Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Quinton
If boredom were fatal, tonight would be my obituary. Picture it: Local doctor found sprawled on a couch, remote clenched like a lifeline, tennis ball in the other hand—victim of terminal ennui.
As the woman on TV droned on about miraculous hair transformations, I tuned out her promises of keratin bliss.
My mind wandered, cataloging the slow decay of my evening.
Seven PM on a Tuesday: me, sweatpants, couch, infomercial, cold pizza—living proof that the bar for excitement could always sink lower.
I absentmindedly tossed the tennis ball at the wall, catching it out of habit more than skill.
It was less a game and more a ritual—a lazy orbit, repeated until even the wall seemed bored of me.
The monotony didn’t break; it just looped, punctuated only by the infomercial’s increasingly desperate offers and my own increasingly desperate need for distraction.
The pizza had cooled to the temperature of existential despair; three slices down and five left, waiting patiently for me to muster the energy to eat them. Maybe I would get to them. Maybe not. It hardly mattered in the grand scheme of my Tuesday night.
It was not just that I was alone. It was that I felt disconnected—from everything that used to give this time shape.
I missed Vivian’s stories: the chaos at the clinic, the way she made even the most mundane complaint sound like a sitcom recap.
I missed the comfort of sitting across from someone who understood my jokes without explanation, of trading bites and banter instead of catching tennis balls and catching myself in a spiral of self-pity.
Now, my only companion was a woman with impossibly shiny hair, hawking a fourteen-step hair routine and an allegedly magical brush, as if that could fill the void where conversation used to be.
Once, this hour meant Thai food, laughter, and the kind of connection that didn’t need words.
Now, all I had was the sound of a ball hitting the wall and the nagging feeling that even a golden retriever would’ve moved on to a better hobby by now.
If the universe were listening, I would take dinner with Vivian over a free detangling brush any day.
So when my phone finally buzzed, I sprang up with all the energy I thought I had been conserving.
Hope—ridiculous, persistent hope—flickered for a second.
Please let it be someone who could remind me what it felt like to actually live, not just exist. Preferably Vivian, but honestly, at this point, even a telemarketer would get a warm welcome.
Vivi: Did you end up getting Thai food?
I stared at the screen, and then I smiled.
I couldn’t help it. She was texting me. She was on a date with her boyfriend, and she was texting me.
I started typing immediately.
Me: No. Decided cold pizza and infomercials were a better use of my time.
I hit send.
Then I typed again.
Me: How’d the date go?
I watched the screen.
The three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Then:
Vivi:
I laughed out loud, a burst of relief mixed with guilt. It was twisted, how much joy I felt at her frustration.
An angry emoji. That was all she sent—and yet it spoke volumes. Suddenly, I was picturing her fuming, maybe even venting about him.
An angry emoji. Which meant the date had gone terribly.
Which meant the boyfriend had done something stupid.
Which meant—maybe I was happy, because lately I’d felt like her happiness eclipsed my own.
Or maybe, deep down, I hoped moments like this would nudge her to see me in a new light.
I stopped myself, catching the swirl of jealousy and wishful thinking.
I should not have been this happy about her bad date. I should have been sympathetic. Supportive. A good friend.
Me: Want to talk about it?
The response came immediately.
Vivi: No.
Fair. I was about to put my phone down when another text came through.
Vivi: I need a beer. Like the one we had at the comedy club.
I stared at the message.
Read it again.
She needed a beer. Like the one we had at the comedy club. Which meant she was thinking about the comedy club. Which meant she was thinking about me. Which meant—Stop! Stop analyzing. Stop reading into things. She just wants a beer. That’s all. A beer.
I could have suggested a bar. There were plenty of bars in New Haven. Good bars. Bars with good beer.
Me: There’s a place on Crown Street that has a great selection
I stopped and deleted it because that wasn’t what I wanted to say.
What I wanted to say was: Come over.
What I wanted to say was: I have beer. And cold pizza. And a couch that’s way more comfortable than any bar stool.
What I wanted to say was: Please come over because I’ve been bored out of my mind for the last two hours and the only thing that would make this evening remotely tolerable is you.
But I couldn’t say that because that would be crossing a line. A very clear, very important line.
We had been to baseball games. We had been hiking. We had been to the comedy club. We had dinner. Multiple dinners. But all of those had been public. Neutral territory.
Safe.
Inviting her to my apartment was different. My apartment, or technically my penthouse, was private. Personal. Intimate. My penthouse was where I lived. Where I kept my things. Where I walked around in sweatpants and threw tennis balls at the wall and ate cold pizza straight from the box.
Inviting her here was dangerous.
It was a boundary I hadn’t crossed with anyone in years.
Not since—I stopped that thought before it could finish.
I looked at my phone. At her text.
I need a beer.
I could have suggested a bar. I should have suggested a bar. That would have been the smart thing to do. The safe thing. The thing that didn’t involve her sitting on my couch, in my space, close enough to touch.
I started typing.
Me: I have beer.
I stared at what I had written. That wasn’t an invitation. That was just a statement of fact. I did, in fact, have beer. Lots of people had beer. It didn’t mean anything.
I kept typing.
Me: And cold pizza. And a couch. If you want to come over.
I read it.
Read it again, and then I hit send before I could talk myself out of it.
The phone left my hand like it was on fire. I dropped it on the couch next to me and stared at it.
What the hell had I just done?
I had invited her over. To my apartment.
My private, personal, intimate apartment.
The place where I lived. Where I kept my things.
Where I was currently wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt that said “I’m not arguing; I’m just explaining why I’m right” that Gabriel had given me as a joke three Christmases ago.
I looked down at the shirt.
Oh God. I was wearing the shirt.
I should change. I should definitely change. But if I changed, that would mean I cared what I looked like. Which would mean I was treating this like a date.
Which it wasn’t.
It was just two friends. Hanging out. Having a beer. Eating cold pizza. On my couch. In my apartment. Alone.
Oh God.
My phone buzzed, and I grabbed it so fast I nearly threw it across the room.
Vivi: Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude.
I typed back immediately.
Me: You’re not intruding. I’m literally throwing a ball at the wall. You’d be doing me a favor.
Vivi: That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
Me: It’s strategic. I’m working on my hand-eye coordination.
Vivi: You’re a doctor. You already have excellent hand-eye coordination.
Me: There’s always room for improvement.
Vivi: You’re ridiculous.
Me: So is that a yes?
The three dots appeared, and I held my breath.
Vivi: Got to change first. Give me twenty minutes.
I stared at the screen.
Twenty minutes.
She was coming over. In twenty minutes. To my apartment.
I looked around. The pizza box was open on the coffee table. There were three empty beer bottles next to it. My tennis ball was on the floor. The TV was still playing the infomercial. The woman was now demonstrating the proper way to apply leave-in conditioner.
I had twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes to make my apartment look like a functional adult lived here.
Twenty minutes to hide the evidence of my pathetic evening.
Twenty minutes to figure out what the hell I was doing.
I jumped off the couch, grabbed the pizza box, and closed it.
I collected the beer bottles and took them to the kitchen.
I picked up the tennis ball and threw it in the basket by the door, where it lived with three other tennis balls I had accumulated over the years for reasons I couldn’t explain.
I turned off the TV. The sudden silence was deafening as I stood in the middle of my living room and looked around.
It was clean.
Okay, it was relatively clean, but clean enough. The couch was fine. The coffee table was fine. The bookshelf was—I looked at the bookshelf.
It was organized by genre, then alphabetically by author within each genre. Which was normal. Totally normal. Lots of people organized their books that way.
I was fine. This was fine.
Everything was fine.
Except. Except I had just invited Vivian Darcy to my apartment. Vivian, who had a boyfriend. Vivian, who I was definitely, absolutely, 100% not in love with. Vivian, who was going to be here in—I checked my phone—seventeen minutes.
I sat down on the couch and then stood up before sitting down again.
What was I doing?
This was a terrible idea. This was possibly the worst idea I had since I decided to buy those concert tickets.
The concert I wanted to take Vivi to. The concert that had started this whole thing.
This whole mess of feelings and rationalizations and weekend plans and dinner reservations and now—now she was coming to my apartment.
Because I invited her. Because I was an idiot. Because I couldn’t help myself. Because the thought of her sitting in some bar alone, drinking a beer, thinking about her terrible date, made my chest hurt. Because I wanted to see her.
I wanted to make her laugh. I wanted to sit next to her on my couch and share cold pizza and listen to her complain about whatever Colton had done to earn that angry emoji. I wanted her here.
In my space. Close enough to touch.
Which was dangerous.
So dangerous.
Because once she was here, in my apartment, sitting on my couch, drinking my beer. Once that happened, I couldn’t pretend anymore. I couldn’t pretend this was just friendship. I couldn’t pretend I was just being protective. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t want more.
My phone buzzed.
Vivi: On my way.
After grabbing a beer, I sat on the couch and waited, as I tried very, very hard not to think about what I was about to do.
Fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes until Vivian Darcy walked through my door.
Fifteen minutes until everything changed.
I was so screwed.