Tim never understood Sam’s obsession with boots. Tall boots, short boots, leather boots, boots with heels, and those fuzzy boots that people made fun of but yet still remained firmly entrenched in the annual rotation of society’s collective footwear collection.
He liked the scarf she had on. A blue and white plaid kind of piece he thought really brought out the deep brown in her eyes. But that was only a momentary distraction. It was 21 degrees outside and there she stood, putting on her heaviest coat with a fashionably exposed bit of leg between the cut of her pants and ankle-height boots. It just made no sense to him.
“Aren’t you going to freeze?”
Her brow furrowed with a true lack of understanding. The coat, fully zipped, doubled her in size and left her instantly on the verge of sweating.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your legs, don’t you want some socks or something?”
“You don’t wear socks with boots like these, Tim.”
His sense of fashion could generously be described as non-existent. That is, if people were truly being honest with Tim, they would tell him he had negative fashion, like he was trying to not be runway-ready.
But nothing could be more fine with him. A pair of jeans. A comfortable shirt. Some kind of shoes and socks. As long as he met the basic social contract about what people have covered when outside of their house, he didn’t care what it all looked like. After all, it’s not like anyone was ever going to stop him on the street and suggest he appear right then on the cover of a magazine.
Sam was the opposite. Flip through the pages of a J. Crew catalog too quickly and you would be sure you recognized her among the models at first glance. She had blond hair with subtle highlights that hung just past her shoulders and never seemed to be the least bit out of place. Every color complimented her. And when she walked down the street with Tim, she didn’t care one bit about their mismatched look, because while she took great pride in her style, she completely respected his.
This night was all about the simple task of dinner. Sam and Tim had a gift certificate to an Italian place they’d never been to. Her mom, who had reluctantly come to like Tim over the course of their three years together, was treating them for their anniversary.
“Do you have the directions?” he asked as he accelerated the car down their suburban neighborhood street.
“I’m pretty sure I know where it is,” Sam said. “Just go towards the Best Buy shopping center.”
They rode on with few words, letting the sound of her favorite Ed Sheeran album fill the car. At a stop light halfway there, she reached over and held his hand. Tim looked toward her and met her wide smile.
“You seem extra happy tonight,” he said.
“No place I’d rather be.”
There was time for one shared goofy grin before the light turned green and they were moving again. The big blue and yellow Best Buy sign sprang into view.
“Ok, so where is it?”
Sam searched the storefronts streaming past and tried to put together the puzzle she had in her mind. Was it in the next shopping center over? Or was it the one with the Chili’s? She knew she had seen it before. It was right here somewhere.
“Honey. We’re going to drive past it. Can you GPS it real quick?”
“I know it’s over here. Just give me a second.”
Tim shook his head and tried to carry out his own search without smashing into any fellow drivers. Sam’s confusion only built. How was she not seeing it? Could they have moved? Wouldn’t there have been an announcement or something? Why wouldn’t her mom tell her something like that? Was this some kind of mission to sabotage their relationship?
They passed through three more green lights, now a mile down the road from their original landmark.
“Can you please just look it up? It will only take two seconds.”
“This world is all about the easy answers now, isn’t it. Our ancestors didn’t need fancy technology to tell them every step to take. Let’s just turn around and go back down this street. I know it’s here.”
Tim let out the kind of audible sight that lodged a formal protest while declining to declare open war. The next light brought a U-turn. Five minutes later another. Five minutes later another.
After 45 minutes of driving on the same roads, they were back home. Dinnerless. Neither one of them spoke about the decision. It just happened, like the car itself was too frustrated to go on. It pulled into the garage and shut off, leaving only the soft rustling sounds of Tim and Sam’s coats as they sat staring forward, unsure of what was going to happen.
“I tried today. I really did,” she said.
“I know you did.”