Chapter Twenty-Five #3
After work, Macon and I threw everything in my bathroom into boxes.
It was a strange reversal. I had seen his toiletries, and now he was seeing mine: menstrual cups, dandruff shampoo, eczema cream, pimple patches, tooth-whitening mouthwash.
“Do you need this on top?” he asked, rattling my night guard in its plastic case.
I was too busy to be anything but grateful.
I crammed it into my pocket so it wouldn’t get lost.
We emptied out the rest of my bedroom, refilling the basket and hamper and tossing the rest haphazardly into other bags. He forced me to take one lamp and a bedside table.
When we arrived at the studio and I turned on the lights, he looked stunned.
“I know.” I headed off the lecture. He hadn’t even seen the sawdust and plastic sheeting; Mika and Bex had already cleaned that up.
“But it’s only temporary. I’m dumping everything in that corner, so just pile it over there as high as it will go.
I’ll probably have to store some more of this at your place, but I don’t have time to go through it all right now. ”
He just stood there clutching an armload of my belongings. He was only a few inches taller than me, but his body seemed huge in the space. That’s when I realized the ceilings were unusually low.
“I know,” I said again.
“Ingrid.” He said it in that familiar, sad way, as if I were the one breaking him somehow. It didn’t feel fair.
The door flew open behind him. Relieved, I launched myself into Mika’s and Bex’s arms. They were both small, but while Mika was delicate and gentle, Bex was wiry and muscular.
Mika was wearing a sheer blouse and gold earrings that dangled just past her bobbed hair.
Bex kept their hair closely cropped for ease of maintenance and wore stylish tracksuits almost exclusively.
Tonight they were attired head-to-toe in classic Adidas.
“We’re so happy this is going to work out,” Mika said.
“And we’re sorry it’s such a dump,” Bex said.
I glanced at Macon, worried that he would voice his agreement, but he’d rearranged his features to look less aggravated. “This is my friend, Macon.”
Mika’s eyebrows shot up.
Shit . I’d forgotten that I’d mentioned him to her at the café.
I couldn’t tell if Macon had caught her reaction.
Everybody shook hands, I made sure they all knew each other’s pronouns, and then my new landlords helped us unload the cars.
When we finished, the pile of my belongings nearly touched the ceiling.
“Is there any more?” Bex asked, and Macon laughed darkly.
Mika frowned with worry. “Do you need help? I know everything has to be out before tomorrow.”
I started to say no, because they were doing enough for me already, but Macon interrupted. “We could use your help carrying the bigger furniture down to the dumpster. Nothing is heavy, but it’s unwieldy, and Ingrid’s place is on the second floor.”
Mika changed into a T-shirt—even the plain white tee looked prettier on her than it would on most people—and then my friends returned with us to my apartment.
Keeping my promise of dinner, I ordered an extra-large pizza from a local joint called Pizza Friend, honoring Macon’s rules: not a chain, vegetable toppings only, and the box would be his to compost. He seemed pleased but also embarrassed that I remembered his outburst so precisely.
He and Bex began hefting away the unwanted furniture while Mika and I packed up everything that remained.
My downstairs neighbors showed up, hearing that I was giving things away for free.
They claimed a bookcase in exchange for helping us carry out the mattress and couch.
The pizza arrived, we devoured it, and then, eventually, my apartment was empty.
My friends were still chatty, but I had grown quiet. The final item we lugged out was the vacuum cleaner, which I’d just used to sweep the floors one last time. Hopefully I’d at least get the deposit back. I’d have to contact Cory to give him his half. It was our last remaining financial tie.
“Does the vacuum go to your place or mine?” Macon asked.
“You don’t have room for it,” Bex said to me. “Why don’t you let him take it, and you can borrow ours?”
It was disheartening to say goodbye to so many of my possessions, but what was one more?
Everybody got in their cars to leave when I remembered that I still needed to post a photo to the Buy Nothing group.
I hopped back out and jogged over to the dumpsters.
Everything was heaped in a jumble in the darkness.
The second lamp dinged as I approached. The sound was mournful, as if it knew this was farewell.
I looked up at my building. The lights in my apartment were off.
Not my building. Not my apartment.
I closed my eyes to smell the pines, but all I inhaled was the stench of garbage. Behind me, a car door opened and shut. Unhurried footsteps approached. Macon wouldn’t drive away until I did; he had only left me behind that one memorable night.
“It feels like I’ve reverted a decade,” I said without turning around. A lump rose in my throat. “Like every single thing that I accumulated in my twenties is worthless.”
“It’s not too late. We can still take it with us.”
“No, you saw it. It’s all trash.”
He came to a stop beside me. “Which is why you aren’t reverting. You’re graduating.”
I only laughed to push down my tears.
“You were right,” he said. “You don’t need any of this anymore. You have better things coming.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him, but it had been a long night, and we still weren’t done. I took the photo. It was dark, but it would do. Free stuff was free stuff.
It was late when we finished, and I had continued to unravel as we unloaded the last of my belongings into his spare room. I was finally getting ready to leave when he pointed out that I had no bed to sleep in that night.
I sighed. “I know. I’m just gonna sleep in a pile of clothes.”
“Why don’t you stay? I’ll take the couch, and you can take my bed.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m so exhausted that I won’t even notice my clothes aren’t a bed.”
“You shouldn’t be driving when you’re this tired. Seriously, just stay here.”
“I’m not going to stay here.”
“Why not?” His frustration was rising. “Just take my bed.”
“I’m not taking your bed.”
“Fine, my couch.”
My sudden eruption was volcanic. “I’m not sleeping in your house!”
“Oh my God.” He put his hands to his temples. “What is happening? Why the fuck not?”
“Because of the thing! You know. The thing.”
“What thing ?”
“That time I tried to kiss you!” I covered my mouth as if I could swallow the words back down whole.
His eyes widened, and he took a step back. “That was… that’s not…”
“See? It’s still weird. And your friendship means too much to me. I can’t afford to lose it. I can’t afford to lose anything else right now.”
He sat with that for a long moment.
“It’s just a bed,” he said finally, quietly. “Or a couch.”
I took the couch.
Macon was right. It was just a couch, but in my exhaustion, I’d twisted everything up.
I didn’t know what I had been thinking. I hadn’t been thinking.
But now that the house was quiet and I was alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t imagine a single scenario in which him giving me a place to sleep for one night would have led to me…
making another move on him? Was that what I was afraid of?
My overreaction didn’t make sense, and now I’d soured things between us again.
We hadn’t spoken much after I’d agreed to stay.
He’d brought me a blanket and pillow, and I’d brushed my teeth using his toothpaste and my index finger.
Tomorrow was Saturday, so we had to go to work.
I needed to shower, but I’d have to do that at my new place in the morning because I also needed to change.
I knew I should just leave, but that would feel rude.
Although he was down the hallway and behind a closed door, his frustrated presence loomed over me. A purring cat might have provided solace, but he had locked Edmond in the bedroom with him, presumably so Edmond wouldn’t bother me.
The couch was lumpy and uncomfortable. Weeks ago, we’d hefted it into the center of the room so that it wouldn’t get splattered with paint.
Now moonlight cast gloomy shadows of the ladder, buckets, brushes, and tarps.
The entire room had been dismantled, yet nothing had been painted.
I didn’t have time and still had no idea how to pull off the promised bookshelves.
And if I couldn’t figure those out here, how could I possibly figure out the shelving for my store?
My restless mind cycled through the list of things that I still had to learn and do and figure out.
I had to help finish the studio, and then I had to find another apartment.
And I only had a month left of paychecks and health insurance, and then I had to figure out those things, too.
And the classes would teach me some of the skills I needed to know, but they were another thing I had to keep up with while simultaneously applying for a loan and finding a business location.
And Mika would help with that, but I’d always imagined Macon helping, too—and then I was right back to thinking about the humiliation of implying that I was afraid I might make another move on him.
How else could he have interpreted my freak-out?
No. Ingrid. No.
The blanket was too hot. I sloughed it off.
My minty, toothpasty finger found a hole in the couch’s upholstery and couldn’t stop touching it.
My fiddling hands. The pillow smelled like Macon.
I had the strangest sensation of wanting to smash my face into it, kiss it as if I were a child pretending, which filled me with shame and fury.
I tossed and turned. Sweated. The crickets and katydids thrummed with summer heat.
The scent was overwhelming. I pushed my finger all the way into the couch’s hole, and then I did it again and again and again.