Simply Rivalry by Susan Gibb

He picks the Chevy so I naturally get a Ford. He loves Italian and I develop an allergic reaction to tomatoes. Honest, my throat closes, my face swells, the whole scary thing. Why then did we get married? To beat him and win. My mother told me he was the perfect man for me. I told her twenty-nine was not yet an old maid. “But you two have been together since high school,” she said. “Before that,” I growled and she knew enough to drop it for a month. We hated, we dated, we hated, ad infinitum, but he was the one I trusted to pop my cherry. After that, he thought he owned me but I told him, “you merely unlocked the door.” He was the one I came back to for holidays, summers home from campus, because after all, he was there. I’d spend the first few days crying about the latest guy, purposely snotting up the new Christmas sweater his latest girlfriend had knitted. “Let’s be honest,” he said more than once, “we’re trying our best to avoid ending up with each other. You’re better at it than I am.” “No,” I said, “I can just hold out longer than you.” “Hah! No way,” he said, and we fought over that. It grew worse when we both ended up here. “Bet you can outlast me on staying single,” he’d said. Heh-heh. I said “I-do” about thirty seconds before he did.

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