How to Kill A Couch
MILLER
There was absolutely no reason in the world I should have hated Danny’s couch as much as I did.
If anything, given what we’d done on that couch—or technically, over one end of it—my feelings toward it should have leaned in the direction of fond nostalgia.
Or something more Pavlovian maybe, like getting a hard-on every time I caught a glimpse of ugly brown fabric.
Instead, whenever I looked at the couch, I found myself getting—and there was no other word for it—unreasonably pissed.
The couch was a piece of shit, no question.
Maybe twenty years ago it had been decent enough, but now all the cushions sagged, and it creaked alarmingly whenever anyone sat on it.
It also smelled faintly musty, as though it had been water damaged at some point in its lifetime and had never properly dried out.
At least it had smelled like that up until Danny had attacked it in an attempt to clean it a while back.
Now it smelled faintly musty and also like someone had emptied a spray bottle of Febreze onto it.
But the smell wasn’t even my real issue with the couch.
My issue with the couch was that Danny didn’t want to replace it.
And I got it, okay? Danny and his roommates were living on a tight budget.
Who wasn’t, these days? Except theirs was tighter than most, and there was no way they could afford a new couch, even if it was a hell of a bargain.
So I’d offered to buy one—I spent as much time here as at my own apartment, didn’t I? And Danny had, predictably, refused.
I loved that about him, don’t get me wrong.
But it wasn’t just that I didn’t want to sit on a creaky, smelly couch.
The issue was that the guys needed a new couch because Gracie, Wilder’s daughter, was coming to live with them.
Up until now she’d spent her weekends on a trundle bed in Wilder’s room, and it had been fine.
But now she was moving in, and that meant Wilder was giving up his room for her and would be sleeping on the couch.
And I wasn’t exaggerating to say it would cripple him.
I’d made the mistake of falling asleep on the couch one night.
Hours later, when I woke up, my spine was as twisted as a pretzel and my back and neck had ached the whole next day.
There was no way that thing was fit to sleep on.
But Wilder didn’t have the money, and Danny didn’t have the money, and if you emptied the twins’ pockets, you’d be lucky to get a piece of lint and a couple of random pennies, and not a single one of them would accept charity.
Ironic, since any of them would give you the shirt off their back, but I guessed it hit differently when the offer was coming from me.
And I understood. I wasn’t going to push it.
I was just going to be pissed at the couch until either it died or I did.
It was coming up to fall. From my office window, I had a view of half a tree—I didn’t know which sort—and the leaves on top were starting to turn golden. The ones at the bottom were still green.
“What sort of tree is that?” I asked Marty the intern when he brought me a coffee.
“Uh, how should I know, bro?” he asked.
“I’m not your bro.” I told him this a hundred times a day. It was habit more than anything, because he never learned. Neither did I, apparently. “You know about trees, that’s all.”
“Tree law is my jam,” he said. “Also squirrels. So tangentially trees, because, you know, those are squirrel houses.” He squinted out my window. “It might be a hornbeam.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “I just wanted to say horn.” He set my coffee down and said, “Hey, can you sue someone for not replacing your shower gel that they used even though you said they couldn’t?”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Trouble in paradise?”
“What?” He wrinkled his nose. “Oh, you mean with Dalton? Nah, Dalton is my boo and would never not replace my shower gel. Casey is a thieving asshole.”
“You’re not going to sue your best friend for stealing your shower gel,” I said.
Marty’s expression darkened. “Aren’t I?”
“No,” I said. “Just like he didn’t sue you last week when you broke his Bluetooth speakers.” I knew way too much about the goings-on at Alpha Tau. “Shouldn’t you replace those first before you start worrying about shower gel?”
“Yeah, I know,” Marty said. “You break it, you buy it. But I think that’s only a store policy and not part of the Code of Virginia. And since Casey and I don’t live in a store…” He shrugged and then said, “Hey, what do you want for lunch?”
“It’s nine a.m., Marty.”
“I think we should get wraps,” he said. “I’m going to ask Cal.”
I waved him away and wondered if the tree really was a hornbeam. Then I realised that Marty had unwittingly—everything Marty did was unwittingly—given me the solution to the problem of the couch.
If you break it, you buy it.
I was going to have to break Danny’s couch.
On Sunday morning I waited until Danny was in the shower before trying to kill his couch. I’d thought that wrecking a twenty-year-old piece of furniture would be easy. But it turned out I was so, so wrong.
I started out tugging at the arms, trying to break them loose, but they stayed firmly attached.
Then I tried kicking the back of it, giving it everything I had.
But apart from one slight squeak from somewhere in the depths, nothing happened.
I stood back and glared at the couch, but it stubbornly continued to exist. The fucking thing refused to die.
It was like the cockroach of the furniture world—right down to being big and brown and ugly.
Wait.
Maybe, like a cockroach, what I needed to do was stomp the fuck out of it.
I rolled my shoulders, huffed out a determined breath, and stepped up onto the seat. My feet slipped around on the lumpy cushions, and I clutched at the back as I fought to keep my balance. I wasn’t saying the couch was sentient, but it sure felt like it was trying to throw me off.
“The fuck are you doing to our couch?” Chase’s voice cut through the air.
I turned to find him standing in the doorway of the living room with Cash hovering behind him. “I—”
“This isn’t some weird sex thing, is it?” Chase asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Cause you and Danny can take that kinky shit to your place.”
“What? No!”
“Then what are you doing?” Chase stepped into the room and folded his arms, and Cash followed him and echoed the gesture. Standing there like that, side by side, they looked like a couple of mob enforcers—if the mob hired skinny, sarcastic nineteen-year-olds.
I tried to think of a plausible lie, but looking at the pair of them, I had a better idea. “You wanna make twenty bucks?”
Cash’s eyes widened and he leaned over and whispered in Chase’s ear.
“Cash says he’s not sucking your dick,” Chase said.
Cash’s brows drew down in a scowl and he punched Chase in the arm.
“Ow!” Chase glared at his twin. “Fine. He said what’s the deal?”
I climbed down and went and closed the living room door. I could still hear the water running in the bathroom, so we had some time. I turned back to the twins. “I’ll pay you twenty to help me break this fucking thing.”
They both lifted an eyebrow at me in silent query.
I rolled my eyes. “This couch is a piece of shit, but Danny won’t throw it out if it’s not broken and you know he won’t let me buy a new one. If I break it, I can offer to replace it. Except it turns out it’s more than a one-man job.”
Cash hummed for a second, then broke his customary silence. “Wilder?”
Just because Cash was quiet didn’t mean he wasn’t smart.
“Yeah. So you can’t tell Danny or Wilder, okay? I want them to think it was an accident.”
Cash leaned over to Chase and whispered, and Chase let out a snort of laughter. “He says his lips are sealed.”
“Does that mean you’re in?”
Chase grinned. “Are you kidding? You’re paying us twenty bucks to break shit. Of course we’re in.”
Cash elbowed him in the side and cut him a look.
Chase rolled his eyes but said, “Yeah, yeah. Twenty each, right?”
“Obviously,” I said.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” he said, his grin widening. “Let’s kill this motherfucker.”
And with that they launched themselves at the couch, climbing onto it and jumping madly like they were a couple of five-year-olds and it was the world’s ugliest, shittiest bouncy castle.
After a minute I joined them, and it was weirdly freeing, breaking the rules of adulthood that said furniture was for sitting, not standing, and that possessions should be treated with respect. And it was fun.
The couch had been built to last, and it put up a good fight.
I’d started to work up a sweat and was breathing hard by the time there was a loud, ominous crack from somewhere under the seats.
The next thing I knew the couch was kind of collapsing in on itself, like a wormhole in a superhero movie.
The three of us scrambled off it as it died.
“Yes!” Chase fist-pumped in victory and Cash echoed the move before holding his palm out expectantly.
I heaved in a ragged breath and wiped the trickle of sweat off my brow before digging out my wallet and handing him a twenty.
I handed another twenty over to Chase, who tucked it in his pocket.
Then we opened the living room door and he said loudly, “Oh, shit! Miller, did your fat ass kill the couch?”
The bathroom door opened seconds later, and Danny appeared with a towel wrapped around his waist, water still dripping off him. He stared at the couch and at the huge sagging patch in the middle, then at me. “What the hell happened?”
I gestured helplessly at it. “I don’t know. I guess I sat down too hard and it just kind of… caved in.”
Danny walked over and ran a hand over one of the arms, brow furrowing. “Well, fuck. Where are we meant to sit now?” He let out a sigh and after a second said, “I guess I have my college savings. Maybe we can get something off Craigslist.”