Respect the pineapple
Maddy: ??
Maddy sends the message to the house group chat eighteen minutes after Jenny pulls her into an Uber outside the party.
That is the entire message.
Just a fucking pineapple.
By then, I have already called four times.
The first goes unanswered. The second rings until her voicemail begins in that cheerful, high-pitched voice asking me to leave something interesting because she refuses to listen to boring messages. The third is declined after two rings. The fourth does not connect at all.
Nate replies immediately in the group chat.
Nate: ??
I text her directly.
Will: r u with Jenny?
Will: tell me where u r
Nothing.
I stare at the pineapple. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Nate is standing beside me outside the party with his hands pushed into his pockets, physically blocked the gate and told me three times I was not getting into my car after drinking.
He looks less drunk than he did twenty minutes ago.“It means she needs to be alone and hasn’t died.”
I turn towards him. “You have a disappearance agreement with my girlfriend?”
Nate has taken my phone out of my hand before I could call again. “She’s alive. She wants space. You have to respect the pineapple.”
I want to break something. “It’s a fucking fruit.”
DJ steps out of the house behind us, pulling his jacket into place. He has remained sober enough to drive, which would usually be convenient if I had any idea where we were going.
But then he crosses his arms and has that look on his face that suggests if I try anything stupid, he would allow me to embarrass myself before even bother with an explanation.
“She gave us the information we asked her to give us,” DJ reminds me.
Nate rubs both hands over his face. “I know that face. The one where you decide nobody else is competent enough to manage a situation, then start assigning jobs.”
“She’s fucking gone, Nate. I don’t know where she is.”
“She’s mad and needs space. Stop mentally accessing traffic cameras.”
That does not make the urge to locate her disappear. It only makes acting on it indefensible.
But doing nothing feels like somebody walks away carrying an exposed part of my body. Every hour produces another practical reason to locate her, and every reason arrives dressed convincingly enough.
I look at the pineapple again.
I want to know where she is because not knowing makes me feel nauseous.
That is not the same thing as her being unsafe.
So I send a text to the group chat.
Will: Okay.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
I type, I won’t come looking for you to our private thread.
Then delete and try again.
Will: I should have told you.
The message delivers.
No reply.
Maddy doesn’t come home that night, or the night after.
I call one more before deciding the pineapple probably applies to phone calls too. After that, I reduce myself to two messages a day because anything more begins to look like I believe persistence can convert her boundary into something else.
Will: I’m sorry
Will: Come home baby. Let’s talk.
The next day, I type an explanation first.
It takes nine paragraphs and includes dates, Coach’s response, what punishment each player received and the exact point at which I convinced myself the issue had been resolved. It is thorough, accurate and completely useless.
I delete the entire thing.
Will: I miss you.
Then because I cannot stop myself, I send her another text the next day.
Will: I’ll tell you every detail when you’re ready. No missing pieces.
Will: come home baby. You don’t even have to talk to me.
My thumb remains over the screen.
There are several useful things I could add.
I could offer to bring her clothes. She likely has enough.
I could remind her that her laptop charger is in the living room. She has probably purchased another one.
I could tell her I made food. She can feed herself.
For once, I have nothing practical to attach to the sentence.
Maddy disappears from every surface available to me. No social updates. No show up to class or meetings.
Jenny calls twice to ask whether Maddy has returned to the house. Apparently Lizzie has been calling Jenny just as often to ask whether she’s heard from her. She was not with any other friends, nor replied to any other messages.
I try to focus on my year long thesis, which the draft is due to my advisor on Friday. I have known this since September. It has been in a calendar with two reminders on it since September, because that is the kind of person I am.
It is Wednesday. I have written eight hundred words in five days, most of them twice, and at some point last night I typed her name into a document about endorsement markets and did not notice for eleven minutes.
There are never any extensions.
The department is famous for it. A third of the grade for every four days late, and no exceptions for illness, computer failure, or the fact that the girl you live with has disappeared.
By the third day, I have slept enough to technically survive and not enough to trust my own judgment. Thank fuck we don’t have a game this weekend because I think I’ll lose that game as well as my mind.
At five, I’m already downstairs to make coffee. There’s nothing to do but direct my brain to watch game footage I have already reviewed twice and re-evaluate how fucked up I am.
THUD- THUD- THUD
A skipping rope cuts through the morning air in fast, uneven loops.
Maddy is back.
She is fucking back.
And she’s skipping on our patio with her headphones on.
Maddy doesn’t even see me approaching. Skipping away, clearing it eight times until the rope catches one of her shoes and she hisses a curse.
I have never seen my girlfriend in proper gym clothes before.
Tiny denim shorts capable of distracting several academic departments, yes. Sleep shorts barely wider than an elastic waistband, constantly. Leggings, training shoes and a sports bra apparently designed to survive physical movement, never.
Actually, I am also no longer certain she is my girlfriend.
The rope catches against one shoe again. Maddy swears, flicks it behind her and starts skipping one more time.
She's terrible at this. She used to kill me at this. And she's out here at five in the morning doing it anyway, which means she isn't exercising.
She has taken whatever is happening in her head and given it repetitions.
That is my move.
I hate watching her use it.
“Fuck you,” she hisses at the rope, louder this time.
Maddy finally sees me standing near the door. “Morning.”
Three days without hearing her voice, and that is what I get.
“You’re back.” I consider walking over, then stop. “Skipping so early?”
Maddy removes her headphones. “Sorry I worried you. I just needed some time alone.”
“Can we talk now?” I take a step closer to her.
“Not yet.” She shakes her head, looking down. “I’m sorry. I need to sort my head out first.”
“Okay.” I exhale sharply.
She looks back at me then she returns to her music and skipping while I go back into the kitchen and make two cups of coffee anyway. Back to my film studies.
I promise her space. I’ll give her space.
I just didn’t expect giving her space to fucking kill me.
Maddy is back in the house but it is entirely different.
She sits in the living room with Lizzie, arguing about whether a pair of silver boots qualifies as neutral. She eats popcorn directly from Nate’s bowl and spends twenty minutes helping DJ write one sentence in a message to his professor.
Her laughs sometimes carry through the floorboards into my room. That is unbearable.
Second only to the distant, “Thank you, Will. I’ve already eaten,” whenever I offer her food. No sunlit laugh. No gremlin smile. Meanwhile, my little GREMLIN container sits untouched in the fridge.
————
I really fucked this up.
I wish I understand what it is about Maddy that makes every logical system I possess stop functioning properly.
Maybe my body recognises her before my mind could make any sense of it. We kissed before I understood that I had feelings for her, then I liked kissing her too much to stop chasing.
I became addicted to her voice before admitting I missed it whenever she left the house.
Even when she was shouting directly into my face, the volume felt better than this.
I would take the shouting now.
Hell, I would stand outside while she read every message aloud and publicly detailed why I was an asshole if it meant she was speaking to me as though my reaction still mattered.
Maddy never asked for much from me.
That realisation arrives while I am standing at the kitchen island watching her campaign documents spread across the dining table. She is on a video call with Jenny, both of them discussing three athletes whose profiles now occupy the front of the deck.
I used to think she needed my input.
She asked which athletes worked well together, which movements looked natural, who could follow direction and which campaign language made businesses sound like they understand the vibes.
I told myself she came to me because I was useful.
Maybe I was, occasionally.
Mostly, she had already reached her own answer before entering my room. She wanted to argue until she discovered which version she believed more. She wanted me to look at what she built, hear why she was excited and sit beside her while her thoughts arranged themselves.
Maddy did not require introductions to athletes. She was confident enough to strike the conversations herself.
She kept asking me because she wanted me inside it.
Time was the only thing she always asked for.
Morning walks. Movies. Food at the island. Ten minutes here. Five minutes there, while she decided whether one photograph made an athlete look approachable or constipated.
Right now, she is functioning perfectly without me.
“You changed the lead athlete?” She’s got ear earbuds in, her voice rises probably without her knowing.
I stop reading the same paragraph of my assigned paper for the sixth time.
Maddy pushes out of her chair and begins pacing. “No, I understand the deadline. I’m asking why you changed the athlete and the entire concept without—.”
She stops.
Jenny speaks for longer this time.
“No. I know I wasn’t answering.” Maddy presses her fingertips against the dining table. “I know you worked on it too. That’s not what I meant.” Another pause. “No of course, it’s just that it changes the entire thing—”
Another response. Maddy finally stops pacing.
She stands beside the dining table, shoulders lifting and falling beneath an oversized shirt. “No, you’re right about the deadline. I’m still fucking pissed off.” Her voice rises again, hands already flying. “The client could have pushed shooting day later.” She groans loudly.
Another long response. Maddy closes her eyes. “No. No. No. This is fine. The interview clip should open with why she rows then, not the injury.”
Then her voice changes, more deliberate.
“Nope. Client needs to understand that the fucking talent will not lie about her semi-pro sport because they need an injury story angle.” A beat.
“Sure. We can feed that angle in but if you only push for that and not why she loves rowing, she’ll look like she’s taking a shit on camera and we will have no footage. ”
Jenny must say something funny because Maddy lets out one short laugh and sits on the edge of the dining chair again. “Keep the new concept. It’s better.”
I look down at the unread paragraph in front of me. That is when the last piece of my defence collapses.
Jenny hangs up a few minutes later.
“Have some.” I put a glass of orange juice on the table beside her elbow, and sit down at the other end.
I don’t say anything else, because everything I have thought about saying has started with let me explain.
“Thank you.” Maddy looks at the glass for a while instead of me. “You know Leila was my best friend in high school. We'd been attached at the hip since the first week of junior year.”
“Mhm.” I nod.
“My ex cheated on me with Leila. For about three weeks. That I know of.” She turns the glass a quarter turn on the table. “You probably already know that too.”
I don’t know that part. I guess today’s the day she tells me.
“Actually. I still don’t know how long they’ve been fucking behind my back. I never asked them.” Maddy takes a sip of the orange juice in between bitter chuckles.
I wait.
“A friend of mine walked in on them at a party and told me on a Sunday. Everyone in our circle already knew by then. Everyone knew, except me.”
“Maddy—”
“I'm not finished.”
I shut up.
“When I told Lizzie we broke up, she said she'd known for a few days." Another quarter turn. “He'd gone to her. Asked her to give him time to tell me himself. She didn’t see them kissing, just Leila having frozen yogurt with him after school. So she sat on it and waited for the right moment.”
The kitchen is very quiet.
“Four days,” Maddy continues. “In those four days I asked my sister to help me pick a graduation present for him. She helped me pick it. She had opinions about the wrapping.”
There’s nothing to say to that, so I don’t.
“Lizzie loves me more than almost anyone alive,” she looks up at me for the first time since she started. “And she sat on it for four days because she decided I couldn't hold it yet. And she was probably right. I probably couldn't have.”
I swallow and meet her eyes.
I have spent four days building a case. It is a good case. I am not a liar, I took it to Coach knowing I’d get dragged into it too, did the drills and cleaned the locker room for two weeks and never once mentioned any of it to make myself look better.
Every item on that list holds up.
It’s the wrong list.
“I don't want to be the last to know in this one too,” Maddy says calmly.
“Okay,” I nod.
That's it. That's all I have. Twenty-two years of being the person who knows what to do in the room, and my entire contribution is okay.
She nods once, takes the orange juice and goes upstairs.
Her door doesn't slam. Nothing in this house slams anymore.
I have never in my life felt this useless and she didn't even have to raise her voice.