I fold his laundry. I fold it neatly, which is insane, because he won't notice and nobody is grading me, but I do it anyway. At one point I realize I've been holding the same T-shirt for thirty seconds, just standing in his hallway breathing it in, and I fold it so fast and so hard that I crease it wrong and have to start over.
By 10 PM, Ethan is asleep. Or pretending to be — I can never fully tell with him, because his version of sleep involves a studied casualness that seems like a performance of its own. His door is half-open. The hallway light is off. Bagel is curled at the foot of his bed, and Poutine is somewhere in the apartment doing whatever Poutine does at night, which I suspect involves plotting.
I should also sleep. I've been sleeping in the guest room on a fold-out couch that has a bar across the middle that my spine has developed a personal relationship with. I should go in there, lie down, and close my eyes and not think about the fact that I'm living in a man's apartment while he recovers from a broken pelvis and we still haven't defined what we are and I've been wearing his old T-shirts to sleep because I didn't pack enough of my own and his T-shirts smell like laundry detergent and something underneath that I'm not going to name.
I go in. I lie down. I turn on my side.
And stop.
The bar isn't there.
Not gone — it can't be gone, the mechanics of a fold-out couch don't allow that — but the angle is different. I reach underneath me and feel it: a towel. Folded once, precisely, and laid flat on top of the sheets, right where the metal ridge sits beneath them. It's not thick, just enough to turn the bar from a thing that digs into you to a thing you can almost forget about.
I lie there in the dark, my hand still on the towel, and I think about timelines.
I was at my mother's apartment for three hours this afternoon. Ethan was alone. Ethan, who needs both crutches to get to the bathroom, who isn't supposed to bend at the waist, who has hardware in his pelvis that is — as the physiotherapist reminded him twice — still healing. Ethan got off the couch, crossed the apartment, came into this room, figured out where the bar was with the rubber tip of a crutch, folded a towel into a narrow strip, laid it on top, and got back to the couch before I came home.
And when I walked in the door he saidFixed?and went back to his phone like nothing had happened.
I should say something. Tomorrow morning I should saythank youoryou didn't have toorplease don't hurt yourself for my comfort, you impossible man.But I know I won't. Because saying something would mean naming what this is, and we're not doing that yet.
I close my eyes. The bar doesn't dig. My spine stretches into the space where the pain used to be, and the absence of it is louder than the pain ever was.
I should sleep. But my mind won't stop. It keeps retracing his path — couch to hallway, hallway to guest room, the careful geometry of a man navigating his own apartment like it's an obstacle course, prodding the mattress until he found the ridge,folding a towel with one hand braced near him, placing it where he could reach without pretending it was easy. My brain draws the route over and over, and each time it gets to the part where he lowers himself back onto the couch and picks up his phone, my chest pulls tight.
Instead I'm in the kitchen. Because the pasta I made for dinner was terrible — I know this because I ate it and smiled and said "not bad, right?" and he said "honestly, it's great" and he is lying to my face, lying kindly, and I hate the kindness more than I would hate the truth because the truth would at least be something I could fix. I'm telling myself now: the pasta was terrible. And I'm hungry. And the bag of chips behind the rice cooker is calling me with the quiet authority of a snack that has been waiting for exactly this moment.
I open the bag. The crinkle is loud in the dark kitchen — louder than it should be, loud enough that I freeze for a second and glance toward the hallway. Nothing. His door is still half-open. The apartment is quiet.
I eat a chip. Then another. Then five.
I'm sitting on the kitchen floor now. Not because the floor is comfortable — it's cold tile and my tailbone has opinions — but because standing felt like too much effort and the counter felt too formal and the floor doesn't ask anything of me.
Bagel appears. Of course he does — Bagel has a sixth sense for unsanctioned food events. He materializes from the hallway like a small orange ghost and parks himself in front of me with an expression that communicates, clearly and without ambiguity:share.
"No," I whisper. "These are mine. You have your own food."
He stares.
"Stop it."
He puts one paw on my knee.
"You're the worst negotiator I've ever met," I whisper, and hold a chip out. He sniffs it. Considers. Pulls back with the expression of a food critic who Has Reviewed This Establishment And Found It Lacking. He doesn't eat it — Bagel's standards are, apparently, higher than mine.
I eat it instead. And another. And another. The bag crinkles every time and I keep cringing at the sound but I can't stop because right now, on this floor, with this cat looking at me like I'm mildly disappointing, is the first time all day I haven't been trying.
"You know what, Bagel?" I say to the cat, who has given up on the chips and is now grooming his paw with theatrical disinterest. "I think the pasta was genuinely the worst thing I've ever made. I think it might have been worse than the risotto I made for Sophie's birthday that she said was 'interesting' and then ordered pizza." I brush a crumb off his ear. "And he said it was great. He said it wasgreat, Bagel. With a straight face. Who does that?"
Bagel doesn't answer. He blinks slowly, which in cat language either meansI trust youorI am bored of you.
"At least you don't need me to pretend," I say, and the sentence comes out quieter than I meant it to, quieter than the chips, quieter than everything, and for a second it sits in the dark kitchen like something I wasn't supposed to hear myself say.
I eat one more chip. I close the bag. I put it back behind the rice cooker.
I stand up.My knees crack — traitors, both of them — and I get a glass of water from the tap. Then I get another glass.
His glass. The one he keeps by the bed in case he wakes up thirsty. He mentioned it once — or maybe he didn't mention it,maybe I just noticed it was always there, always half-full in the morning, and started refilling it without being asked.
