Lady Labyrinth

Jade is Skeptical

I remember the day when Rowan told me about Natalie. We had just moved in together. I am originally from way out of state. We met coincidentally, dated online for a few months starting in the spring of 2019, then I was able to move. I'm a biologist, by the way. I'm a year younger than Rowan, but we both graduated from high school and college the same year.

"Found a new intern for next year," he said after I asked how the alumni thing was.

"Who?" I asked.

"Her name is Natalie. I didn't catch the last name. She's awesome."

The only other thing he could tell me about her was where she went to high school. That was how he was. He tended to overpraise and overpromise things sometimes. We had been dating for five months at that point (yes, we were already living together). I knew I'd meet Natalie eventually, but I didn't think it'd be in two years.

My work meant I had to go in sometimes during the early months of the pandemic. I was one of those people who wore the face shields 'cause there was no way I was getting me or Rowan sick. And we ended up adopting two cats, and when I heard something about cats being able to get COVID I internally freaked out.

Since Rowan worked in education, he was at home for the spring, but back at school in the fall. His program was able to function halfway - many programs didn't run at all in the fall of 2020. He felt super lucky. The one thing that was missing from each conversation about school was Natalie. I'm sure she wasn't able to work due to the circumstances. Since Rowan barely knew her, I figured I wouldn't hear about this mysterious girl again.

When our lease ended at the apartment in August of 2020, we moved to a small house that we bought for a good price. The house was pretty old, but it was cute. Our cats were way happier in a bigger place. The gigantic front yard had a garden built, so we decided to try it. Turns out, we got pretty good. We grew a lot of food for ourselves, including grapes, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, and carrots. The eggplants were shaped more like eggs than the emoji, which Rowan, of course, commented on.

"These aren't shaped enough like dicks," he said. "That's disappointing."

Neither of us were really into eggplants until we grew them ourselves. The carrots turned out pretty good too, though some of them looked pretty funny. It took a few years to finally get the grapes. They grew on vines on the fence of our front porch. The tomatoes and cucumbers were also great. We had friends and former students over for dinner sometimes, and often times the vegetables we served were ones we grew. Including to Natalie and the staff from the program Rowan ran.

Right after the season ended, Rowan invited Natalie, Pubes (his real name was Patrick, but no one called him that), Sri, and Sri's girlfriend Vicki.

"What time are people coming over?" I asked.

"I told them 7:00. Natalie will for sure be the first one to get here. She's always early. She panics about being late. Pubes is always late."

I knew that about him.

A few hours later, Natalie was, indeed, the first one to arrive. I hadn't met her yet, even though it had been two years since Rowan said her name for the first time. I didn't even know what she looked like.

Our house was on a corner, and Natalie had parked on the side where we parked our cars. The house was over a hundred years old, and we did not have a garage, so we parked in the dirt driveway and on the street.

"Natalie's here," said Rowan. "though she's not sure if she has the right house. I'm gonna go outside," Rowan said as he got up from the couch. We had not started making dinner yet. Since Pubes was going to be so late, we decided to hold off.