“Well—” That was actually kind of a complicated question—and an interesting one—so I levered myself out of my writing chair, set my laptop aside, and padded into the billiard room.Keme and Millie were lying on the floor, looking at Millie’s phone.“That’s actually kind of a complicated question,” I told them, “and an interesting one—”
“Don’t care,” Keme said.“Already bored.”
“See, I had several apartments in Providence.My first apartment—”
Keme made a buzzing sound.
“—had two bedrooms and one bathroom, and let me tell you, that is not the ideal ratio—”
“What didn’t you get about—” Keme asked, and then he made the buzzing noise again.
“Rude!I’m trying to help—wait, what are you doing?”
“Looking for an apartment,” Millie said, still staring at her phone.“Want to help?”
“An apartment for who?”
“For us.Oh Dash, look at this one!Isn’t it adorable?”
“That’s only three thousand dollars a month,” Keme said.“We can afford that.”
The staggering obliviousness of that statement must have been why my brain went blank.Objections presented themselves, each one immediately discarded: you’re too young (no, technically they weren’t); you can’t afford it (apparently they could); and then, simply, youcan’t.My mouth switched over to autopilot.“But you live here.”
“Millie doesn’t live here, you donkey,” Keme said.“Show him that one with the jacuzzi.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
I barely made it into the hall before a wave of heat rose in my body.It ran up my chest, up my throat, into my face—every inch of me stinging as sweat popped out under my arms.Somehow, I kept walking—I needed to get away.
Somehow, I ended up in the kitchen (talk about running on autopilot).Fox sat at the counter, eating a heaping slice of huckleberry pie, and they hurriedly wiped their mouth and shoved the plate behind the toaster.
“Indira said I could—what’s wrong?”
I burst into tears.
Fox watched me for a few moments.Then they led me to a stool, sat me down, and brought me my own slice of huckleberry pie.They handed me several paper towels, which I used to mop my face as I told them, in broken fragments, about Keme and Millie.
“They’re young,” Fox said—not unkindly, but not terribly sympathetically.“They’re in love.Of course they want to have their own place.”
“But theycan’t.We live here.We all live here.Well, not you, but you’re here so much you practically live here, and you certainlyactlike you live here, like, you had that pallet of old bricks delivered here—which, now that I think about, you really need to take to your studio—”
Fox shushed me.“We’ll worry about that later,” they said, which was exactly what they’d said the last time we’d gone out to brunch and they’d forgotten their wallet.“Dash, they can’t live here forever.”
“I know,” I said.But I almost started crying again.Because Ididknow that.But there had been this part of me that had hoped it would be years and years before they left.“But they can stay for a while.Save up some money.You talk to them—Keme listens to you.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“You love them,” Fox said with surprising gentleness.“You care about them.Of course it’s hard to let them go.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said.But then I shook my head.“I don’t know.”
“It’s hard to see things change.To see one phase of life end so that a new one can begin.”
I didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything to say to that.So I said, “I just don’t want them to leave.”
Fox made a sympathetic sound, but they said, “But theyaregoing to leave, Dash.Eventually.”They waited, as though I might interrupt; when I didn’t, they continued, “If I may offer you a tiny bit of advice, Dash, it would be this: you can either embrace this as an opportunity to deepen your relationship with them, or you can fight it—and, in the process, push them away.”
