ShopWe had a plan
Less time, surprise expenses, more work than they expected: hardly anything is left of their plan. Victoria wonders whether she expected too much. Sam doesn’t want every change to turn into a problem, and Victoria hears that he doesn’t care.
Victoria found the note while digging through the top kitchen drawer for parchment paper. Folded twice, written in ballpoint pen, and at the top, in her handwriting: “Our Plan.” She knew right away when they’d written it. The night they signed the lease, in the sunroom at the Limonaia. Sam had paid, and Nonna had brought them a second slice of cake without being asked.
She read it. Dinner together every night. Out of the house every Sunday, phones off. 1,000 euros in the cushion by Christmas. Everything set up by Christmas. Dancing together on Thursdays. Game night with Kathi and Jakob once a month. Underneath, two signatures, hers with a flourish, his neat.
That was three months ago now. Victoria counted on her fingers. Dinner together: Sam’s train left at six forty, she had her late nights in the lab, maybe twice a week it worked. Sundays: mostly yes, but twice no, once because Chiara showed up at the door after a fight with Giulia, once because Victoria studied for analytical chem all day. The cushion: Sam’s bike had broken, 140 euros, and instead of heading toward 1,000 it was back down to 410. Set up: a bare bulb hung in the hallway, and in the bedroom a bedsheet was clipped over the window as a curtain. Dancing: Sam had been to Mr. Ivanov’s twice, both times with the face of a man at the dentist. Game night: once.
When Sam came home from practice and hung his rowing gear on the hook, she was sitting on the kitchen floor with the note on her knees. “What’s going on?” She handed it to him. She wasn’t loud. That worried him more than any yelling. “I think I expected too much,” she said. “From us. From me.”
Sam read it and sat down next to her, his back against the cabinet. “That’s normal, Vici. Things just turned out different. Not every change is a problem.” “Nothing is ever a problem for you.” Now she did get louder. “You say ‘normal,’ and I hear: whatever. I wrote that down because it mattered to me. And now almost none of it is working.” Sam got quieter. “It’s not whatever to me. I just don’t want us to pull out this note every month and check off everything we didn’t pull off. Then every night turns into a failure.”
Victoria looked at the page. For five minutes she didn’t say anything at all. Then she noticed something, and she had to laugh. “Pen,” she said. “I always write my plans in pencil. Always. My five-year plan, my lab schedules, everything, so I can change them. And this one I wrote in pen.” Sam smiled. “Because you were in love and you had an apartment.” That made her laugh even harder, and he got a pencil out of the drawer.
They went through the note line by line. Dinner together every night became three set nights, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and on the other nights whoever got home later would find a plate in the fridge with a note. Sundays stayed, they both said it at the same time. The 1,000 euros for the cushion moved to summer, but something would go in every single month, no exceptions. “A promise is a promise,” Sam said, and wrote that down too. Victoria crossed out “Everything set up by Christmas” and wrote above it: “When it’s done.” Sam added: “Hallway light: Sam, by Sunday.”
At the dancing line, Sam stared for a long time. “Every Thursday?” “Twice a month,” Victoria said. “And you’re allowed to be bad.” “I am bad.” “I know, sweetheart.” Game night stayed, Kathi had already asked. At the very bottom, in his careful handwriting, Sam added a new line: “Look at this note once a month. Together. In pencil.” They taped it to the inside of the cabinet door, where you’d see it every time you grabbed a mug.
On Sunday they left their phones in the bowl by the door and walked to the little bridge over the river, the one they crossed so often. It was cold, leaves were floating on the water, and a single rowing shell glided underneath them. Victoria leaned on the railing. “And what if the new plan doesn’t work either?”
Sam stood next to her, watching the water. “Then we write a third one.” “And a fourth?” “As many as it takes.” He pulled her in against his side. “I didn’t move in with you because of a piece of paper.” Victoria rested her forehead against his. They stood like that for a while, until they got cold.
By Sunday night the hallway light was up. Whether the rest would hold, they’d find out next month. In pencil.
Has a shared plan failed if you have to change it?
Two points of view
I was scared we were already failing at our own goals after three months. Turns out the goals were just written down too permanently.
What matters to me isn’t that every line holds. It’s that we change them together.
The story does not end here.
You might have seen it differently. That is part of the point.