” he asked.  “Of course I do,” I said, “the most attractive man I know.”  Before I knew it, he leaned in and kissed me.  It was electric and warm and soft, so I kissed him back.  We were breathless. We both knew that we wanted to be together, forever.  “Oh god,” he said. “I know,” I said. 

Six months later he proposed.  Within the year we had our wedding at the Puck building in Soho. We danced to The Gin Blossoms and Hootie and the Blowfish, and I felt so lucky to have married my best friend.

Our first two years of marriage were an extension of our honeymoon.  We got an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, where we listened endlessly to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and The Buena Vista Social Club. Most nights we wandered along 9^th Avenue hand in hand; once we walked to Tower Records to get a new CD of Loreena McKennitt.

When our son Aaron was born, there was a shift:  Our different cultures and backgrounds seemed more pronounced, incongruous, and we started ever so slightly to take positions.  By the time our second child, Oliver, was five months old, we were hardly speaking; every conversation ended in a fight.  At that point we were living in Queens.  Even though we agreed that he should leave, we both cried as he packed. I watched him walk out with a suitcase, and I felt sick, like I was going to throw up, and then I did. 

I saw him for visitation pick-ups and drop-offs in our lobby and the occasional day in divorce court.  Our relations were frosty, barely civil.  In this way, four more years passed, and the world went crazy.  The Twin Towers, which were the centerpiece of my picture window, came down.  Less than a year after that, NYC and the entire eastern seaboard fell into darkness with the largest blackout ever.  My father remarried; my brother-in-law had a stroke.  Time continued, and we settled into our separate lives. 

When our divorce was official, there was another shift.  We had nothing to fight about anymore: the courts had told us what we could and could not do.  Our interactions stopped being unpleasant; we even smiled occasionally.  We were just Val and Leslie, once great friends with children we were both wild about.

I found myself putting on lip gloss or a splash of perfume before I ran down to the lobby to meet him to deliver or collect our sons. One Wednesday evening, as I brought the kids to his car, he asked me to come along for dinner.  I became flush and said yes and climbed in.  After that I joined them every week at a local restaurant on Queens Boulevard that had a giant fish tank beside a life-sized warrior in a suit of armor.  From the moment we sat down in a booth, we had so much to tell each other. “You’ll never believe what Oliver did,” I’d start. “Do you want to hear the funniest thing about Aaron?” he would say.  The boys looked at the orange fish.  We saved up all the stories about them for those dinners.  I heard myself giggling. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  The ink was hardly dry on our divorce papers, I thought.  What would my sister say, or my father? My longing embarrassed me.

A few weeks later, when Oliver turned four, I invited Val inside the apartment for cake.  It was strange. Aaron and Oliver were animated and acting silly: Their father was in our living room.  I lit the candles, and we sang happy birthday. Val made a fuss over Oliver, holding him up in the air. As I was cleaning up, I saw him gathering his things.  “I better go if I’m going to catch the season premiere of ‘The Sopranos’,” he said.  It was a show we had watched enthusiastically when we were together.  “You’ll never make it home in time,” I said.  Then I said, cautiously, “Why don’t you stay?” 

He set his things down.  I put the boys to bed. Val and I sat on the brown couch we had bought at Crate and Barrel, our first piece of furniture.  The opening music of the show started.  He looked at me, and I thought, what am I doing? After the show, I pulled out my old backgammon set, anything to keep him there a little longer.  I felt my desperation. And then on that soft brown couch, we moved closer, like we were magnets, and kissed.  I wanted him back.

After two months of secretive dating, he moved back into our apartment.  Aaron was happy, but Oliver wanted him to return to his own apartment.  He was confused when Val got into my bed. “She is my mommy,” he would say, throwing himself on me with a fierce hug. 

When the boys were six and nine, we bought a house together in Westchester.  We laughed over dinner after the closing because the lawyers assumed we were married and had to rewrite the deed.  Aaron put down his fork.  “Wait, you are not married?” he said.  I wasn’t sure what he remembered and what he knew.  “No, Aaron,” I said.  With that he ran to his room crying.  Val looked at me and said, “I wouldn’t mind being married to you again,” and I stopped chewing.  “I’ll never leave you,” he added.  “Okay,” I said, swallowing my mouthful. 

A few days later, on a Sunday morning, we were married in our living room.  Our boys were our only witnesses. The officiant offered to take a picture of the four of us with my digital camera, Val and I on either side of the armchair, the boys between us. Oliver flung his arms around me at the last instant, and suddenly we were a family again.

Val and I have known each other for over 30 years and have been married for most of them.  Our boys have become men.  Our friends, the ones we couldn’t live without all those years ago, have moved away, and we are no longer in touch with them.

Sometimes Val and I drive into the city, listening to The Cure or The Cranberries on Spotify, and visit our old haunts: Florent is closed, and the meatpacking district is saturated with people and unrecognizable.  We walk past the restaurant where he proposed, remembering how broke we were. We walk past the store where we bought our wedding rings, the Puck building where we got married, the place where we had our first apartment, where we were young together. It’s at these times, as we walk side by side, that it’s still just he and I, the way we were before life happened to us.

I put my hand through his grey hair and ponder.  “Everyone is so young,” I say as we pass outdoor restaurants and bars. “We could be their parents.”  “No,” he says, “their grandparents.”  This makes us laugh.

“Let’s go home,” he says, and I’m all too willing. 

– Leslie Lisbona

Author’s Note: “Friday I’m in Love” is a love story with challenges.