We buy candy at the bodega. When I remember us, it’s this:

He meets me in Hell’s Kitchen after I get out of work. I wear a scarf wrapped around my neck. It’s March so New York City is beginning to thaw; he’s wearing the merino wool sweater I bought him for Valentine’s Day and no jacket.

The bodega we’ve stepped into is the one where, when I was lonely in my twenties, working nearby, I used to buy cigarettes.

“I used to buy cigarettes here,” I inform him. I give bite-sized details about myself like this. He doesn’t ask me many questions. We are new and I am still bashful.

Now my only vice is candy; I’ve found a match in his sweet tooth. Our palettes are equally unrefined. In our courtship he showed me Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Doritos of all kinds. I introduced him to Caramel Cremes. How lucky we are to have found each other.

 He brings me Peach Rings. I don’t like them but I eat them just the same. I text:

• It’s nice having something in my mouth that reminds me of you.

He tells me lore of cereal I don’t remember, though he is not much older than me. Kaberry Kaboom. Cap’n Crunch Sprinkled Donut Crunch. A Sour Patch cereal.

I share:

• Sour Patch Watermelons and I have had a long-time love affair.
• Lucky them.

• You can be my next sour and sweet object of affection :)
• Wish you could hear my heart beating.

We love Nerds Gummy Clusters. Now I see meme after meme about them, like them being the entirety of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We love these memes too. Going down on a girl who says I’m doing a good job. To lay my head in your lap. Making out in missionary.

I send him ones I shoddily throw together and screenshot: a Leo to come inside me.

“Sweet girl” is what he calls me.

On the A train back to Brooklyn, with our loot of Gummy Clusters, he can’t get enough of me. He kisses me deeply even though there are people around. I open my mouth to receive his kiss; I won’t be too ashamed for PDA anymore. We agree that this blue, berry flavor is better than the regular kind – more good fortune.

He sticks his fingers into the bag, grabbing, greedy, splitting the plastic further. I take a few and hold them in my palm, like I am saving them to feed a horse or stray dog. I pluck one into my mouth. The candy begins to dissolve on my taste buds as I wait for a break in his monologuing. I pull him into another kiss, passing the cluster between his lips with my tongue. It is a sweet and sexy surprise. He bites down. I fucking love us.

He worked in the living room and I spent the entire Saturday in his bed. I sat cross-legged in his paint-splattered sweatpants. I wrote a new essay. I read Mary Karr. I shut the door and masturbated. There is a pile of wood scraps by my head; my torso falls into a deep depression in his mattress, rendering me u-shaped. His place is a mess but I love being one with his things. I worry I’ve overstayed my welcome, but when he leaves the apartment for a meeting, still I stay, awaiting his return.

He crosses to me with his heavy footsteps, grabs me, and kisses me. More good things, I realize in grateful disbelief. From the shredded pocket of his jacket he pulls a pouch of Sour Patch Watermelons and hands them to me. I pop them into my mouth one right after another until the bag is gone, my favorite.

He couldn’t wait to come back and fuck me, he says. Again he cannot get enough of me. He pulls the sweatpants down my legs. We latch together. He says my name, then pauses.

“I maybe love you.”

“Maybe?”

He was afraid to say it, he whines.

“I was thinking about saying it when I bought those Sour Patch.”

I laugh. It’s the laugh of a woman whose life is perfect. I picture him in the ugly, wane light of the bodega on Myrtle and Franklin, holding the bag in his hands, thinking, I love her.

“I love you,” I say. Then I say it again, and again, masticating each sound between my sugar sticky teeth.

His gums bleed when we kiss. The bristles of the toothbrush he brought to my apartment only two months ago are flattened and frayed. He doesn’t brush his teeth; he just stands in the living room chomping down on its head, scrolling.

“I’d say we’re about three big fights away from breaking up,” he warns, a strange thing to predict. Our fighting is near constant. I need him to listen, not follow orders, which is what he hears. I wake to thoughtless slamming of cabinets in my kitchen, the loud crinkling of him digging into bags of chips like a ravenous animal. This happens at seven in the morning. Hey, he greets when I emerge, without looking up.

In June, I get so sick my stomach feels like it is going to burst. I vomit black sludge and convalesce for two days. He drops off things that aren’t what I asked for – an entire sleeve of Ginger Ale, Triscuits instead of Wheat Thins. He brings me Strawberry Pocky, which I’m sure I’ve said I don’t like. It comes back up immediately. I flush my puffy, pink vomit down the drain, weak in the knees.