Under One Roof

maybe that’s what will happen this time, too. I’m on the verge of homelessness, my heart feels like a stone, and I want to be with someone way more than that someone wants to be with me.

You’re not as heartless as you think, Liam.”
“I’m not as heartless as you think.”

There is something reassuring in hearing about their lives. It reminds me of grad school, when we couldn’t afford therapy and we’d engage in some healthy communal bitching every other night, just to survive the madness. There were some bad moments—it was grad school: there were a lot of bad moments—but in the end, we were together. In the end, everything turned out to be all right.

“We’re just friends,” he repeats again. Like he wants to make sure I know it. Like he’s afraid that I don’t believe him. Which, to be fair, I don’t. Look at her. Look at him.

“What’s his last name?” Liam asks, like it’s a totally normal question. “I can talk to him. Explain that he has made you uncomfortable and he should stop—”
“What?” I let out a laugh. “Liam, I’m not going to tell you his last name. What are you gonna do, pour a barrel of oil on his house?”
He looks away. Like it was an option.

A man of few smiles and even fewer words.

comes right on the trail of arriving home late and noticing that he left the porch light on for me.

I wonder why I wonder.

And for what? Sex? Jury’s still out on whether I even care about that.

See, that’s the thing I hate the most about adulting: at some point, one has to start doing it.