Chapter 5
five
BILLIE
My boyfriend, Tyler, is on the couch when I get home. He’s always on the couch. I used to find this comforting. After a long day, there’s something to be said for someone who is always reliably where you left them. Now, I’m worried “reliable” really means “stagnant.”
He’s in his usual configuration: baseball cap backward, legs stretched across the length of the sofa, a controller in his hands, feet resting on the coffee table beside a chip bowl and an empty glass.
The TV screen is full of explosions. He’s twenty-nine in spirit, even though he is technically thirty-two and capable of, according to his own words, “crushing it at budgeting apps.” He looks up when I come in.
“Hey,” he says, with a big, easy grin. Tyler has a nice smile. I should be honest about that. He’s always had a nice smile. “How was the— thing— you were worried about?”
“The meeting with Franklin,” I set my bag down on the kitchen chair. “Not great,” I say. I shrug out of my coat.
“Aw, Billz,” Tyler says. He pauses his game. He pauses his game, which is the sort of small kindness that has tricked me into staying for years. He turns to look at me, his face soft with genuine sympathy. “Come here.”
I go to the couch and sit next to him, tucking my feet up under me, and he puts an arm around my shoulder in a way that should feel good and mostly communicates care, but also carries a faint hollowness tonight.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I mean, it’s not fine. But I'm fine.”
“You’re the best person at that office,” Tyler says. “Franklin doesn't deserve you.”
With that, he restarts the game— and the rest of our conversation happens over the sound of explosions and limited eye contact.
“He said I didn’t have nerves of steel,” I offer.
“That’s insane,” Tyler says, punching keys on his controller. “You’re great under pressure. You handle all our bills, planning trips… You’re so good at handling everything.”
“That's what I said! But he meant it differently. He said I’m too—” I pause, trying to locate the right word. “Accommodating. That I don't fight for things.”
“His loss,” Tyler says, and a sound from the game makes me aware that he’s just exploded a building. “You’re great. You just— you know what people need.”
I sit with that for a moment. He’s describing something true about me. But somehow it still doesn’t feel like what I was hoping to hear.
“If I quit,” I say, watching his face, “what would you do?”
Tyler looks at me. He pauses the game again. From his headset, I hear a series of dismayed groans from whatever invisible person he’s playing with. “What do you mean… quit?”
“I mean, if I left Franklin’s. If I just— left. Took some time to figure out what I actually want.” I look at him. “Could you pay the rent while I do that?”
Tyler is quiet for a second, like he’s doing quick math without a calculator. “Right now it’s pretty tight, and you know I’m trying to FIRE–”
Yes. I do know this. Tyler is part of a movement called FIRE, which stands for: “Financial Independence, Retire Early.” He hates his job as a data analyst, and puts away extra money every month in the hopes he can quit working by fourty-five. I love that he’s financially responsible. I do.
“And that works with us splitting everything equally, but if I had to do it alone I couldn’t save as much. That would really impact my future, you know?”
His future. Not our future.
Tyler continues: “… I guess if you had something lined up, you know?”
“I wouldn’t have something lined up right away,” I say. “That’s sort of the point.”
“Right, no, totally.” He nods. He picks up the remote. Starts the game again. “I just think— you know— we both have to support each other here. It takes two.”
I don't say anything. I want Tyler to be happy– to retire early– and I don’t want to stand in the way of that.
Splitting the rent is cheaper for both of us; or at least, it would be, if he hadn’t talked me into the most expensive lease on our block.
But I wish he’d think about me with the kind of burning passion men show for women in romance novels– women they’d fight for, die for, live for– take a bullet for.
That’s not the kind of love we have. I look at the coffee table.
At the empty glass and the chip bowl and a fork that I don’t remember being there this morning.
There’s another exploding sound, and Tyler cheers this time. He’s not worried that I’ll quit my job— he knows I won’t. He’s not worried that I’ll quit this relationship, either. Because I never do, even when I know I should.
From the couch, I can see the kitchen. I can see the pile that was already in the sink.
Dirty dishes. Ten plates and a dozen mugs and a spatula from this morning that I told myself I’d get to later.
I’ve been leaving them all in the sink intentionally, waiting to see how long it would take for Tyler to get to them if I didn’t do them.
The answer is: never. He’ll never do them.
I think about what Melissa said in the break room. That I wait for someone else to make a better decision on my behalf.
Tyler laughs at something on the screen. It’s a familiar laugh— warm and genuine.
I look at him and try to imagine the version of me who is not afraid, and is not the one with a big heart.
Not the one who splits everything equally and answers all the emails and does the dishes before she goes to bed.
I try to imagine what this apartment would look like without that version of me in it.
Would Tyler still be happy? I don’t know.
But honestly? I think the dishes would be a real problem.
I stand up. I tell him I’m tired. He says sleep well, Billz, without looking away from the screen.
And I walk to the bathroom to get ready for bed, carrying something I can’t quite name— not anger, not sadness.
Something quieter than both. Something that has been sitting in the sink for a long time, waiting for someone to deal with it.
* * *
When you live with someone and they’re asleep— snoring next to you— while you’re awake, it’s impossible to go back to bed. The feeling isn’t insomnia exactly. It’s more like the day hasn’t finished with you yet, and you have to lie there in the dark and wait for it to let go.
Tyler’s breathing is even and deep beside me.
He fell asleep immediately after getting into bed, in the same easy, untroubled way he does everything else.
His baseball cap is on the nightstand. The room is dark except for the greenish glow of the cable box in the corner.
I turn on the TV and play a show I found on Amazon Prime streaming in the background: it’s some period piece with that handsome actor— Reginald Ashcroft— reciting a monologue.
I stare at the ceiling and think about nerves of steel and Mr. Franklin’s watery eyes and a nametag in a trash can and a bowl of cereal going in after it.
I pick up my phone.
I tell myself I’m just checking the time. Then I’m scrolling. I do this sometimes— a midnight audit of other people’s lives, which always makes me feel terrible and which I cannot seem to stop.
There’s a text from Melissa, sent at eleven-fifteen. It reads:
Melissa
Baby shower is Saturday, don’t forget, Steve already tried to reschedule it with his family golf thing and I almost divorced him, so please just be there.
Then, below that:
Also Alana’s coming. Be nice. She’s great.
Then, below that, a single firework emoji, which I think is supposed to be celebratory, but with Melissa I can never quite tell.
I type back: I'll be there. Then I put a heart. Then I click out of the text and, almost against my will, open Instagram and pull up Melissa’s profile.
Melissa’s last story is still up. Posted three hours ago.
It says Namaste new friends! in a font that has little stars around it, and features Melissa and another woman in a yoga studio.
The studio has exposed beams and good natural light, which in Chicago means someone is paying for the aesthetic.
Melissa looks large and magnificent and is wearing workout gear that I recognize because I was with her when she bought it.
The other woman is a complete stranger and also one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen in my life.
She must be Alana.
She’s tall, and blonde, and even in a yoga pose— some kind of impossible hip-open thing that I would have to be sedated to attempt— she looks like she belongs on the cover of a magazine.
Her hair falls in a perfect wave over one shoulder.
She’s in a pale pink workout set, naturally.
She’s smiling at the camera with an ease that says she hasn’t once questioned whether she should be in the room.
I tap to the next story. Then the next. Alana has clearly tagged herself, and Instagram, being the pusher it is, serves me her profile immediately.
I click on it.
I scroll through Alana’s grid and I’ll be honest with you— it’s a lot.
It’s a very glamorous kind of a lot. She’s in a series of pink outfits in various European cities.
She’s laughing on a terrace somewhere that looks like Croatia.
She’s holding a cocktail in front of an ornate, stone building, and the location tag says she’s in Monaco.
I look at her for a long time in the blue glow of my phone.
Why can’t I have a life like that?
It’s not even a real thought, more of a reflex. It’s my late-night brain doing its least helpful work.
Maybe she has thousands of dishes in her sink, I tell myself. Maybe she’s a disaster. Maybe she’s terrible.
Her most recent post is a selfie captioned: living my best life and yes these lashes are real.
She seems fine.
I keep scrolling, and that’s when I see him. A man that is exactly my type– and I didn’t even know I had a type. He might be the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.
He appears in the background of one of her photos first. He’s just an edge of a person, standing behind her on a balcony somewhere warm.
Dark hair. Strong jaw. A jacket pushed up at the sleeves.
I don’t pay much attention to him until I scroll a few more pictures and he appears again, more clearly this time.
He’s at a construction site in this one.
He’s wearing a hard hat pushed back on his head in a way that looks accidental and perfect at once, a pencil tucked behind one ear, some kind of architectural plan rolled under his arm.
He has the kind of build that comes from actual physical work rather than a gym— broad through the shoulders, solid, a presence that seems to take up exactly the right amount of space.
He’s not looking at the camera. He’s looking at something on the plans, one hand braced against a scaffolding pole, and the light is catching him at an angle that’s beyond ideal.
I click on his profile.
His name is Rodrigo, according to the tag. His bio just says: building things / painting things. That’s it. No hashtags. No inspirational quotes. Just those two lines, like he knows what he is and doesn’t feel the need to prove it.
His grid is half construction projects— buildings going up, beams being set, that kind of thing— and half paintings.
The captions tell me these are things he’s painted himself.
The paintings are good. They’re really, actually good.
They’re full of color and weight and feeling, crafted to make viewers feel the person who made it was paying full attention to the world.
One of them is just hands— a pair of large, paint-stained hands, rendered in a sort of warm ochre light.
I stare at it for longer than I should. What would it be like, to date a man like Rodrigo? One with passion?
I look over at Tyler.
Tyler is sleeping with one arm thrown over his eyes and his mouth slightly open.
He went to work today at a job he doesn’t care about and he came home and played a video game and went to sleep in four minutes and tomorrow he will do the same thing.
He’s not a bad person. I need to be clear about that.
He’s a fine person. He has a nice smile and he pauses his game when you’re upset, at least for a few minutes.
But he has never made a painting of hands.
I put my phone face-down on the nightstand and lie in the dark for another few minutes. Then I get up.
The kitchen is just as I left it. The dishes are in the sink; Tyler’s bowl from earlier added to the stack from before. I stand in front of them in the yellow light of the overhead fixture, the one that hums a little because we’ve been meaning to replace the bulb for three months.
I think about Alana on that terrace in Croatia, laughing, her hair perfect.
I imagine being in her place, standing next to Rodrigo— a man looking at architectural plans with a pencil behind his ear.
I think about Melissa’s baby shower on Saturday, about meeting this new person who apparently has manifested a life I’d love to have.
Why can’t I have a life like that?
I turn on the tap.
I do the dishes because I always do the dishes, because the alternative is going back to bed with a sink full of dirty things and I won’t be able to sleep knowing they’re there. That’s the thing about me— I know it’s a problem. I know what it means. I watch myself do it anyway.
The water runs warm over my hands, and I think about the baby shower, and Alana, and her unreal lashes, and the small, creeping terror of meeting her.
I am nervous, I realize. I am nervous about meeting a stranger at a baby shower.
I scrub a bowl clean and put it in the rack, thinking all the while that Alana’s life is probably perfect, and she never feels the rage toward Rodrigo that I am starting to feel toward my own boyfriend. Alana and her boyfriend probably get along perfectly. They’ve probably never even had a fight.