Janie and I have been sharing a full size bed for the length of our relationship. For six long years we’ve positioned our bodies in unnatural poses around three sleeping cats whose only responses to prodding to move are to growl. We’ve spent most of the years pressed tightly together like peas in a pod. Until Monday night.

As a birthday gift from my parents, we got a new mattress and as an anniversary gift from ourselves, we bought a bed frame. We spent the first night in our king size bed after a long drive from the Costco Home store, following behind my father who was toting our new mattress set and bed frame in his utility trailer. The bed sagged over the sides, wobbling precariously under the strain of thin but expertly tied ropes, and we were not completely certain that it wasn’t going to just flip into Lake Washington as we drove over the 520 bridge during rush hour traffic. (“Janie, if that thing falls in the water, I’m getting out to row that fucker to shore because I’m not wasting all this money to not have a new bed by the time we get home.”) We did make it home, narrowly avoiding being rammed by a semi as we merged onto I-5, where we spent three hours moving the mattresses up a flight of stairs and the new, gigantic headboard up a steep retaining wall covered in juniper bushes because it wouldn’t fit in the stairwell.

For the first time in years, Janie was not on me even once in the night. It was cold and lonely. I woke up several times somewhat unsure where I was. The entire room felt foreign, like we were in a hotel. As I was relaying this feeling to Janie, the following conversation took place:

It was really weird sleeping in there last night

I know! I couldn’t fall asleep. It just felt so strange.

You were so far away from me and I’m used to you being so close. This is how it starts, you know.

How what starts?

Divorce.

This is how divorce starts?

Yes. Two people in love get a king size bed. Before anyone knows it, they’re sleeping farther apart and, soon, they can’t stand each other and are arguing over who gets the cats.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah. So we need to meet in the middle or else that will be us and, by the way, you get to keep Carson because I don’t want her peeing all over my nice new bed.

BEFORE

AFTER