Before I even consider moving in, I should check if there’s any Chinese markets nearby. My favorite pastime is fishing for four-dollar shampoo with packaging that says “ELEGANT COW 上美肌大洽” or something. At this point in my life, all the Mandarin I have left in me is allocated to bargaining with-and-against Chinese boomers – in fact, I have a whole script rehearsed for this very scenario. It goes something like this:
I approach the boomer. “Zhè gè duōshǎo qiǎn?” (How much is this?)
Boomer smirks at me, the aspect ratio narrowing into cinematic proportions. (Ai-yaaah. White as fuck and the inflection is qián not qiǎn. I’ll start with twelve, he’ll take it for nine and think it’s a deal.) “Shí'èr kuài.”
Me, shaking my head: “Tài guì le.” (Too expensive.)
Boomer: “Jiǔ kuài ba. Zhèshì wǒmen de zuì dī jià le.” (Nine dollars then, bottom price.)
Me, dramatically putting the thing back onto the counter: “Wǒ bù yào leeee...” (I don’t want it anymore.)
Boomer, on their knees, bowing at my feet: “Sì kuài ba, guǐ lǎo.” (Alright, five dollars then, whitey.)
And there you have it, ka-ching, I just saved me a whole seven bucks.
I smile kinda homophobically at the mental image of Marcus being gay. Dude looks like a grizzly bear that couldn’t pay the bills and had to get a job in the timber industry.
“Not that I know of.”
At least I hope not ‘cause, uh, obviously he’d be crazy in love with me from all the times I lay shirtless in front of him, and I still have PTSD from standing guard at Pride three years ago. A drag queen wrapped one of those Hawaiian flower necklace things around my neck and began, like, pole-dancing without a pole in front of us while marchers cheered him on chanting, “A-CAB, A-CAB!”. It was great, I felt very welcome there.
No, really, it was okay. I took solace in knowing that at least Dale was out there somewhere, living his personal Hell.

The Homecrest parking situation looks about as good as it gets in New York City. I kinda like the place already.
Interesting how I’m standing in front of my prospective apartment with this girl I only just reunited with after nine years. I know I tend to rush into things, but the way she asks me my opinion feels so familiar that I forget to question how we even got here in the first place. If she wanted to sell my organs, I’d be her easiest project yet.
Then again – area feels pretty safe, no tweaker caravans, no nothing. Quiet indeed.
“All quiet’s good. I’m old, remember?” I smile down at her before I give the building itself a pleading look, heaving a sigh, “Please, no rat shit in the corner.”
And on that positive little note, we get going.

When we reach the apartment, I step over to the doorbell and ring it before sliding right back to Mac.
“So, just in case he suspects,” I lower my tone with a tiny smile, “how do we prove I’m really your boyfriend?”
The sidelong look I give her flicks downward for a split second, not-so-subtly implying that a little making out here and there would toootally sell this whole shtick. Yep, we’re about three hours into our reacquaintance and I’m straight-up hitting on her, no shame, no class. Maybe it’s for the better that I timed it in this way: someone appearing in the doorway, inviting us in before she could react.
First thing I do when I step inside is look up. No cracks or stains on the ceiling, not in the living area at least. Based on the patterns, it seems like my Sunset Park rent buys hardwood floors in Homecrest, and I fuck with a good floor. Back in the day, I considered getting an apprenticeship in construction, either as a carpenter or some kind of electrician – electrician ‘cause it pays well if you don’t mind climbing poles, carpenter ‘cause wood is just cool. When I was a kid, mom worked for this one family who had a son my age, so she’d bring me over to watch us both at the same time. Whole place was set up in this rustic style, shit looked like someone had chopped a piece of wood down in Oregon, draped cowhide over it and just decided it was now a dining table. Going off of my limited life experience, I kinda just assumed wooden shit like that was the “You’ve Made It” of furniture. And families.
“Taylor Zheng,” I shake his hand, nod reciprocated. He seems alright, nothing salesy about him, which I do appreciate. “Thanks for seeing us.”
I pop an obligatory smirk at his bribery line. “Right.” Not that it wasn’t funny, it just wasn’t natural-smirk funny.
I blink vacantly when he casually mentions his husband. Not sure why, but I kinda assumed he was the husband in question, as in... To a woman. Not sure why I assumed that, there’s probably no reason for it, in fact I wasn’t surprised for even a split second. I’m just hip and 2023 like that, not even a single second thought went into this.
When he gets to the end, I pout with tiny nods, “A’ight, sounds good.” Wrapping my arm around Mac’s shoulder all boyfriend-like, I give her a brief look before smiling back at him, “We’ll take a look around, then.”
“Why, take aaall the looks you need,” he waves his hand with widened eyes and a sigh, already on his way. “I’ll be here dog-sitting if you have any questions. Can’t guarantee I’ll know the answer, but I can always ask Shawn.”
I let go of Mac, palm shielding my mouth from Daniel’s lip-reading superpowers, “Let’s start with the shower, we’ll get to the boring part later.”
‘Cause plumbing’s shit all over town, not just the projects. What’s that if not equality?

Entering the bathroom, I flick the light switch to check if it’s even working. The square footage barely fits two people, but there’s a walk-in shower spanning the entire wall in front. Kind of an upgrade from the one at home, which stands in the corner on this ugly ass acrylic platform.
“White brick tiles,” I turn my head towards Mac with a ‘Not bad’ kind of expression. “I guess I’ve officially made it.”
I open the cabinet under the sink and bend over, checking the pipes for anything suss – leakage or grout or, like, rats living inside. Then I walk behind the glass panel, roll my sleeves up and unhinge the showerhead, about to test the temperature.
“Not a fan of the water pressure,” I declare before turning aside, angling the showerhead halfway towards Mac with an Evil Grin, water trickling down the glass. “Wanna come test it?”
I might have actually sprayed her with water thirteen years ago, but I like to think I’ve grown a couple brain cells since then.
“I ‘on’t know,” I hiss in the end, putting the showerhead back. “That's water pressure for ants, Mac. I don’t think I can cope with this.” Lips drawn to one side, my cupped hand makes a horizontal motion towards my neck. “He should be paying me to live here.”
And I squeeze my way past her, unable to suppress a smile. Not trynna get ahead of myself here, but, I mean… So far, so good.

I’ve read somewhere that people are attracted to symmetry both in nature – which is a clear indicator of other humans, which means order, which equals to ‘safe’ – and in faces of potential mates. It has something to do with evolution and species preservation instinct, because genetic problems often appear in facial features. That’s why celebrities usually have near perfect symmetry – personally perfection weirds me out, but I have to admit, Gigi Hadid’s facial symmetry is to be acknowledged.
The other thing that’s purely subconscious is our preference for familiar things. It was Freud, I think, who was obsessed with his little Oedipus complex so much he based his entire ideology on people subconsciously desiring their opposite-sex parent. I only took a few courses in college but I seem to recall that a lot of his theories have either been discredited or simply held in a skeptical light due to lack of matches of scientific criteria.
This article I’ve read in some science magazine in my therapist’ waiting room said, however, that people do have a preference to ‘familiar’ facial structures. You take away things like the color of your skin, your haircut or even the shape of your eyes and you’re left with a purely geometric design and more often than not, you get a pattern in past partners and the people around you, parents, siblings, yourself.
Familiar is safe, and safe is good. If I’d take a photo of my dad when he was thirty and then try to find the similarities in Tay, I’m pretty sure I’d come out empty handed, thank God. But as I lean against the doorway with my shoulder, hugging the papers to my stomach, I do get this faint déjà vu as he goes to inspect the piping. The first thing Dad did when he helped me move my stuff to our apartment with Nina was rattling all the doorknobs and checking all the electrical outlets. “You hear that squeak? We need some WD-40.” Later he went on to lease an industrial vacuum so he could clean the vents.
“They are very nice tiles,” I nod, ‘cause that’s the part my superficial ass is interested in. Not that I have any interest in this apartment. Absolutely none. When I look at that closet above the toilet, I’m sure his toiletries could fit there nicely, and I’m not at all jealous of having built in wardrobes at the entrance. To be fair though, most of that would get packed up with baby stuff fast, right? Strollers are huge.
My head bops to the side when he asks if I want to test the pressure. “I’d prefer to test it when we’re alone,” I smirk back at him, fully aware that given the square footage and me basically standing at the door, Daniel can probably hear me. Not that I want him to, but Tay can’t be the only one who gets to joke around like that. Tearing my eyes away from him, I try to scale things as much as I can. “It’s good size, though. You could fit in the baby tub easy. Unless you prefer the kitchen sink.”
Washing your baby in that only seems like a good idea until they realize they can pee in the water. After that, all your dishes will smell like pure chlorine for weeks.
Given his preference for piping, I’m guessing the next stop is the kitchen. It has a separate door to the foyer and your standard open counter towards the living space. It’s definitely narrow and not made for two people to work in simultaneously but I’m guessing Billie won’t be baking apple pies in the near future, anyway. I walk around the counter to the living room side and lean forward with my elbows planted on top so he can have his space. Daniel’s leaning out the front window on the other side with his phone, clearly in a lively conversation. I have no idea what it’s about, though, my A+ in Spanish in High School only goes this far.
“There’s four whole burner there,” I nod my chin towards the gas stove. It’s not exactly your state of the art Inox, given that they’re white, both that and the refrigerator seem to be at least ten-fifteen years old but hey, they look clean. “That’s basically an existential crisis. I might just move in with you for that alone, though, ours is induction. You can’t roast shit on that. You need fi-yah, hiyaaa.”
Wheeeee’ your wOK, Ja-mie, wheee’ yo’ WOK?
Racism aside, I think it’s a good kitchen for one person. Sure, the one window is half-blocked by the fridge, but it looks out to the alley, anyway, and there’s three in total for the living space, one to the alley, the other two front-facing. The place I’ve almost moved in with Dylan to had three in total, the whole apartment.
I fully embrace my new job as a rotating guard, leaning from one doorway to the other as he looks for cracks and stains in the rooms, too. There’s no furniture, but I think the bigger room is about the same size as mine, which – okay, isn’t exactly big but fits a Queen sized bed and my HO station, and he probably won’t need space for a pop-up hanging wardrobe, either. You don’t really pay apartments for walking space, anyway.
The other room you could probably order like a Super-Super King sized mattress and there, you have everyone’s dream, a room that’s just a wall-to-wall bed. He wasn’t wrong back when he said it’s pretty small, but Billie won’t need too big a space for quite a while. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘cozy’,” I smile up at him when he mutters something about the size. I’ve engaged myself in the agreement, almost finished now – still nothing about ‘no rabies, no babies, than-k YOUUU’ – but this whole let’s talk shit for the sake of it thing he has going on is amusing. “With this here,” I knock the end of my pen against the wardrobe door, “you’re set ‘till… Like, her teens. By then, you’ll be in your forties and shrink like a raisin, anyway, so you could just do a switcharoo.”
I feel my phone buzzing in the bag, vibrating my ribcage, but I decide against looking at it. I don’t want to know. Instead, I turn the clipboard around and extend it towards him. “It only requires you to sacrifice an organ every second Full Moon and it doesn’t say it has to be yours, so I think it’s cool.” He should probably flip through it though, obviously, because his boundaries might be different to mine. I mean, I’m sure they are, but the most intrusive thing it requires you is to allow the owner in if they give you a warning two days ahead, but it also says they cannot just go in all willy-nilly. Which should be basic human decency, and you might think it is, but then there you are at 8 AM on a summer Sunday, getting your after-sleep showers and suddenly your middle-aged landlord barges in ‘cause ‘she just wants to read the water meter’ and ‘no need to worry, she’s seen what you have before’ like that’s supposed to be comforting.
“You think you can overcome the shower pressure?” No one likes a knowing smile but come on. “’Cause… The lease is only for six months at a time. Maybe you shouldn’t go in with ‘hey, cool place, how ‘bout I pay less than the listing price’ the first time around? I could sign in with you on paper, our landlord only allowed two people on the lease agreement and we have our separate thing, so that would get the whole ‘forty times the rent’ thing out the way at least for now, and once Daniel inevitably falls for your roguish charm, you could renegotiate it.” I might be overstepping here, I have no idea, but seeing the place it’s clear that it would be weird to get an actual roommate once Billie’s here. It would be a miserably missed opportunity to not get this apartment though. I mean, I’m kinda in love with it, although my expectations are reaaaaaal low as indicated by my ex-pool.
I might also be a total idiot, ‘cause I might have kinda known him almost a decade ago, but I don’t really know him now, no matter how much I feel like I do, and just signing things here and there isn’t exactly making my diploma proud. It’s just this swirl of emotion, the same that pulled me in when he wanted to get JJ, I feel like I can help, that you know, someone might need me, even if only on paper, and it just makes me make sense.
“I’m just interested in your stove.” Obviously. “You could also go and sell your soul to the mafia to be your guarantor or sign up for a sugar baby website. Chelsea wine moms would probably fight for you.”

Passing Mac, I lift my brows – I mean, is it just me or do I got this in. the. bag? Call me old all you want, Alex, but ya boy still got it, even with his “problematic twenty-eleven game.” Good thing the two of ‘em will never meet, Alex would find out Mac was into women and smooth her waves back like a lesbian Sean Kingston, “Shawty, you deserve better.” I can put up with male competition, but lesbians? They got talk. I’m lucky Alex is like five feet tall, kinda makes us even.
Inside the kitchen, I flick each burner on and off, inspecting the laminate countertops. Contrary to popular belief, I do know how to cook, especially towards the end of the month, so a somewhat-operational kitchen wouldn’t be too bad. Though my midnight snack’s just been spoonfuls straight out the rice cooker lately, so I guess my skills could use some dusting-off. For years I’ve been using the exact same non-stick wok for literally everything from low-effort chicken strips to five-ingredient “pad thai” – and three out of five is just soy sauce ‘cause I never have all ingredients on hand simultaneously. I don’t know what I’ll do with four whole burners, I’m so used to just one.
“I mean, feel free,” I give her the go-ahead. “‘Specially if you’re gonna roast shit for me.”
‘Cause let’s be real, I still prefer not cooking when given a choice.

“Shoulda brought some measuring tape,” I mumble on the doorstep at Bedroom #2, gaze wandering about. So far, it’s the only hang-up I have about the joint. Can’t even tell if this technically counts as the separate room it was advertised as or if the listing took legal standards a bit loosely. Then again, I’mma lodge a baby in here for a while, so I guess I could unclench my asshole for now.
“Not unless Billie takes her future powerlifting career seriously,” I bring the high-hopes Asian parent, not about to confess that I sometimes look in the mirror and see Christian Bale from The Machinist. It’s this “Fuck it, I’mma just get on gear” type body dysmorphia that hits everyone from time to time. I’m a veiny fuck as is, though – shit’d have me looking like the Wax Lake delta and I already got enough temper without the ‘roid rage, thank you. I’mma just embrace the balding raisin look when it kicks in.
Shoulder against the bare wall, I cross my arms, eyeing the Terms & Conditions Mac is showing me. Offering to sign in on paper, flattering my roguish charm and all.
“Sounding more and more like a scammer, Mac,” I smile before taking the clipboard, leafing through the pages. This is New York, you gotta Say Yes to the Dress and fill out a rental application on the spot or someone else will, but that don’t mean I’m looking forward to the paperwork, not with my brain cells noticeably dwindling by the year. I can feel myself getting dumber, I swear. Might be my concussions adding up.
Only memory I have of my last fight in muay thai is the week I spent in the hospital afterwards, unable to read or write, perceiving the letters the neurologist showed me but not knowing what to make of them. The doctors advised me to finally exit my MMA-wannabe phase, said I was at a high risk of traumatic encephalopathy due to my history of head injuries since… Basically adolescence. Can’t count the amount of times the coach sighed wearily, ambling along the edge of the mat like, “TAAaay, you’re blocking with your face agaaaiin, can’t keep blocking with your fAAAaaace…!”. I know, dude, it’s not on purpose, it’s just I’m thirty and up against  fucking Welterweight Tawanchai over here.
So… Yeah. It was time to quit, I guess. I was shitting bricks at first, thought I’d stay braindead forever – but once my neurons rebooted I was like, whatever, I’m fine now. I no worry head trauma, no sign notice me yet. I wanted to be careful though, so I got back into no-gi instead. Thought it would be fine since I never had any, like, major headaches doing that before. You do get the occasional knee to the temple but overall, it’s pretty vanilla.
Well, I got thrown once, a measly ass foot sweep I used to take like nothing – this time I couldn’t function for days. Had to go back to the concussion clinic ‘cause my head was splitting the fuck apart. Dr. Advani just wrinkled her forehead, glasses perched on the tip of her nose, “If I understand this correctly, Mr. Zheng, you went straight back to combat sports three months after your traumatic brain injury.”
“Well, I don’t really, uh… Think of it as a combat sport, it’s more of a… Grappling sport. Well, more of a submission sport, to be exact.”
“...Where one might be thrown against the ground.”
“...Yeah.”
She sighed very hard.
Good news though, I pro’lly got a solid ten years before the Parkinson’s sets in.

Pages fluttering as I turn them, my gaze flicks back up at Mac as she brainstorms alternative options. It’s true, moms do indeed love me – I can’t control it, my “Kindle Store Romance Section Bad Boy Plus a Uniform” energy just hits a very specific spot, I guess. Then again, it might as well be my sculpted calves or my accidental rhymes, I don’t know.
Mac co-signing would mean she’d be obligated to pay up if I defaulted for whatever reason. Obviously, I’m not going to: I’ve been going strong in the same career I settled on almost a decade ago and I have no history of evictions. Still, when you really think about it, it’s a major favor to be offering somebody. On the one hand, she gains absolutely nothing; on the other hand, I could make her pay if I wanted, I could lower her credit score if I wanted. And she’s a lot smarter than me, I’m pretty sure she’s well-aware, so I’m failing to see her motive here besides… Wanting to help, I guess.
I cross my arms once more, papers facing the back wall.
“You shouldn’t be so trusting with strangers like that, y’know?” I half-whisper in the end, eyes searching hers. It doesn’t feel like we’re strangers ‘cause we sure as fuck don’t act like it, but it’s been almost a decade and she’s got no idea what kind of person I am now.
“It wouldn’t be fair to you,” I finally decide in an exhale, getting up off the wall, waving the clipboard. I tap it against her forehead softly, barely a touch – the draft still disrupts a couple baby hairs, prompting a smile. “But I’ll think about it, and I appreciate it. Now enough helping-me for today, let’s get you home.”
And so I head out, adding on my way back, “Can I buy you late lunch? You choose the spot.” Which is not only a segway into asking her out for lunch, but it’s kind of the least I can do after dragging her all over town.
…Plus, I’ve got a pretty short memory, but not for stuff like what she said in the bathroom. From now on, the only way I’ll disappear is if she chants the magic words “fuck off” three times to my face. Chant only once or twice and I’ll figure it could’ve just been Tourette’s or something.

“Hey, um… Can I come over?”
There’s no real casual way of asking that, and there’s only two explanations once you can’t use ‘let’s just study for AP bio together’ as an excuse anymore. You’re either trying to be classier than a bleak wyd titled Snap of absolutely nothing at 11PM, or you have some serious shit. Back in high school, I used to have this girl over a lot, Jeanie, she was pretty chill and nonchalant about most stuff, so the only thing that really gave away that maybe not everything was okay back at hers was how she’d always hang out at our house or another friend’s. No one really questioned it though, nor how she’s sometimes missed school for a few days. She’d always have some vague explanation; it’d be different today but at fifteen you don’t really dare to say anything in that situation, even when you’re fully aware how awful some families are. I did end up regretting it, as a year later police hauled her father away for chasing her mother around their block with a knife. They moved to Seattle a few weeks later.
That was serious though. I’m just overreacting something that doesn’t warrant it. I know I could go home; pass Dylan as I did before. He did this the last time, when I moved here, he basically camped down opposite our apartment and just… Stayed and smoked. Kept it on for about two or three weeks and then he disappeared. Whenever we broke up before he’d come visit – I never met him, but he kept leaving stuff at the door, sometimes he’d order Doordash for me or send me flowers. Dad almost went to the cops multiple times and tried to persuade me to do so; I knew it technically classified as harassment in the second degree under Penal Law, but it just felt so stupid. He wasn’t a stranger, like that weird dude who almost followed me home one night when I worked at Wendy’s and had the closing shift. He wasn’t, like, poisoning the stuff he sent me, or had a nanny cam in the flowers. He was just trying to… I don’t know what he was trying to do.
I saw him putting out a cigarette on the side of the trash at the stop I usually get off the train at and my heartbeat got stuck in my throat. I jumped back on the G line and squeezed in between a homeless guy who was sleeping (could’ve been a woman) and a twelve year old with the world’s biggest backpack. I kept starring in front of me, counting the muddy footprints on the floor. Felt like the longest twenty seconds until the doors closed and the train departed the station with a jolt.
When he asks why or if I’m okay, I just nod along. Takes a few moments to realize he can’t see me.
“Yeah, um… I’ll tell you.”
Noone likes people who take long calls in public in a train full of people and although I wouldn’t be the first to air out my dirty laundry on a New York City train, at this point it’s kind of a must have in your life like mutated superrats or Starbuckses, I feel like I’m this close to sounding not okay and I’m not having that.
I think about going the long way around, the G comes back from Queens and I could transfer somewhere at Union Street, but I end up stepping off after three stops and ordering a Lyft, clicking on the first female name I see.
Rebeca listens to Meghan Trainor and Taylor Swift all the way, since I told her it doesn’t bother me at all, and it’s kind of hard to stay in the same ‘I’m not okay’ mindspace. I almost consider not getting out at the stop. Maybe I could just pay Rebeca to drive me around the city all night until I fall asleep like a baby.
It’s stupid. It’s stupidit’sstupidits’stupid…
“I’m starting to think I’m giving you the wrong idea,” I greet Tay with an ‘I’m tired but trying’ smile once he opens his door. It shouldn’t feel familial, the way I have to squeeze past him again – there probably shouldn’t be an ‘again’ to begin with –, with my work tote and the cloth bag I keep my yoga stuff in. I go to this studio a corner away from the office, that’s the reason I was out later than usual. It’s also why I kind of concluded that maybe Dylan being at that specific stop was just a coincidence.
“You won’t believe me if I just say we had a water leakage and all the Quality Inns are full, right?” I hug my bag, sort of just lingering as close to the door as I can, so, you know. He can still kick me out if he wants to. “It’s fine, nothing happened. Saw him at the station and noped out of there. I’ll go back later, I just didn’t feel like riding the train for three hours, and, um… You promised me a late lunch I didn’t get…?”

There’s this Chinese granny in my unit who can get her laundry down to the basement but can’t get it back up, considering it’s an uphill climb and the load’s heavier when wet – she says she doesn’t trust tumble-dryers, gotta hang it from the balcony. I kinda get where she’s coming from ‘cause I got my own trust issues, only it’s with washing machines. Not that I ever had one growing up or whatever but I never wanted one either, not even when I’m eating basmati rice with chopsticks because chopsticks are easier to clean. I’ll pick up the fucking grains one by one if it saves me even a second of doing the dishes. One could argue that such a process takes more effort than actually just cleaning a fork and a knife afterwards, but by doing so, one would fail to consider that I once avoided studying for finals by copying a semester’s worth of curriculum onto a post-it note at a morse-code looking font size. Looking back, cheating probably cost me more time than if I'd just studied, but hey, at least I didn’t have to learn anything. I avoid learning at all costs – God knows what might happen if I learned something that proved me wrong. Fuck you mean Rio isn’t the capital city of Brazil? Shut up, it is in my book.
Having set Li nǎinai’s laundry on her coffee table, I wish her a beauuutiful day and head out ‘cause it smells like not one but thirty grannies in here.
On my way to the door, she asks if she can pack up some fried dumplings for me in return and I stop in my tracks, thinking, “I hope it's pork.”
And it was. It was also meant for her son, as it turned out, only he had to cancel his visit, being a “very busy doctor” and her “pride and joy” and all.
I'm already headed downstairs by the time I check the time on my phone and spot Mac’s text. I really wish her timing was better so I could have somehow arranged to perform this act of chivalry in front of her – nothing feels more like a wasted opportunity than helping someone out only for zero girls to witness you doing so. Then again, my neighbor also used to be a girl about a century ago, so I guess that counts for something. I’m starting to think we got a thing going ‘cause she keeps asking for my name and then forgetting it, so she usually just addresses me in Mandarin as either “dear” or “handsome”, and that’s exactly why I help her. Finally, a woman who knows the way to my heart. Food and flattery.

My apartment’s definitely, totally, a hundred percent always as clean as it looks when I let Mac in.
She utters her first words about wrong ideas and I’m pretty sure the Magnum in my pocket spontaneously expires.
“Damn,” I mutter as I close the door behind her. “Ice cold.”
Just kidding. When I read her text, my first suspicion was something court-related, so it’s not like she had to start with this disclaimer. I admire her sophisticated rejection technique, though.
“Eh,” I rate her proposed excuse with a tentative grimace and a little shrug. Solid five out of ten. “I’ve heard worse.”
Takes me a moment to comprehend what I’m hearing, but once it dawns on me, it straight-up triggers my fight or flight. Mostly my “fight”, though.
I wonder if Mac came to me because I’m the only one who knows about her psycho fuck of an ex – quite likely considering that the only reason I know is ‘cause he kept ringing her cell in front of me, thinking she was on a date. The first time she told me she ran into him, I assumed it was a chance encounter, I thought they probably both lived or worked around the same area as exes often do, but with her running into him again in the span of a few days, it’s starting to sound more and more like stalking.
A cop’s the one you call when “killing with kindness” and “assertive communication” ain't shit. No matter what these "coaches" advertise, their methods ain’t some kinda masterkey to resolve all your conflicts. We’re talking about real people here, and real people will do whatever the fuck suits them without giving a fuck if it suits you. You can try all the assertive communication, all the “I-statements” you want, you can be all “I feel like you are violating my bOuNdaRiEs, I feel like you’re making me feel unsafe…!” and he can be like, “Fuck yeah I am, bitch, that’s what you get for dumping my ass.”
What then? No, really, Coach, tell me. What then?
I don’t want Mac to think I’m angry at her or something, nor do I wanna come across as a complete psycho, so I do just that by stretcing my lips into a tight line, looking like I should dial down on the botox.
“Is that…” Cunt. “…Guy.” I give a few tiny nods. She can probably tell my blood’s boiling, only thing missing is an eye twitch. “Waiting for you at the station.”
It’s supposed to be a question but currently I don’t have enough inflection in my tone to raise my pitch at the end.
Fun fact: I don’t just get angry for myself or the people I know. I can get angry for anyone. Last month, I got angry for this random kid at the Dollar Tree, for instance. From what I could gather, the Karen attacking him was a regular there and wanted him to “check in the back” for her, only he no longer fucking worked there, he was in street clothes and all. Their back-and-forth of “Lady, I’m tellin’ you, I don’t work here no more” and “I KNOW you work here, I fucking recognize you!” went on for a while before I hijacked the conversation by going up to that idiotic bitch, street clothes in plain sight.
“Greetings, ma’am, I work here.”
“Finally. Can you t…”
“And as you’re PROBABLY BLIND and can’t tell from my PLAIN CLOTHES, I’m security. And I’mma have to ask you to leave this man alone.”
Oh, make no mistake, I can go aaaaall day, I can and will waste my own time. What, do I look like I got something better to do? I watch TLC on my downtime, we good.
Needless to say, she DiD NoT LiKe mY tOnE. All it did is now she was arguing with a n***** and a chink, but why would I notify security when they can’t even insult her haircut like I did? Vigilante justice is superior, no one can convince me otherwise.
“Hey, which station is that, again?” I squint at Mac, looking like I’m about to storm out the door, like I’m only waiting for her go-ahead. “I mean, clearly, he’s waiting for someone,” I wrinkle my forehead, spreading my arms. “Maybe he’s waiting for me.”
Imagine thinking you can scare someone away from their own home without karma coming for your ass. The sheer fucking balls on this guy, I swear. Ripe for the taking if you ask me.

Tension is not something you can actually feel, it’s the subtle hints your unconscious mind picks up on faster than your conscious mind does, the emotional signs, the body language… Sometimes you feel it so thick, your hairs raise all over. I wouldn’t exactly call Tay ‘subtle’, restrained, maybe, but I’m trying to deny the facts over here, don’t bring the obvious truth into this!
Denial aside, though, the fact is, the moment I don’t hear him remark something about lunch being dinner at this time, I know I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place. What was I expecting, a pat on the back, good on you, you lil’ stalker-magnet? No, I came here to be the victim, like always, ‘cause that’s what I do the best. I can practically hear this little voice in my head snarl like, you always make it about you. Sometimes I wonder if Dylan was right about that; sometimes I feel reassured that he was.
“No, I… No, he isn’t,” I tell him, absolutely full of shit. Okay, big gulp, big breath, let’s take this from the top, Harriet. “He was just… there, not doing anything suspicious. I overreacted, and it’s fine, really.”
Trying to act all nonchalant and casual, I turn around, dumping my bags on his kitchen table. I kinda wish I would have gone ahead and got takeaway like I wanted at that long-ass redlight or that he’d have at least a few mugs in his sink I could wash just so I could fumble around with something. Right now, I have nothing; so I take my sweet time taking my winter coat off. I’d love to say it looks like some really weird striptease but it’s probably more like your great gran arriving at consultation before her rheumatoid arthritis surgery.
His acting skills are almost as bad as mine. Or maybe he’s not trying to act, maybe he’s fine with being angry – I get angry, I just don’t like it, it’s so unpredictable and heavy. Not that I have any place policing how he’s allowed to feel, in his own apartment after I sought him out. Still, I wish he’d let it go, backpedaling all of a sudden. Isn’t this what I came for? His support? To not be alone? Yeah, but now I feel like he might just… whoosh out of here any moment and I’ll be alone again.
“And if he is?” I shrug, my eyes searching the floor for anything to hold onto. I shouldn’t be acting like I’m the sane one in this situation, I have no right to do that. This situation does start to feel like I messed up big time, so I’m trying to keep my head above the salty waters of anxiety. “What’s the plan then?”
It’s getting harder to get out sounds besides the lump that’s sitting in the back of my throat. It’s the same feeling I got a few years ago when I saw the doorknob turn on the bathroom door and I remembered I didn’t lock it. I also wasn’t done color correcting the bruise under my right eye. Ian is one of the least ill-tempered person I know, even with the teenage hormones clouding his judgement, but I got seriously scared when he started chanting what the fuck like a mantra. I wasn’t scared of him, obviously, or that he’d tell Mom and Dad, I was afraid he’d go and do something stupid and get in trouble, with school, with the police… I thought about how he could get seriously hurt for something so incredibly stupid and pointless.
Obviously, Tay’s way stronger than my thirteen years old brother was, but that doesn’t make this easier.
“Standing at a station isn’t a crime,” I state then, cushioned between measured breaths. “Whatever you do, even verbally, opens you up for a lawsuit. And you sure as hell won’t get custody over Billie if that happens.” My logic kinda goes: ‘well, whatever reason he has to be angry can’t be more serious than her’ and then I hope for the best, trying to read his thoughts. Have I convinced you yet? “I promise, it’s not worth it and it doesn’t matter. Can we just…” I hold out my palms, kind of defeated and tired. I sure as hell don’t have the capacity to deal with him – meaning Dylan – right now, so I’m just running away. I’m good at that.
I let go of that nonsense with an exasperated sigh, my hand skimming through my hair. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to… I shouldn’t be barging in here like that, I mean, you were completely right, we’re technically strangers, so. Yeah. Are you okay?” I take a step closer, head tilted in concern. It’s so selfish, dumping my problems on him like that, problems I can absolutely deal with, I just refuse to. It’s also not fair from me to ask him to only react a certain way to things, the way I want him to. “I can leave…? Just… I’ll get a Lyft.”

Based on the stories Jason probably told them in childlike honesty, the MacLaines must’ve thought of our household as some kind of living hell back then. I was never one to talk at length about what had gone on back home, but I’d hit ‘em with an offhand joke here and there, not really thinking twice about it until I saw their faces drop. I wished I could backtrack in those moments, tell them it wasn’t what it sounded like, it wasn’t all that bad.
And it really wasn’t. Just off the top of my head, I could go on and on about good memories – little things, but good things nonetheless. There’s me lying on the couch, lifting Jason up like an airplane, for one. There’s Mark spending all his advance screening tickets from work on taking us to premieres a week ahead of release. There’s getting Costco pizza on the way home, Jason’s sneakers squeaking against empty mall hallways, him excitedly recounting the entire plot of the movie we just watched.
And it may not be much, but I’ll never forget my teacher calling mom in third grade, telling her I’d forged my score from zero to a hundred on the test paper I showed her. I’d left the entire page blank only so I could bully a classmate for the right answers, have mom sign off on the version I filled out in hindsight. I was shitting bricks listening to their phone call, mom promising my teacher I’d get my due punishment and shit. Then she hung up and fell silent for a bit, me waiting with bated breath – in the end, she just laughed. It had been a while since she last laughed.
And then there’s all the other sides to her. The memory of her tearing me off Manny, screeching at me to stop, me to get off him. He just had a long day at work, he just this, he just that. I don’t know if a long day at work is enough of an excuse to be dragging my mother across the kitchen by the hair, her flailing around, blood trailing down her nose. I don’t know why Mac’s asking me if I’m okay, either.
“Wh… Me?” I knit my brows in confusion. “Yeah, I just don’t get why y…”
Mom blamed me when Manny left her a week later, leaving me with her relapse and a seven-year-old that still peed himself and this single intrusive mantra that kept me lying awake at night, breathing heavy, glaring at the ceiling. You should’ve been on my side, bitch. You’re never on my side.
And to this day, I still catch myself making excuses for her. She doesn’t deserve it, she’d never do the same for me, and yet here I am at thirty, telling myself it wasn’t that bad. If Mac’s backtracking ‘cause she doesn’t want this asshole to get hurt, I kinda feel her on that. I still don’t get why we can’t just tell him to fuck off, though. I mean, what’s he gonna do, sling a gun at me? I don’t think most guys are that determined, and even if he was, well… I’ll just dodge the bullet. I’m pretty much convinced I could wrestle God and win, by the way. I got unmanaged temper issues on my side, what’s he gonna do, sEnD mE to HeLL? Joke’s on him, I’m already on my way. I took a guy’s eye out and never even said sorry. Checkmate, God.

“No, don’t,” I blurt out at her suggestion to leave, weary yet apologetic, one hand reaching halfway after her before I stop myself. “It’s okay. Forget it. You can stay however long, a’ight?”
It’s probably not okay and I should probably be trying to convince her to seek help before this escalates, but I can’t be chasing her out of here when I might’ve already been her last resort. Again, there’s probably a reason why she came to me of all people.
“Got a bit triggered there is all,” I heave a sigh, hands shoved into my pockets. “Very twenty-sixteen of me.”
And I sneak a sidelong smile as I skirt past her towards my fridge.
“As for the lunch I promised, look what my neighbor packed me.”  I open the door, dying lights flickering inside. Faking a grunt, I lift a plastic bag off the shelves, plopping it onto the counter with mimed difficulty. “A family-size portion of dumplings. Hope you haven’t dedicated your life to Shariah law yet or I’mma gain that ten pounds I said to tell your ex.”
I begin reconstructing the Twin Towers out of colorful plastic on the counter, lunchboxes I’ll need to return later. I click one of them open and immediately pop a cold dumpling in my mouth, heading to the microwave. I won’t portion this one out, we’ll just have to make do with a lunchbox of dumplings and a dipping dish of soy sauce. China’s a sharing economy like that, you see.
“Comin’ right up,” I mutter in a singsong tone, slamming the microwave closed. “You can sit wherever. Table, couch, floor… I don’t judge.” I pull out one of the top drawers and dig into the depths of my cutlery tray, producing a big ass pair of steel chopsticks. “You cool with plastic or you like your chopsticks green, too?”
No one likes their chopsticks green – I fucking hate these steel bitches, I only own a single pair and even that was a gift. They’re heavy and cylindrical and will roll off your plate every time you put ‘em down. Nobody puts up with their bullshit except for Koreans and climate fans, but as an honorary member of both categories, I figure Mac should have the experience and the grip strength to efficiently employ one. Unless of course she’s nothing but a blasphemous impostor.
“Damn, they solid.” I whisper as I lift them up in the air for inspection. Mac’s far enough to appear bite-sized, so I squeeze one eye shut and pinch her in-between the ends like a dumpling. “I could lift you up with these.”

I get that he doesn’t get it; I don’t get me at times like this, either. Clearly, it bothers me enough not to act like a fucking grownup and face him, but not enough to grow up to the challenge. Noooo, I’d rather mess up another guy’s evening for funsies, ‘cause, you know, inconveniencing others with your random visits is an absolute green flag. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and that thought’s making my insides churn. Big surprise – I’m not a ‘let’s just do whatever the hell we feel at the moment’ kinda person. I’m more of a… ‘let’s have a fun night that we’ve properly planned a few days ahead with at least three different method of transportation home, a designated sober person, at least one epipen and not on a weekday night’ type, and I swear I’m fun sometimes.
My offer to just leave is absolutely genuine, even if my feelings aren’t with it. That makes it worse, somehow. Like, not only am I dancing this weird limbo around confronting Dylan like a little bitch, I’m also using it as an excuse to hit up someone just because I used to have a crush on him ten years ago. I’m sure he has nothing better to do than accommodate me and this horribly acted out improv show where I pretend I only care about the meanings of his tattoo and there’s absolutely no other reason why I’m staring at him. Nope. None.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I sigh a laugh. “Very chivalrous of you, though.”
So he’s saying I can stay but in my head, I’m like mMMMmm, can I tho, with a scrunched up face and all. The last few times we met up, there was a clear reason, and if we’re being honest, it was the same all those years earlier. First, he came around to check on JJ, then he came around to hang out with Oliver, then I just kinda had to hang around and chaperon him and his brother so he won’t go all Pink Panther and snatch up JJ like he’s the world’s largest diamond and dash out the Five Guys, Road Runner-style. And then there was the whole thing about custody, and well, that was a shitshow. This is the first time I’m here for the sake of being here and honestly, I’m hella confused how he’s feeling about it.
He's feeding me. That’s a good sign, I guess. “Well, depends. This is a neighbor who likes you, correct?” One of my eyebrow shoots up, not at all implying I could imagine him having a strained relationship with one and they putting laxatives in his gift or something. Me? Him? Never. My stomach moves again with a faint gurgling noise, which reminds me I haven’t properly finished my lunch, either, and those are some good looking dumplings. “I have metal ones,” I say, settling on staying by taking my shoes off. It’s a very nice pair of high heeled Chelsea boots but after a full day of walking around it’s kinda killing me. I’ve also set my mind on the couch and I’m not about do drag my street-dirty boots on his cushions. “Not on me, wasn’t expecting to run into wild dumplings today, but… As long as it’s not the crazy long ones, I’m good. Technically plastic is green. If you keep reusing it till the end of times.”
Upcycling 101: never let the siracha stains dissuade you from using your favorite plastic cereal bowl all the time. If it’s dirty, it’s the cleanest dirt ever.
I have a funny feeling he’s not worried about hurting my wee little ecofriendly heart, though. Maybe he just doing his best to act like the previous minute didn’t happen. I’m fine with that; and by the time I wash the train bacteria off my hand and quickly make sure my eyeliner isn’t smudged (all the important things), my heart’s almost done palpitating.
Seeing him just squint at me with his little chopsticks is not what I expected stepping back out. It’s very much fucking stupid, actually. “You know, you’re kinda weird.” Just a casual observation I manage to squeeze out between two bursts of laughter. I have no idea what’s going on, gotta love that. “And that’s coming from someone who does a Jack Sparrow impression run on the regular.”
I would offer to help him move ‘lunch’ over to the living room but it’s literally two things, so I’m kinda stuck getting my water and whatever he’s drinking over. First, I gotta find where he keeps glasses, and I mean, I could ask. “Nonono, I’ll find it. Women’s intuiton,” I mumble after my second failed attempt which in and by itself is impressive, given that’s kinda half the doors I could have opened. “My radar’s kinda off nowadays.”
The point is I find it, not embarrassed at all, and the microwave beeps, and then I’m sitting on the couch, cross-legged, dipping homemade pork dumplings across him like it’s a regular occurrence. “I get why you’re not too keen on moving out now,” I admit after swallowing the first dumpling. “I’d stay for these, too. Maybe you could ask her to move in with you.”
He doesn’t have to tell me, you can just taste when something’s made by a mom or grandmother. No flare from chef schools, all the pivotal experience.
“I ran into Dan earlier. He told me the couple that came after us didn’t take it, either.” You know, the couple that was actually a couple, that came after us, the separate people. “Something about their gym equipment not fitting in there… So it’s still available. Just sayin’!” I throw my hands up, chopsticks at ease. “I’m not trying to nag you or anything. I mean, I have a few hours of nothing, so we could look some up. Or whatever you’d do if I wasn’t here. I don’t wanna mess with your usual schedule.”

Framed by a blurred pair of chopsticks, Mac finally calls me weird after about five consecutive years of knowing her. Took her a little while.
“Now you gotta do a Jack Sparrow impression,” I reply, letting the chopsticks down. No way she gets to dangle that carrot in front of me and then refuse to deliver.
The microwave beeps and I walk over, passing her by, watching on as she randomly opens my cabinets. After her second attempt, I spare a totally well-meaning hint, “You check in the oven yet?”, but she makes her discovery right as I shut my filthy mouth.
I guess presentation ain’t my strong suit, not with these dumplings crowded inside a lunchbox like shar-pei puppies stacked on top of each other. CBS Sports on mute starring as Light Source #1, I set our "lunch" on the coffee table alongside a small bowl of soy sauce and my white-trash can of Mountain Dew. I plop my ass on the couch and twist the ring on the lid, pressure escaping aluminum with a hsssss.
I’m glad Mac can tell the goods are homemade. Ugly but good, the trademark of grandma cuisine, I assume. I imagine.
Putting my can down, I roll my sleeves up and pick up the chopsticks, time to dig in.
“How’d you guess I wasn’t keen on moving?” I hunt down my first dumpling, my tone betraying reagular, everyday sarcasm. I hate bitching about shit that some people would rightly call a privilege, but looking back, I guess I made my reluctance pretty obvious.
Then Mac brings up Homecrest again and I really, truly wonder why she even cares. Not that I mind, in fact I very much appreciate it, even if it is a question mark – kinda like her little steel straw. It’s been a while since I met someone who cared so much, or at all, for that matter. This is Southwest Brooklyn, we ain’t exactly millionaire expats roleplaying as NYU alumni around these parts, nor are we Williamsburg artists jerking off to interpretative dance at some art cafe. We just wanna make it through another rainy ass Tuesday, no fucks left to give, won't look twice at a dude loudly humping a trashcan in a squirrel suit.
“Still trynna scam me, I see,” I deflect between two dumplings. Yeah, place was pretty solid, but I ain’t about to use poor Mac to plug the holes in my funding. She’s what, like, twenty-five with pending student debt, c’mon. That’d be low, even for me. I’ll find a place. Billie just graduated fetus school, she won’t give a shit if the wallpaper’s a bit nineties.
And obviously, my “usual schedule” flew straight out the window when Mac texted me. No biggie, it consisted of jacking off and then watching ONE Fight Night later today, so when she tells me we could just do whatever I’d normally do, I smile at her with a sideways glance, “Careful there. My usual schedule involves listening to Rod Stewart on repeat.”
I wish I was lying.
That said, we still gotta unmute CBS at eight. Allazov’s knockdowns were fucking in.sane. last month, no way I’m streaming that shit after-the-fact. That, and I know girls love watching two cartel-member type guys pounding on each other while blood sprays all over the ring, the commentators's mics distorted by a “WOOOOAAAAAH!!” or a “WOO-HOO-HOO!!”, my palm extended at the TV as I analyze the rewind autistically, “SEE THAT?! SEE THAT?! SWITCHED STANCES MID-COMBO!”. That’s just how I operate, I put that shit on and bam, it's a score.
Hiding out at my place does come with a price, you see. Including the part where I wait for Mac to reach into the box only to reach at the same time, our chopsticks pointing at the same dumpling. It looks accidental at first, so she naturally goes for a different one – but my hand hovers after hers, both of us arriving at the same dumpling again. I repeat this one more time before she finally realizes what I'm doing and we exchange a look.
“What?” I ask, playing dumb. A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth, daring her to accuse little me, me who's never done anything wrong in his life.
In the end, I pick up a fourth dumpling, letting her have the ones she vibed with. Then I put my chopsticks on standby and lift my Mountain Dew, leaning back. I spend a few seconds just searching the nape of Mac's neck like the weirdo she only now realized I was.
“Sorry I called us strangers, by the way,” I mention casually, abruptly.
I didn’t even remember putting it that way until she quoted me a couple minutes ago. I guess I didn’t think much about it, I guess I often don’t, even when I don’t mean to come across as a dick for once. Like that one time Diondra showed up on our doorstep with bright pink cheeks and sparkly blue eyelids, a preschooler's idea of make-up. I remember pausing, knowing full well Jason was gonna make a cruel mockery of this, he was gonna make this Joke of the Month. He was only ever nice to pretty girls and he didn't think his girlfriend was one of them – his motives in dating her were always unknown in an ominous way. So I lowered my tone at her and suggested with a straight face: “You should wash that off.”
She rushed past me, making a beeline to the bathroom. Came out bare-faced with her eyes all red, a couple flecks of glitter still twinkling here and there, and at that point I realized I could’ve been, uh… Nicer about it. Good intentions, dogshit execution.
“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just…” My hand makes an aimless upward motion, like I’m only guessing. “It’s been a while and we’re both… Different now. I mean, uh…” Shakespeare who? “...I mean, shit happened.”
I chuckle and enunciate in a way that says, Understatement of the year.

Our parents never treated me or Ian differently to Oliver, obviously, but the same can’t be said about other people; strangers on the playground, the parents of classmates, even our paternal grandfather who at 85 still thinks making jokes like ‘Why doesn’t Mexico have an Olympic team? Cause everyone that can run, swim or jump is in the USA already’ is funny. Strangely, I never really minded his company, because he was the only one who made it known I was different, but that it was okay. He still took me places, he still has me in his will as granddaughter, and still calls sometime to invite me over. So obviously, I’ve tried to make sure that I’m absolutely who he expected me to be. Even if it meant learning to shoot with absolutely no desire to ever go hunting, or spending two weeks of my summer in middle school visiting famous war locations within the US.
I’ve always been the same with everyone else, too, ‘cause that’s how I’ve learnt to form relationships, chasing this feeling of belonging. I’m way more conscious about it since I did therapy a few years back. The main thing she said was, I need to practice acceptance: that I should focus on what is similar about me and others, not the differences, and that’s where I’ll find the connection.
I have absolutely no clue why Tay enjoys seeing other people beat each other up in a cage fight, and now I know that’s okay. Ten years ago, I probably would have pretended to be interested and mesmerized by the absolutely brutal strikes and take downs, like it was cool how the guy gets up with this gash above his eyebrow drippling with blood and he’s ready to go again. I mean in a way, it is very impressive; I dated a guy once, he was into boxing, and while I hated every single minute he spent in the ring, pounding, pow-wow-wow, he was otherwise the chillest dude ever. He said he used to have all this pent-up aggression in school, mix in a little ADHD too, but boxing took away all that energy. I’m guessing it’s the same with all combat sports so at the end of the day, it’s a good, consensual thing.
Besides, there’s something very endearing about people who are usually not your most openly emotional type, usually men, getting fiercely passionate about something. No need to understand the thing in order to appreciate that.
Eating and sending a quick message to Nina about me getting home late takes some time off my hands, anyway. The only problem is, when I’m not actively engaged in even a sporadic conversation – and I’m not about to mess up his vibes with questions like ‘how is that thing legal but that one’s against the rules?’ –, I start thinking. And when I’m worked up like Dylan got me, it always comes back like this flame in my chest that just flares up again and again. Now it’s mostly about how I’m gonna get home, and that I need to confront Him somehow, but then Tay’s messing with the dumplings pulls me back to now.
I arch my eyebrow at him with a questioning smile, gaze jumping all over his face ‘cause I can’t figure him out. He always did things like this to annoy others and amuse himself, but eversince we started texting and talking again, there’s this underlying tone, an offbeat hint of a message that I know I should understand but I can’t. If we truly were strangers, I’d think they were flirting but it can’t be, not Tay. Must be the remains of some middle school delusion.
“I dunno,” I end up saying, shaking my head, ‘it’s nothing’, and just take a dumpling, turning away like he could read my mind somehow. Which he kinda still does.
I didn’t expect him to say sorry for, well, anything, but especially not that part. Sure, it felt weird, but only in the way I’m used to feel. I’m well aware I get carried away with people, too much too soon, and when you go eighty in a thirty zone, the lines get blurred.
Slowly chewing away on the bite, I let out a breathy nose-laugh. “Yeah, I guess things happen in a decade,” I agree with a lighthearted expression. The leg I’ve pulled up underneath me starts to feel tingly so I wiggle around a bit to free it, which ends up in me leaning closer. Oh no, how am I gonna survive that. “It’s fine, really. I need reality checks sometimes. That’s why my best friend is an angry lesbian with no filter who WILL tell you you’re being fucking stupid.” She would be screaming it into my ear by now, to be honest. Too bad she’s not here. “I mean, last time we talked I was a kid, we both were.”
I add the last bit a little hesitantly, cause I definitely still was as stupid as a kid at twenty-one but I don’t know how he feels about that.
“Even if we’re not quite strangers, it was still pretty presumptuous of me to come here. I just figured you’d give me the least shit about the situation.” I don’t really want to get into that, ‘cause there’s no reason, and I’m trying to push him as far away from my mind as possible, at least for a little while, until I need to get going. I fish out another dumpling but end up just looking at it. “Can I ask you something? After the shit happened, why did you stop talking to me? You and JJ both. I get why you weren’t keen on keeping up with the family in general” I say with a pointed side-glance and arched eyebrows, ‘cause I haven’t seen my Dad as furious before, “, but I… Dunno. I thought… I hoped…” I look at him like I expect him to know what I mean even though I, myself, have no idea.
I hoped he’d look at me differently which is, you know, a very bad, very illegal idea which you don’t really think about at seventeen. Even when you’re supposedly smart and graduate early, because I swear, ‘smart’ people are the dumbest. Mostly I just hoped we’d keep in touch, at least. By that point, JJ was a lot, I’m not gonna lie, and seeing how things went down, I’m not sure it wasn’t for the best. Back then though, it just felt like I did something bad any everyone thought so, even though they had no idea.

Mac shifts in her seat and I sip liquid crack from a lime green can like the Man of Culture I am. I lift my elbow onto the backrest as I listen, thumb rubbing along the faded 13 on the side of my index finger – kinda like I’m rolling an invisible piece of snot into, y’know, like a tiny little snot-ball. That’s right, I’m the king of similes and actually just the king of literature in general.
What a coincidence that Mac happens to have an angry lesbian for a best friend, though. When she’s finished, I circle back to this topic in a tone-deaf way, “Your friend, she single?”, then flash a smile at how I’ll-set-her-straight that line came off. “Asking for my angry lesbian friend.”
Alex acts like she knows all the ins-and-outs of the universe, but she’s been telling so many self-deprecating jokes about singledom that even I’m starting to pick up on the message. As a masculine black woman who’s also ACAB, her dating pool’s probably a portable, inflatable one.
Back to the topic at hand, I gaze into the abyss of the hole in my can and the abyss gazes also into me, and I finally acknowledge, “No, you’re right. Thing about bein’ a kid, though…” I shrug like it can’t be helped now, “You don’t know you are one.”
‘Cause Jonathan and Helen were perfectly aware of my being a kid at the time. Sadly, I wasn’t, and that might have been a catalyst for the series of unfortunate events I call my twenties.
Apparently, Mac’s reason for coming to my place is that those who know the whole situation are blaming her for it, and I can’t tell if that means they’re right or if she’s simply surrounded by assholes.
Lifting the can to my mouth, I intone absently, “Presumptuous...”, just as an aside – I like the way she throws words like that around. And no, I didn’t have to repeat it out loud, but I have no filter, so I did.
(Meaning when I don’t say anything out loud, it’s not because I’m all mysterious and deep in thought and keeping it a secret. It’s just I’m not even fucking thinking.)
When she asks if she can ask me something, I almost reply, “Yeah, I’m single,” then decide against it. Whatever she’s about to say, she seems pretty serious about it, so I simply purse my lips and mutter, “Ask away.” Just the usual double-think of conversing with a girl you’re into: half a mind on whatever she’s saying, half a mind on… Nothing.

Aaand that’s a good question.
I guess I didn’t talk to a lot of people at the time: that entire phase of my life was pretty much consumed by adulting. Our household was like this old cartoon, some “funny” bit where Jerry dashes across the kitchen, sweeps everything in his way and Tom hurries after him in a panic, catching plates in his arms and propping a teetering fridge with his foot only to be crushed by all the shit falling from above.
Why yes, my early twenties did feel like a run-on sentence.
I search her eyes, waiting for her to finish, but she doesn’t. Story of my life.
“I, uh…” I blink, brows meeting in the middle like I’m performing Olympic-level mental gymnastics here, which I kinda am. “I mean, I checked up on you every once in a while – not, not just you but, y’know, all of you guys.” Seamless. “And I saw you were doing pretty good, and, uh… Yeah. I… Yeah. I should’ve thought about your perspective, too, I guess.”
And I squint at her and purse my lips like, That made no fuckin’ sense, did it.
With all the other siblings, it was kind of a two-way street, but Mac was never the type to make the first move. There loomed an unspoken understanding that if either one of us was gonna reach out, it had to be me, and yet I never did anything with the ball in my court.
Not until the day I needed something from her. Again.
“Why’d you stop talking to me?” I swat her shoulder with my hand without moving my arm from the backrest. I can barely squeeze the next question out through this grin, but I somehow still manage: “Wasn’t I the Jacob to your Bella or something?”
Ollie and I once stole Mac’s copy of Twilight and read passages out loud while she hopped around, trying to get it back. It was hilarious and definitely not bullying.
Her expression pretty much confirms my suspicions, to which I throw my head back against the wall and laugh at the ceiling, “Knew it. S-hoh-hooooo knew it.” I roll my head to face her and I nod, wrinkling my forehead in a "Yup" kind of way, “I saw the way you looked at me.”
And it kinda sounds like I’m not talking about the old times here. That’s right, I, too, have peripheral vision.
I don’t break eye contact unless she does, which, let’s be real, she usually does – they don’t call her Miss Mixed Messages for nothing. Without Alex’s lesbian expertise here, it’s pretty hard to tell if Mac simply doesn’t realize I’m trying to hit on her or if she simply wants none of that shit.
Though she hasn’t, like, reported me to the authorities yet, so that’s always a good sign.

When he asks if Nina’s single, I give him a questioning look, waiting for him to elaborate on that. If TikTok has taught me anything besides some highly inappropriate dances, it’s that the main sources of Angry Lesbians are first responders and… forests, I guess. Or I just liked one too many ‘hot, muscular woman chopping wood in flannel’ videos. “She is. Knowing the lesbian dating scene around here though, there’s a fair chance that they’ve already dated, uHauled, adopted a cat and broke up, all within three months.” I don’t really know what is it about WLW relationships that make it so intense without giving you the usual ‘woah, this ain’t healthy’ feeling you get with guys, but it do be true.
Is it… Communication…?
Not that I’m shitting on heteronormative relationships; it would be highly hypocritical, seeing as eighty percent of my exes are male, and most of them weren’t too shitty. It’s usually just this whole right person, wrong time thing which does tend to rip your heart out more. It’s easier to let the people go who’ve been painstakingly awful to you, there’s this sense of righteousness behind the split and you don’t feel like you’ve missed out on something. That’s what I missed about Our split, too; obviously, whatever childish infatuation I felt towards Tay made that difficult, but even with JJ… He has never been truly hurtful to me, even when he was having these bursts of anger and spite, or when his jokes targeted at Ian and Dallas went too far. When he said something he shouldn’t have, he apologized. I could never be sure when he really meant it, cause his face and tone tended to go blank, but a part of me just felt like I owe this forgiveness to him. Like that would made up for all the other things he didn’t have.
It's only now I realize I don’t even know what he’s in jail for, since I never asked. It wasn’t out of politeness, I simply forgot. It reminds me of that one time when I was supposed to go with him and Tay to Luna Park during the summer, but Tay’s pass was pulled for some reason or other, and before I could even ask what Jason wanted to do, he got this grimace on his face, way too sour for a kid his age, saying Guess you don’t care about going anymore, and he was kinda right, and I had no intention of letting him know that. So we went, anyway, took Ian and Dallas, too, and it was the most horrible decision of my life, almost had a panic attack when we lost JJ in the crowd right before leaving. He never told me why he left my sight, or where he went, because he just ended up walking back to us like it was nobody’s business.
“You didn’t need to,” I disagree with him immediately. “I’m sure you had your work cut out for you. I was just curious.” Curious if he thought I’d annoyed him enough, or if he simply forgot about my existence the moment he didn’t need to be in contact with me. He didn’t owe me any contact, it’s fine. And at first when he goes on about me not hitting him up sooner I’m like, yeah, I could have – but there’s this tone in his voice again that makes me look up and he’s grinning so wide it makes the hairs at my nape stand at attention.
“Oh-mygooood…” I wish my hair wasn’t in a bun so I could hide behind it, but it’s all free real estate, the second-hand embarrassment I feel lighting my skin on fire. Looking back, I’m well aware how fucking obvious I was, the only thing missing was my pupils morphing into little hearts every time he so much as looked at me. I had a feeling he knew, but having a hunch and being served are two very different things.
Even though I try my hardest, I simply can’t scrub the past off my face so I might as well live up to it. “Okay, well, it wasn’t exactly the Zodiac case, Sherlock. And Bella doesn’t feel anything towards Jacob, totally friendzones him, that’s why she ends up with Edward, it was soooo not the right analogy…!” I’m trying really hard to revive 2010 me and soak myself in fangirling, but that energy keeps getting allocated somewhere else. It’s not my fault, he’s the one who keeps breaking the 5 seconds eye contact rule! What am I supposed to make of that? That he’s trying to fight me? Somehow, that seems even less probable than the other option.
“Yeah, did you?” God, it sounds stupid, but my brain short circuits. I’m aware I can be considered ‘cute’ now, and that people usually decide whether they find someone agreeable or not regardless of the type of their connection. So the fact I’ve caught him looking at me here or there – the same way he implies he caught me – doesn’t mean he wants anything from me. The problem is, I want him to, I want him to want everything from me, and if he were anyone else, I know this wouldn’t be so hard. I wouldn’t have this restraint, ‘cause what’s the worst that can happen, right? They say ‘no’ and that’s it.
I end up looking the direct opposite way of him, scratching my head where the bun sits, before turning back with a breathy laugh. “Y’know, I’m thinking it might be easier if we were strangers. I could ask you what way you mean,” I muse, tapping on the forearm he has popped against the couch three times, the way you ask to be dealt a new card in Blackjack. “And it wouldn’t be weird.”

Billups, who had been unarmed and protesting peacefully, saw that police were trying to clear the intersection with gas. When he turned to grab his girlfriend in an attempt to leave the area, he was hit in the right eye by a projectile fired by an unidentified officer about 30 feet away. He told The Post that he immediately knew what had happened. “Suddenly, my face went all numb and I couldn’t see in my right eye,” he said. “Everyone else was shouting, but I was in shock. I just kept saying, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Maranda Thompson, Billups’ girlfriend, said that other protesters ran to their aid, escorting them to safety. “There was a loud ‘bang’ and his head jerked back and he just fell to the ground, he just kind of curled up. I kept screaming and shaking him, I thought he was dying.”
That one was from an amNewYork article, specifically the part about the guy I shot at two years back. They said he was an amateur photographer – I even went and found his Instagram. He’d curated a series of photos for this makeshift exhibition titled “Colors”, with images of his friends and family partially covered by film burn. Wrote a long description I didn’t read.
Me being me, it’s already kind of hilarious how I’m posing as someone that’s trying to “protect” Mac, but the hypocrisy truly reaches comedic proportions when you consider the fact that I am also hitting on her full blast. Can’t tell if I’m the asshole here: on the one hand, I’ve caused her a tsunami of shit in the past, then came out the woodwork only to ask her for yet another favor. There’s things she doesn’t know about me that I know would repel her if she knew, and her parents would probably abhor the idea of me practically making her work overtime, me driving her places on the clock, me eyeing her on my couch. And after all Jonathan and Helen have done for me and after all I’ve done to them, I might be a dick for barely even mustering a fuck to give until now.
…Yeah, after reflecting like that for five seconds, I guess I might be the asshole.
On the other hand, though, she’s a grown-ass woman who’s more than capable of deciding for herself. Right? Her prerogative. Call me whatever you want, but I am, above all else, a feminist trailblazer of the twenty-first century.
She turns away and does her Nervous Laugh, then she turns back and taps my arm and I swear, this shy, not shy thing she’s got going on, it kinda hits the spot. I should just grab a hammer and thwack her into my shape sorter of all the women I’ve ever gazed upon lasciviously – she’ll fit right in with classics like Arianny Celeste, Chun-Li and the hot fish from Shark Tale.
“Is that you asking me what I meant?”
I guess it is, in her own roundabout way, so I cast my gaze over her in response, down and then back up. I practically just checked her out straight to her face.
“That’s what,” I state factually, lips curling at the corniness. Our back-and-forth is starting to sound an awful lot like the vapid bullshit your backup brain cells assemble when you know you’ll be making out in a minute anyway – not that I know that, not with Mac. I mean, she doesn’t seem all that sure for a girl who was talking big game just a week ago in that damn bathroom.
Anyhow, it’s too late to backpedal now, I’ve made it all glaringly obvious: Yes, I Am Hitting On You. And yes, she literally just escaped her crazy ex and we literally just sat down, but let’s be real, I’ve had faster sprints to first base before. The year being 2023, I assume she’s no different.
So while she’s worried that asking what I meant might come across as weird, I’ll just go ahead and do something way weirder.
“Hey, hold up,” I squint at the top of her head. “You got something here.”
I put my can down before turning back to her. There’s a heavy pause before I lift my hand above her head, lightly tugging at the donut-like band thing that’s holding her hair in a loose bun.
The velvety fabric slides off easier than I thought, her hair tumbling down, the scent of fresh sweat and shampoo – I’mma just guess vanilla again. I don’t even know what form of exercise she did before coming here, I don’t even know what form of exercise she does in general. Only met her like three times since our reunion, but I haven’t seen her hair – her anything – look as unruly before.
“There.” I hold the tie up, pretending I just did her a favor by hunting this unidentified creature out of her hair. I’m pretty much just honoring tradition here – definitely must’ve pulled a similar prank on her at some point in the past. “It was eating your hair, but I got it out for you.” Pinching it between my thumb and index finger, I examine it with furrowed brows, “Kinda suss with the color. Might be poisonous or something.”
To be fair, the thing does look like it could be an alien lifeform, the kind of boring little worm scientists would call “Life on Mars!”. And if she tries to get it back, I’ll be quick to lift my hand, keeping it just out of reach, smiling like it's a challenge: guess she has no choice but to get up close and take it.
…If she wants. I mean, I think it’s pretty transparent where I’m going with this, so if I got the wrong read here, I’ll actually just have to give the thing back and apologize. That’d be pretty awkward, but I’m kinda hoping that what I just did is so out of line, even for me, that it kinda circles back around to becoming in-line again. Which is actually how most of my “flirting” works. Or doesn’t.

Saying that I didn’t exactly leave my apartment at 7:47AM today expecting to be sitting on Tay’s couch a bit more than twelve hours later would be an understatement. In fact, I expected it less than how I expected to see Dylan. Because that’s what he’s always done in the three years between our final breakup and his incarceration – he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere, and then just as suddenly as it starts, he disappears. Sometimes I wondered if it truly always happened because he thought I was dating someone, or because He found someone new. Sometimes I also wondered if I should look them up, say something, anything. He should come with a warning label like the ones on shampoo bottles, only it’s not for external use only but avoid contact. When you think about it, most people should come with some sort of warning, maybe not a full-on red flag, but a quick heads up, the way your doctors pass along your medical records. Just because you happened to have broken your feet two times in the past doesn’t mean you’re inevitably going to break it again but it’s nice to know, right?
My label would surely say something about might cause mild irritation due stress or hard to detach. I have no idea what Tay’s would say and yet my first instinct was to call him. Dude called me for help, met me two times, and here I am, eating his food. I’ve known him for, like, five years, lost contact for almost double that time, I shouldn’t be this comfortable defaulting to him.
But then his eeeeeeeeeyes are like that, and he smeeeeells niiiice and my brain shuts off.
Was that me asking him what he meant? Who knows? Not me.
You’d think him looking me up and down like that would get the fact he’s into me through my head and it partly does but then my anxiety goes nuh-ah, you ain’t having a good time without me and straight up pushes me into the pits of confusion. I expect him to make a move, body tensing up in anticipation, all the while the whys and hows floating around in my head, and then he doesn’t. Does he expect me to do something? Is he still joking around? We’re not too busy holding up any intellectual conversation, that’s for sure. “Sorry, I got distracted. Could you do it again?” Yes, I’ve been crushing on him for years and the best I can come up with is an almost exact quote of him from a few weeks back, when I told him what he can do about Billie’s custody case.
I’ve never had to do this tango of should I, shouldn’t I, gaging and guessing the other’s intentions, whether they reciprocate mine or not, not in a long time. The last time I was like seventeen and couldn’t figure out how to approach a relationship with a girl who wasn’t officially out yet. Like – is she complimenting me and touching me because she’s interested, or because she’s comfortable like that? Am I becoming a gay cliché of falling for my straight friends? Turned out I wasn’t, but it also didn’t work out, cause she said it was ‘too intense’ for her and she needed space and time to figure herself out. Never heard from her since.
With guys, it’s usually pretty straight forward, most of them don’t really know how to spell ‘subtlety’, much less make use of it. They come up to you at bars, at parties, in the college library, they say some shit like, ‘You’re so pretty you made me forget my pickup line’, and you know they aren’t there to be your friends.
“Hm? Where?” My eyebrows draw together in confusion, hand skimming through the top of my head, expecting a bug or something. There are some lessons I’m very, very slow to learn , and this is one of them. Some people pretend to fall for tricks like this so the other person can have their moment of success and fulfilment, but me? No, I’m just plain naïve. See? I’m a catch. I eventually realize what he’s doing when I feel him pulling at my hair tie. I recall his voice, years back, telling me it looks better this way – he didn’t mean it like that, cause then he managed to mess it up until it looked like I stuck a fork into the outlet. Patented design by Zheng, that’ll be 500 bucks, or something like that. Memories like these are the reason I’m hesitant to reach after it a second time, once he moved it away to the other side.
But then it’s also why I pull my leg underneath me, planting it firm into the cushion, to keep my balance as I lean towards him – the thundering drum festival currently held in my chest might swing me aside. My hand sprawls across his shoulder, slowly skimming towards his neck once I’m sure I didn’t guess his intentions wrong. Gaze falling from his eyes to his lips and back again, I want to come up with something, because I feel like I should say something preferably highkey witty, lowkey hot, but like I said, I have no game.
There’s this new bullshit on social media, going ‘yk butterflies are actually red flags, ‘cause that means you’re anxious and afraid of a situation’ and all those comments going ‘that’s right, I’ve been comfortable next to my husband from the first moment, been married ten years, super happy’ and I like agreeing with whatever for the sake of peace but I always felt that was wrong. And Google proved me right – yeah, new researches are out there saying you know they COULD be a warning sign, but they also say they could be just plain arousal, excitement, anticipation, whatever. Whatever’s going on in your brain, it has an effect on your stomach. I have zero idea what’s going on in my brain, but I know that these are the good kind of stomach flips as I slowly lean closer to nudge my nose against his. It’s hard not feeling on edge when you kiss someone new, it might be good, it might be bad, you worry about a thousand stupid shit the other person won’t even care about.
Anxiety aside, I still kiss him though. Either he leans in or I miscalculate, but my mouth bumps awkwardly against his at first, and I have to lean back to let out a snorting laugh. It never went down this way in my imagination at like sixteen. But then the second time everything fits perfectly, tentative at first, my other hand smooths against the side of his neck and goes up, thumb stroking his jaw line, and I can barely hear the sirens of a firetruck blasting along the street or the voice of the TV loudly announcing a new event.
“Is this an enthusiastic yes?”, I end up saying with pretend seriousness when we pull apart for air, the weight of his hands still igniting sparks into my skin. I can feel the stupid grin spread across my face and I’m like this close to giggling like a dumbass. My eyes follow my hand, stroking along his face, still trying to make sure he’s real. At this point, I’m not sure I am, all things considered. There’s this tug at my chest, an unseen force pulling me closer to him, into him, and it’s easy to oblige, chest against his. I want to ask if it feels just as right to him, but that would mean letting him go and that ain’t happening.
Not even with my phone buzzing aggressively on the coffee table.

Can’t believe that worked in an age where even having eyes is pushing it. My ex and I fought over shit like this all the time, like are men allowed to gawk at a woman out and about in a bra-sized crop top, for instance. I’m like, fuck yeah I’m “allowed” to look at whatever the fuck diverts light back onto my retinas and she’s like, women dress for themselves, asshole, not for men to gawk at them and I’m like, then how about dressing in actual clothes like men do, surprise-surprise we don’t have this problem and she’s like, oh I could be wearing a fucking blanket with two holes for my eyes and you’d still stare at me and I’m like of course I’d stare at you you’re my fucking girlfriend and she’s like THAT’S NOT MY FUCKING POINT!!
…Anyway.
I expected this to be an I’ll just go in and hope she doesn’t stop me, but no. Fuck the hair tie, she’s up close before I even know it, doesn’t need any tricking-into. I glance down at the strings of her hoodie dangling between us, the cropped hem of her sweatshirt sliding up the small of her back, and I realize she might be more into me than I thought.
Good. ‘Cause the feeling’s mutual.
My stare flicks back up, locking hers. Slowly, my hand slips up her bent knee and slowly, she looms closer. Drops her gaze and I drop mine, tilting my head, leaning in. It’s a ready, set.
Go. Go so out of sync her lips smack me square in the face with a soft sound, smearing a cold taste of her onto one corner of my mouth. I smile because she smiles – and that smile, the freckles scattered around her lips, adorable. I didn’t even remember bullying her freckles as hard as I did, but she does, and yes I do hate myself.
I bite my grin back so I can kiss her again. There’s a different kind of amusement when I taste that jarring blend of soy and soda, God it tastes like shit, I love it. Tastes perfect.
I grasp the feathers at the nape of her neck, thumb coming forward to trace a curve along her throat. I can feel her fingertips brushing against the grain, the bristles of my fade probably scraping her. No lie, she’s a weird one for giving girls a try and then going back to men, but I’m not complaining.
I’m actively lip-reading when she pulls away and my brain still takes a few seconds to process what she just said, let alone what the TV just said. ONE’s about to begin, gotta tune in no matter what.
Yeah, nah, I couldn’t give a shit right now, I’m not that autistic. I can stream it later on YouTube.
Thumb tipping her chin upwards, I’m already up close and grinning, correcting her in an undertone: “More of a fuck yes.”
And then it’s Take Three as if instructed by a French director, this time with passion, and it doesn't even taste sweet or salty anymore. It tastes like Harriet MacLaine on my couch, this girl I know but I don’t know, this girl whose parents fucking hate me and she’s still into me and it needs no explaining, it’s just hot.
And yes, she’s also the girl whose life I’ve put in danger and then saved and whom I’ve thanked for being family to my brother and then turned around and got her family cross-examined in court, but that was almost a decade ago. That was a different us.
So I push, hand reaching down to her outer thigh, splayed fingers sliding up to the pit of her knee, pulling her leg across my lap.
And I lean until she’s lying against the armrest, her hair coiling all over the cushions, one leg bent around me. I’m on top, her stomach rising against mine with every breath, and yet my ass is still seated in its original position somehow, this whole setup only working ‘cause she happens to be tiny. It’s the kind of couch-Twister you play when you’ve never been with her before and you didn’t even think you would, so now you’re contorted in half a missionary but with your lower half square to her lower half, her back leg probably falling asleep behind you. Cinematic.
We part and I exhale in a winded huff, my only thought being a horny-ass yeah as I breathe down her neck, slipping a hand under her sweatshirt. I push the hem upwards, fabric gathering around her ribs, it’s pretty clear what I’m about to do.
And it’s at this exact moment that she tells me to “Wait”.

I was this close, man. This close, and I get the feeling it ain’t happening, and I think I just spontaneously contracted clinical depression.
I take her hand, thumb lightly squeezing her palm as I whisper, “You okay?”
It’s not like I deserved her, anyway. Karma is indeed a bitch: roses are red, my balls are blue, it’s all because I turned some dude’s eye into goo.

The only problem with being a bi girl who’s also mostly femme presenting is that you never look gay enough. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if I had the confidence of your usual 22 years old frat boy who thinks the whole world is in love with their shotgunning skills and 2% body fat, but alas, I do not possess that magical talent. It kind of explains the lack of women in my ex-pool, ‘cause I always wait until they do the first move which they never will if they think you’re straight. It’s different on the apps, but as boomer as it sounds, I do really hate them. Most people look for quick hookups, some in and then you’re out, which is fine, I’ve tried it, thank you, not for me. It’s the same with most ‘modern’ manners of relationships. Friends with benefits? No can do, I either love you, want to love you or can’t have sex with you. Open relationships? Tried, tested, failed, monogamy might be a social construct but so am I as it turns out. Situationships? Don’t even get me started.
The only thing all these made me realize besides the fact I’m not into all this is that I have no game, not really, and I do have a deeper level respect for those that do. What I do have is anxiety, so I either do something right away or I will never do it. So I get when I see this hint of surprise on his face, like, trust me, I’m surprised, too. It’s almost enough to sway me back to my place, a faint brush of what the hell am I doing, but then I feel the warmth from his hand and it’s gone.
…For about a couple minutes.
I’m not sure when it starts, it’s just suddenly there. Or maybe I’m just slow to realize it’s been seeping to the front of my mind, fighting for recognition with this haze of rosy infatuation slow but steady. Maybe it’s been perfectly in synch with the pace of his hand on my thigh, lost in the heavy thump-thumping in my chest, my ears, I feel it all over my body. I’m fine with him pulling my leg over his lap, with me being laid down on the cushions, the worn leather crunching and squealing which is, you know what, kind of rude. My hair gets caught on one of my ear piercings, one of my legs is boxed in and I’m like – it’s fine, it’s more than fine, it’s great, ‘cause he’s kissing me, and he tastes like Mountain Dew, and if he knew the amount of times I pretended my pillow was him at fifteen, he’d laugh his ass off so hard he’d probably have an aneurysm and die.
And that’s where it kind of starts hitting me. Like… I’m sure he did not do the same. He did not spend literal years being smitten with me, the way I laughed or talked or wore that one particular black t-shirt. It’s been years since then, but I just mean this feeling isn’t new to me. For him, it must be, it’s not wanted this for so long when his hand sneaks along my waist, and I don’t know what it is. It feels wrong when his mouth leaves mine and all of a sudden I’m staring at the empty ceiling. I don’t know his stance on friends with benefits. Or open relationships. Or situationships. I don’t know him enough to have a clue about what’s going on in his mind right now, and the only thing I know for sure is that I’ve never felt good about myself after a one night stand.
“Wait, I…” That’s all I got, it’s just wait, and I have no explanation. He immediately looks at me and it’s so soft, and I want to kiss him again, but I catch this glint of disappointment in his eyes. What the fuck am I doing. Makes me want to backpedal immediately – tell him I need to put my phone on airplane mode, because it’s taking me out of the mood or something. I’m over lying to myself, though, and I don’t want to mess this up with him by being fake, either.
“Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just…” I don’t want to, but I push myself up to a sitting position. I also manage to put my elbow on my hair in the process and pull on it but I kinda feel like I deserve it. That’s what being impulsive gets you. I’m running my hand through my hair, and I feel it all tangly and matted, and I feel an embarrassed tint heating my cheek instead of want now, as I laugh out, “This isn’t exactly how I imagined presenting myself to you.”
The phone stops buzzing on the table, but there’s a new ringing in my ear. It could take only moments, but it still feels like such a long time, all the while I’m convinced I’m screwing this chance up. So now I’m pulling my hand away from him – even though I don’t want to – and scrubbing my palms across my face, hiding – yet another thing I don’t want to do –, gathering my thoughts that are just clearing up. Physically, I was so ready, it’s ridiculous, I don’t want him to think otherwise.
“I’m sorry, I’m just… A bit overwhelmed, I guess, I… I usually go out at least a few times with people before sleeping with them. Not that there’s anything wrong with…! I mean, if that’s what you’re into, it’ fine, it’s just not for me, so…” I want to end it in a way that says ‘I’m law school material’, or in the very least, a functioning adult. All I have is a helpless shrug, though. “What are you into?”

Sitting up, I blink in confusion as she buries her flushed face in her hands. I raise my arm before awkwardly looking left, looking right, then deciding to retract it, unsure if a pat on the shoulder is the right course of action here. I don’t even know if she’d want me touching her at all right now – for someone with the outward facade of a brick wall, I sure can be a lot.
“Uh… I shouldn’ve…” I shake my head, weighing the best possible way to put it. Tried to undress you without asking first? Kinda hard to word that one. “…Went that hard. I…” Knit my brows. “…Assumed.”
Which comes across almost as presumptuous as the way I would’ve reacted to this situation in high school. “Oh, my bad, I assumed…! ‘Cause deadass, like, that’s a first that somebody doesn’t, like, deadass hop on my dick the first chance they get, well pffft girl you odee treesh anyway, aight bye…!!” or something.
And yes, I was a certified chigga in Bowne High, you kinda had to be unless you wanted to get “thirty’d”, as we called it. Helen was actually kind enough to come and pick me up after class once, rolled up at just the right time to witness a “thirty” breaking out in front of the school building. I proudly strolled over to her car like, See? Not a scratch, I ain’t even started this one, I’m good now. Adopt me.
The longer Mac talks, the more it starts to dawn on me: she’s not “into me” as in “she wants to fuck me”. She’s “into me” as in she wants to… get to know… mm…ee…? Like, go out and shit? With me. Her, out and about with me.
Probably just my blue-collar inferiority complex fueled by the fact that my brother and I spent years leeching off the MacLaines like these orphaned little rats, but I didn’t even think she’d ever consider going out with me a possibility. When we first reunited, I was surprised she didn’t have some kind of fiancé lined up already, some dude that looked like a mixture of all the Hollywood Chrises, already planning their honeymoon to the Bahamas and shit. Then again, I guess rich people marry late these days, marry late and marry gay if they so fucking please. It’s not them getting engaged by twenty-one, popping out the third kid by twenty-five, it’s my high school slash Coast Guard slash NYPD friends. Basically, everyone in my pin-sized circle but me.
My ex wasn’t a law school graduate, she was a receptionist, and even her friends thought she could do better than me. I was positive they were telling her to just fuck her boss instead – and you know what, I’m sure she followed the advice. He got her these “gifts” sometimes, in fact we had this big ass fight over some perfume he gifted her once. Knowing I didn’t appreciate him practically sugar-babying my girlfriend, she didn’t tell me at first, just hoped I wouldn’t even know what the fuck “Maison Francis” was.
Well, I’ve been dispatched to Bloomingdale’s before, and I always wondered what kind of headcase would spend three-hundred fucking dollars on perfume.
Upper East Side headcases do, as it turns out. So I told her I didn’t wanna be coming home and climbing into bed only to smell him on her. I told her to stop accepting his gifts and she told me she couldn’t, he was her boss and so she had to accept these out of politeness. I was like, oh yeah? Then if one day he asked you to pay all that back, you’d agree out of politeness?
She flipped the fuck out. Got so defensive I was suddenly convinced I was right, she was fucking that Wall Street cunt, she was. Or if not him, then someone that was getting her all this expensive shit, ‘cause men sure as hell ain’t running around throwing handbags at women out of the goodness of their hearts.
So… I went through her messages.
I shouldn’t have – by that point, it was all fucked anyway. Still, I did it, can’t say I haven’t.
Whatever messages she had on Telegram, they’ve long self-destructed, but I knew she told her friends everything, so I went looking in their group chat. I’ve always known she vented about me to “The Girls”, but I didn’t know their conversation was a graveyard of all the things I struggled to open up to her about. Things I told her in confidence, things she’d whip out her purse every time we had a fight – and so would her friends, apparently.
“He just trynna milk you for the love he didn’t get as a kid ”
“Yeah I get he had a not so good childhood but who doesn’t talk to their sick mom.. Like at that point just let it go”
“D got u trippin girl mans got a brother in jail and the personality of a shampoo bootle wake upppp”
Aight, that was uncalled for.
Well, I’ll give ‘em one thing: something is wrong here. I’ll get my panties in a twist out of nowhere, I’ll up and leave the same way I walked out of Five Guys and no, I can’t say why. It’s this vague yet crippling sense that something ain’t right, and why should it be? I had a “not-so-good” childhood and “my brother’s in jail”, everyone knows. My once-friends are out there in the park playing baseball with their kids to the sound of birds chirping and I’m here and everyone thinks I chose this, and I didn’t. I’m here because nobody chose me, not in the long run. Not my father, not my mother, not Mark, not my brother, and definitely not the girls I pulled by acting like I’m tough shit.
I guess some tried. Every once in a while, a girl will swing by to “fix me” and I’ll be like yes, fix me, and soon I’ll realize she’s worse off than I am. Rescue ain’t coming, she doesn’t see me, she sees her dad, her ex, her whoever. I attract damage, maybe I smell of it.
That said, I probably shouldn’t get ahead of myself. I don’t know Mac and she doesn’t know me, and she may not like it when she finds out I ain’t exactly what I advertise. Still, I don’t think anyone’s ever told me anything as needlessly formal as “This isn’t how I imagined presenting myself to you”, and I listen as she explains herself over nothing and calls sex “sleeping” like some fifty-year-old, and I can just feel it coming on, that good old Yes.
I could be obsessed with you. You could be next, but for real this time.
“I mean, I was into the way you were presenting yourself,” I huff a laugh before awkwardly shifting in my seat. “…I guess you could tell. Uh…” I pout and give a shrug: what am I into? “I mean, I’m into… whatever you’re into.” I shake my head, gesturing at her. “We could go out, ifff– you want…?”
And I knit my brows like I’m still not sure if she’s for real. She seems like a conscious person, like she’d check your star sign and your credit score before even going on a date with you. Considering our past and her present and future and my present and future, I just didn’t think she’d want to introduce me to her family.
‘Cause they already know me, and they ain’t exactly fans.

His confusion about the sudden change in situation reminds me of the time I first tried to have sex with my first actual boyfriend. When you’re born a girl, adults spend your whole life telling you that everyone wants to touch you, kiss you, have sex with you, and you shouldn’t let them, because of whatever reason fits their agenda. You’re kind of raised in this environment where you feel like a 60-inch TV that’s 70% off in the morning of Black Friday – the hordes of deal-snorting battle grannies haven’t arrived yet but you can hear them banging on the store window with their purses full of coins. So you think to yourself – you know, as 55-inch TVs do – that it should be an easy sell, right?
And then your boyfriend hits you with ‘nah, I’m good, you wanna watch TV instead?’, and it’s incredibly confusing. So your mind goes – what’s wrong with me, and panic. He says nothing – so then what’s wrong with him? And then you nag him enough to squeeze out the confession, something along the lines of ‘I’m afraid of being with a virgin, ‘cause they get attached’. Confusion number one: so you want to have sex with me, but only after someone else did? That’s not what everyone’s been telling me, bro. Confusion number two: the hell you mean you don’t want me to get attached?
And that’s the story of my first real break-up, too. I’m usually all for being at least civil to my exes but I’m going to be honest, I hope Jared steps on legos every day.
When I told this story to Nina, whom I met not long after this, she said the thing that would become our break-up routine, her mantra of good riddance, fuck the patriarchy, men are trash and you’re a racoon, and I wish I could have felt this way, but I didn’t. I can practically hear her let out that big sigh reeking of disappointment and I can imagine the kind of speech she’d be giving me if she saw me right now. Girl, don’t explain your decisions about your body to a guy you met, like, an hour ago, you don’t owe him shit. I know I don’t. It’s not like he attacked me on the street, though, I get why he thought I want to have sex with him. I mean, I do, God, he’s hot, but this just isn’t working right now.
Once I can make myself look at him square in the eye, I’m trying to decipher where he’s at. He’s definitely not as comfortable as he was before, which I get, buuuut it’s also the vibe I got when Jared told me he didn’t want me to get attached. So, not good.  
Then when he says ‘whatever you’re into’, there’s this heavy sinking in my chest. Of course he’s not gonna say ‘I’m into just holding your hand and going on stupid walks that have no actual goal for three months’. Of course he’s not gonna say, ‘I wanna hear all the unimportant details of your day, feed you chicken nuggets, then do the dishes and take out the trash and not expect a blowjob at the end, that’s what I’m into’.  And he definitely won’t say ‘I can’t wait to put on an actual ironed shirt and pay way too much for uncooked fish at a sushi bar in Manhattan, how does tomorrow sound for you?’ Most people don’t imagine this whole stupid life with other people just because they liked their smile, and I know I shouldn’t be, either, ‘cause the problem with building your home in other people is that they leave and you’re homeless. (Also, all your friends think you’re stupid, and it’s very awkward.)
Biting my cheek in, I’m trying to word an answer that doesn’t come off as demanding because as much as I don’t owe him anything, he doesn’t owe me, either. “Yeah, I… I’m into going out. I was also, like really into that,” I add on, my thumbs kind of doing this back-there gesture, rewinding a few minutes to the very AO3-positive making out I will definitely remember even if this goes awry and my lips stop tingling. “But… I mean, you don’t have to, it’s fine. If you’re not, like, looking for a relationship right now,” which let’s be honest, straight dudes usually aren’t, “we can still be fine.”
By that, I mean me helping him with the custody case. Not that I’d expect him to feel awkward in the long run, I’ve literally had a guy ask me the password to my Amazon Prime a week after we broke up because he cheated, most people don’t have this built-in shame in their system. I simply can’t fathom another reason he’d be so reluctant with his answer, other than the fact he’s not into me like that and I’ll just have to get over it.
“I would prefer going out, though.”