Chapter Three #2
We found a one-bedroom near campus, tiny and dark with only two windows on the same wall.
The apartment was part of a massive complex full of rowdy neighbors.
Mold speckled our ceilings, insects scuttled through our cabinets, and we had to haul our laundry to a dismal facility overrun with mosquitos and lizards and, on one occasion, an enormous snake that management assured us (too many times for it to be an actual assurance) was not a Burmese python.
We had jobs, of course, but we still took a significant financial hit by leaving home a year early. We were also happy.
That wasn’t to say we didn’t take notes.
When we moved, the upgrade from tiny to small was thrilling.
Our new one-bedroom had three hundred additional square feet, windows in every room, and a closet that contained a stacked washer and dryer.
No mold, few insects, no pythons. The entire complex was only six two-unit buildings, and each unit had a balcony overlooking some woods.
Most glorious of all, it was still within our price range.
It wasn’t easy, money never was, but the previous year we’d finally managed to pay off the last of our student loans.
Now we paid that same amount into our separate savings accounts because neither of us had been able to shake those financial fears.
We weren’t broke, but we felt broke. Or maybe it was just that money still felt so precious.
Spending it was stressful, so we lived like we had none to spare.
Squirreling away every spare dollar had been hardwired into us.
Mostly I felt angry about college—that it hadn’t been worth the expense, worth the burden, and we’d invested so much in order to obtain jobs that barely paid a living wage—but we were still lucky.
Our student loans had been relatively small; I had majored in English, Cory in hospitality.
If we’d been interested in fields requiring more than four years of study, we would have been paying back those loans for decades. But there we were, debt-free at last.
And we were still there.
When we’d moved in, Brittany and Reza had lived in the unit below us.
Now it was occupied by a young couple, clones of our former selves.
Most of our neighbors were either in college or had recently graduated, which contributed to the nagging, unshakable feeling that our friends had moved into the next phase of adulthood while we were still stuck in the past.
What would our apartment look like through the eyes of a potential suitor?
What might it reveal about us? Cory and I were clean, relatively tidy, and took care of what we had.
That was important. But our landlord wouldn’t allow us to paint or hang art, so our walls were beige and bare.
And our furniture was largely made of particleboard, items from IKEA and Target that we’d pieced together ourselves, flimsy and sagging under the weight of time.
At least the hypothetical suitor would also notice our extensive collections of books (mostly mine) and vinyl (mostly Cory’s).
We were interesting! We were cultured! Yet our apartment didn’t reflect the way I saw myself.
I was more vibrant than this. I was more structurally sound.
Guests felt comfortable around me, able to cozy up and pour out their hearts.
However, if it weren’t for the books and music, this space could belong to anybody.
I threw myself into cleaning the rest of our apartment, sweeping, dusting, spiraling. No. Ingrid. No. I scrubbed and scoured. The potential suitor narrowed his eyes and judged, so I staged Cory’s vinyl to make me look cooler. I hid the framed photos of us in the bottom of our closet.
The temperature rose. The snow began to melt. I sweated and did the laundry. As I stripped off the bedsheets, I wondered: If the situation were reversed—if Cory were here and I were in an Airbnb—would I ever want to sleep on them again?
No. It was the only easy answer that day.
I laundered the sheets anyway and remade our bed with my least favorite set, in case I had to trash them later. Maybe I shouldn’t bring anyone into our bedroom at all.
My gaze snagged on my night guard, which was still on the nightstand.
It had been embarrassing enough when I’d had to start using it after I began grinding my teeth during the pandemic.
I couldn’t fathom wearing it in front of anybody except for Cory or Kat.
I checked my phone to see if Kat was awake yet and discovered a text from Brittany.
Any interest in being set up with one of Reza’s coworkers?
The chaos froze. My hands shook as I responded: Maybe. Who is he?
Thankfully, Brittany was still near her phone. I felt nervous as she typed. I hadn’t even considered being set up, but it sounded significantly more appealing than my other options.
Nice guy. Funny. Recently divorced. Thought that might be useful since he’s probably not looking for commitment either. He got custody of their kid, so that’s a good sign, right?
It was a good sign.
What’s his name? I asked so I could search for him.
Brittany sent me a link. Adam Coughlin’s social media mainly contained photos of his daughter and their spunky shepherd mix, but there were a few photos of him, too.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t dressed for work in any of them.
It was a well-established fact that UPS had somehow accomplished the impossible by making brown uniforms with shorts attractive, although perhaps this was only because their employees were in such good shape from lifting all those heavy boxes.
Like Reza, Adam did appear to have strong arms and muscular legs.
Cory wasn’t muscular—muscular wasn’t even my type—but there was something alluring about a UPS man.
And Adam looked cute enough and friendly.
Yes , I said. Thank you!
K. I’ll get Reza to ask.
I set down my phone, jittery and excited, before it struck me that Reza would be sending Adam links to my social media.
Snatching my phone back up, I reminded myself what he would see: books.
An endless scroll of what I’d read and enjoyed.
My skin grew hot as I remembered being the geeky kid at school, nose buried in the pages of the novels that were my closest friends.
But if books turned Adam off, I wouldn’t want to date him.
“If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em,” right?
(The John Waters quote was popular online, but I knew it first from reading the essay in Role Models .) Except I wasn’t looking for a normal date.
So did it matter? I wasn’t sure, but I suspected it did.
I inspected the few photos of myself that I had posted.
They were good—like everyone else, I only ever posted the good ones—although most of them were selfies with Cory.
Still, my spirits lifted with tentative hope, and I kept my phone in hand for the remainder of the day, waiting for an update from Brittany, staring at Adam’s photos and my own.
By the next morning, the snow had melted into slush.
I arrived at work on time, but Macon was late, which wasn’t unusual.
I was always on time, and Macon was often late, always with a grumbled excuse.
Alyssa was sitting at my station, manning the circulation desk.
Thursday was our branch’s other late night, so she and Sue had already been there for two hours because they always opened.
Macon and I always closed. Of course our next shift had to be a late shift.
“How was your day off?” Alyssa asked when I returned from putting my tote bag and lunch in her office. The annex was small, so her desk shared a space with our break room.
“Fine,” I said. But my voice sounded tremulous. It seemed best to keep her talking so that I wouldn’t have to. “How was yours? What did you do?”
Alyssa had read—that’s what we all usually did—some new novel by some debut author about…
something. I was pulsating with dread. Sweating in my sweater.
I’d been as careful about selecting today’s outfit as I had been before my previous shift.
Because what did a person wear to work after throwing themself at a colleague?
Corduroy pants and a bulky sweater, I’d decided. Clothing that concealed and comforted.
“Blah blah blah Macon blah,” she said.
I startled, catching only the part that interested me. “Sorry. What was that?”
She jerked her head toward the front windows. He was getting out of his car. The phone rang, so I grabbed it, praying for a long call.
“Ingrid, dear? Is that you?”
The voice was raspy and familiar. Not a long call. I barely restrained my exasperation and dove in with false cheer. “Good morning, Ms. Fairchild!”
“Is the fire lit today?”
Doreen Fairchild was one of a handful of elderly regulars who fought for the chairs beside the fireplace during the winter months.
It was a satisfying place to read the periodicals and do the New York Times Sunday crossword, our most photocopied item.
The rule was that we lit the fire whenever the temperature dipped below fifty, but no matter how many times we gave out this information to that particular subset of patrons, the inquiries still came.
On the rare occasions that we got too busy to light it, the firebugs became downright belligerent.
A soothing crackle issued from the back room. “It sure is.”
“Are there any chairs available?” she asked.
Normally I loathed this follow-up question because it required leaving my seat, but Macon had almost reached the doors.
“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll go check.” I hurried away, aware of the gust of cold air behind me, aware of Alyssa and Macon greeting each other.
The low rumble of his voice made my cheeks flush.
I pressed my hands against them to cool them down.