Myrella Jones

The Bench

     Every year, the couch got a new blanket, and the shed got a new lock.

     The couch was where the day ended: the dip in the left cushion, the seam that had gone slick under her thumb, the faint smell of popcorn that never quite left even after shampooing. The shed was where the day continued: the pegboard, the cold bulb, the drill batteries lined up like little soldiers, the jar of screws labeled by size in his blocky handwriting.

     When the kids were little, the couch was forts and cartoons and her arm falling asleep under someone’s head. The shed was his weekend kingdom. He’d stand in the doorway and say, hey, quick question, as if the shed were an office. He’d come back in with a screwdriver and a look of victory, as if he’d rescued something from collapsing.

     When she cried, he brought her water.

     When she cried, he brought her solutions.

     He’d sit down beside her on the couch, but his knee would bounce. His eyes would drift to the leaning shelf, the crooked frame, the drip at the sink. In the shed, nothing leaned unless it was meant to.

     The first time she tried to talk about the loneliness, it came out sideways, the way truth does when you’re afraid it will be too much.

     She said: I just feel… off.

     He said: We should get you out more.

     He meant well. He was already in there, measuring the problem, snapping it into lengths he could carry. He said: Let’s make a plan. He said: Text somebody. He said: Join a thing. He said: I’ll watch the kids, you go. He said. He said. He said.

     He said all of it like a man laying boards on a workbench. He didn’t understand that she wasn’t asking for lumber. She was asking to be sat with.

     After that, she began going to the shed without saying why.

     At first, she went for practical things. A hook for the broom. A new latch for the gate. A shelf in the laundry room so the detergent would stop living on the floor like an abandoned animal. He’d hear the shed door groan and call from the kitchen: Need help? And she’d say: No, I got it, and feel a small shame—why did it feel good to be in there alone, under the buzzing light, surrounded by objects that didn’t ask her to explain herself?

     Then came the bench.

     It started as a thought she couldn’t stop thinking: a place to sit.

     Not for her husband, who already had his chair, his spot, his routine. Not for the kids, who could perch anywhere and call it a throne. A place for someone else. Someone who would sit down and not immediately start inventorying what needed fixing.

     She found scrap wood and brought it forward. She measured and re-measured. The tape measure snapped back too hard, stinging her knuckle. She liked the sting. It was clean. It made sense. Loneliness did not.

     She cut boards. The saw whined. The saw always had a job. She drove screws until her wrist ached. Each screw tightened with a little squeak, like a promise being secured. The bench took shape—square, sturdy, correct.

     And wrong.

     She sat on it and felt the hardwood under her thighs and thought: This is what he would build. This is what I build when I’m scared. Something that will not collapse. Something that can survive the weather. Something no one can accuse of being needy.

     She found an old blanket on a shelf under a tarp. Sun-faded, smelling like cedar, the kind of blanket you’d once thrown over a table before painting. She shook it out and dust rose like pale breath. She draped it over the bench.

     It changed the bench the way a hand changes a shoulder.

     The shed light buzzed above her, too bright, too honest, and she sat there, wrapped in a blanket, in a room full of tools, trying to understand why the softness felt like theft.

     When her husband came out and saw the bench, he said: Nice. Should we seal it?

     She said: Maybe later.

     He said: It’ll warp if you don’t.

     She said: I know.

     He looked at her the way he always looked at a thing that could be prevented from going wrong. 

     He said: I can do it real quick.

     She said: Not everything needs to be real quick.

     He blinked, as if she’d spoken in a language he’d once known and forgotten.

     Inside, the couch held its familiar dip.

     Inside, the couch did not ask to be sealed.

     That week, she began leaving small things in the shed that didn’t belong there.

     A mug she’d taken out for a minute and forgotten. A paperback. A throw pillow that had lost its place because the kids had rearranged the living room, and the couch looked naked without it. He found these things and brought them in like rescued strays. He’d set the pillow back on the couch with a little frown, as if the house had rules and the objects should follow them.

     She started leaving softer things on purpose.

     A second blanket, folded. A candle she never lit because he hated “smells”. A jar of tea bags. A small lamp with a warm bulb that didn’t buzz.

     He came into the kitchen one night and said: Why is there a candle in the shed?

     She said: I like it out there.

     He said: But why.

     She said: It feels… quiet.

     He said: The living room is quiet.

     She looked at him. The living room was quiet in the way a waiting room is quiet.

     The shed became her odd little protest. She hung a cheap curtain over the window. She pushed a chair beside the bench. She put a plant on a shelf. It died, of course—it was still winter, still dim, still the shed—but she kept the pot anyway, like proof she’d tried.

     The couch took it all in. The couch saw her pick up her phone and put it down.

     The couch watched her thumb hover over old names like a hand hovering over a hot stove.

     On a Tuesday under the shed's too-white bulb, she finally typed a message to a woman she used to know well enough to cry in front of.

     Hey. This is random. I was thinking about you. Want to get coffee sometime?

     She stared at it. She deleted “random.” She deleted “sometime.” She stared again.

     The bench, blanket-draped, waited behind her like a piece she’d built for a person who might never arrive.

     She hit send.

     The whoosh sound was nothing. It was the smallest mechanical mercy.

     In the house, her husband was fixing the drip at the sink. When she came in, he said: Got it.

     The faucet was silent. He looked proud in a tired way, like a man who had kept the world from falling apart one more time. He kissed her cheek and said: Better?

     She nodded and sat on the couch, right into the dip that knew her. He sat beside her and tried to keep his knee still.

Her phone buzzed.

     She didn’t pick it up right away. She let the buzz live in the room with them, small and ordinary and impossible.

     Then she lifted the screen.

     Coffee sounds really nice. Thursday? I’ve missed you, too.

     She exhaled, and it felt like unclenching a fist she hadn’t realized she’d been holding for years.

     Her husband watched her face, trying to read the shape of the moment. He didn’t ask a question. He didn’t offer a plan. He just put his hand over hers on the couch cushion, steady, warm.

     Outside, the shed sat locked and ready to be useful, and she understood—with a sudden, tired clarity—how many years she’d spend building things no one was ever going to sit on, when what she needed was company.

Myrella Jones is a sophomore at UC Clermont, majoring in English and pursuing creative writing. She is both an editor for East Fork Journal and the President of the Creative Writing Club. Outside of school, she spends her time raising four kids, loving on her fur babies, playing video games, gardening, enjoying thunderstorms, and throwing herself completely into creative projects she probably did not budget for. At the heart of it all is her love for storytelling, imagination, and making something meaningful out of the beautiful chaos.