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  Hope you enjoy today's chapter!

  Kyle

  I cleaned deep into the night, sweeping and scrubbing every st inch of floor, vacuuming every carpeted surface and between every couch cushion, wiping down every gss surface, going to town on the toilet and opening windows to let fresh air in so I didn’t choke on the bleach and other chemical fumes. The heating bill would be astronomical that month with how high I was cranking it to compensate, but that was O’Neil’s problem, not mine. He owed me.

  His door was closed when I got home, and it stayed that way. Guess he hadn’t flown out again, meaning I’d have to face him at some point. It was… He was… He was a friend, even if he drove me up the wall with his demands and his judgements and his never fuckin’ being around. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to hang out with the guy, but I really could have benefitted from him staying scarce for the next twenty-four hours.

  I stood in the kitchen, wiping down countertops with a damp rag, realizing that at some point I’d have to knock on his door and hash things out with him. I shouldn’t have said all that shit the night he got back. He definitely could have been a lot more tactful about what he’d said, but still, our unspoken agreement had never been vioted beforehand. He was probably more shocked than anything else by the state of the pce. Maybe a little concerned, given what a wreck I was and how diligent I normally was about cleaning.

  Sometimes, though, I missed my friend. When we were both in grad school, we wound up studying together a lot, watching sports together, getting drunk and stumbling around the city. He’d even gotten me into fighting games. He was a fun guy, when he wasn’t being a pretentious dickhead, but his job as a glorified traveling salesman had rewarded that aspect of his personality over all the other ones. Nowadays, I was pretty sure I was the only non Ivy League educated person he interacted with on a regur basis.

  When I was done with the main room and the bathroom, I set to work on my bedroom, stripping the sheets and pillowcases and vacuuming the floors, all while pnning out what I would do. I’d get her over here, and she’d find an apartment lit with candles and a roaring firepce, rose petals leading from the front door to the bedroom, a home-cooked meal of penne a vodka ready on the stove for when we finished a long evening workout of sweet, sweet love-making.

  I finished cleaning my room, but didn’t stop there: it was seven in the morning, meaning the stores were open. A marathon shopping session got me all the supplies I needed, including condoms and lube and some spare spermicide (just in case).

  When I got back, though, the exhaustion of working through the whole night began to catch up with me. I was sweaty and tired, and I practically passed out under the hot water of the shower. I actually did pass out as I walked back to my room, falling onto the floor and wearing nothing but a towel as I drifted off.

  I woke up to the sensation of a soft, delicate hand on my back, pressing into my hard flesh and gently nudging me awake. For a second, I thought Rose had arrived early, but I turned around and found a different redhead looming over me instead.

  “Hi,” I said groggily. “What’s up?”

  “You, uh, fell asleep on your floor,” O’Neil said.

  “I’m aware,” I returned. “That’s what I get for working through the night, though. Good thing I just vacuumed.”

  “You left your door open too. I, uh, wanted to make sure you were okay,” O’Neil said awkwardly. Like everything the guy said and did wasn’t awkward.

  “I’m fine,” I grumbled, standing up and trying and failing to catch my towel as it fell off of my waist. O’Neil gulped and let his mouth hang open a moment, and then, as if only just remembering to, looking away. I rolled my eyes as I dug through my dresser and pulled out a pair of jeans and a tight-fitting red fnnel shirt.

  “You, uh, you cleaned,” O’Neil said.

  “I did indeed. Got a date tonight.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s her name?”

  “Rose.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “Pretty girl,” I said.

  He gulped again. What was that about? “What time is she coming over?” O’Neil asked.

  “7 PM. What time is it now?”

  “4.”

  “Perfect! Just enough time to cook.”

  I rushed out in the kitchen and started work, O’Neil trailing behind and sous cheffing for me. He chopped vegetables while I stirred the sausage into the vodka marinara sauce. “Thanks for the help. You, uh, you don’t have to-”

  “I want to,” O’Neil said. “I feel bad about yesterday, and I… I wanna make it up to you. And besides, I like cooking.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Why is that surprising?”

  “I just don’t know when you’d have time to,” I said. “You’re always traveling.”

  “Oh, my company usually puts me in hotel suites with stoves and stuff. I wind up cooking for myself a lot. Gotta keep the weight off. It’s not easy when I’m traveling all the time, but I still try to keep it healthy. And I find it rexing, you know? Helps me unwind after a long day.”

  “What about the whole ‘wining and dining’ thing?”

  “Mostly just the wining for me.”

  “You do that a lot, yeah,” I said, side-eyeing him and giving a wry grin.

  He shot me a dirty look, but after a few minutes of me smirking at him, he chuckled and then waved a finger at me. “Okay, that was funny.”

  “And accurate.”

  “Oh come on, I don’t whine that m-”

  I stared at him, unblinking.

  “Shut up,” he smiled.

  “Never.”

  “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  He finished chopping the vegetables and then slid them onto the skillet while I helped him stir, sprinkling on a generous amount of chili fkes and garlic powder. We stood next to each other, the heat from the stove and our bodies alike helping keep us a little warmer than we would be otherwise. “Hey, gotta make up for lost time. I’m sure you miss it while you’re out of town. You need your fill of my rapier-like wit and insightful commentary.”

  “Omigawd shut uppppp!” he whined. I just ughed at his face as it scrunched up. Pfff, little gremlin.

  “I note that that was not a no,” I said, my wooden spoon plunging into the veggies. “Not one hint of denial.”

  “More like I need to restore my sanity while I’m gone, and have some breathing room, you big lummox,” he said, poking my shoulder.

  “Heh. Fair enough. Seriously, though: how was the trip? I never really got a chance to ask.”

  He looked up at me and tilted his head. He did that every time I asked him that question, every time he got back and we actually had a chance to hang out like this, like he was genuinely confused by it. Like he couldn’t believe I cared enough to ask. He always said the same thing in response, too: ‘oh, the same old same old, getting drunk and letting people talk themselves into mergers and such.’ Verbatim, every single time for the past five years.

  Not this time, however. This time, he said, “Honestly, it wasn’t great.”

  I scrunched up my brow. The hell was this? Must’ve been something bad if O’Neil actually wanted to talk about it. “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened, that’s the thing.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It was just a normal business trip. I did the same things I always do. I went through the motions. And I get back and my boss is telling me to take time off because she’s worried about my work-life bance, and here I am having not left the apartment since starting this whole impromptu vacation and I’m just left wondering ‘what am I doing?’ Like, what do I do for fun? I have no idea, I have absolutely no clue what to do with myself. And that… That really bothers me, Kyle. It makes me feel like I’m not even a real person.”

  “O’Neil, of course you’re-”

  “I know, I know,” he cut me off, holding up his right palm while his left hand was banced on his hip. “It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous-”

  “You’re not-”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me, his mouth a thin, straight line.

  “Okay, you are pretty ridiculous,” I deadpanned, “but not in the way you’re getting at here. You have hobbies. Sports. Video games. Uh… You really like crooners, right? Like Sinatra and shit, old jazz with vibrato singers?”

  He smiled. “I do.”

  “Of course you do,” I chuckled.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Kyle-”

  “What I’m saying is that you’re not giving yourself any room to explore. If you want to be more well-rounded, start with the stuff you know you like and try to branch out from there. Meet new people. I wouldn’t know nearly as much about cooking if it weren’t for my gym buddy Rachel and her wife. I’ve told you about them, right? The lesbian caterers?”

  “Sounds vaguely familiar,” O’Neil said. Clearly lying, going by the furrowed look and narrow eyes, but hey, I suppose wanting to spare my feelings constitutes effort.

  “Anyway, go to a jazz show or something. Come to a hockey game with me- I already scored Beanpot tickets.”

  “For serious?” he said, his eyes widening, his hands cpping together and standing at attention in front of his mouth. It almost hid his smile, but honestly, the thing was too big to be fully contained.

  “Yes, very much for serious,” I said, returning the smile.

  “Thanks, Kyle.”

  “No problem, Bri-”

  He gave me that annoyed expression that he wore so well, and I stopped short. “O’Neil. Sorry, it just slipped out.”

  He looked down at the vegetables, taking the spoon out of my hand and stirring them. “It’s fine. You caught yourself, that’s what matters.”

  “Do you want some of this pasta, by the way?”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I mean, even if three people have a full pte, there’ll still be enough for leftovers. And you helped, so it only seems fair.”

  “Cool!” he said, looking at me and lighting up once again. I swear, this one was gonna give me whipsh at some point.

  We kept working together until the meal was done, and O’Neil helped himself to a modestly sized pte and skipped over to the dining room table. He crossed himself and prayed silently before he began eating. I always forgot about that part of him: I’d seen him pray before, but when he was away I tended to forget some of the details.

  That bothered me more than I expected it to. The tight knot of shame in my chest was proof enough, even if it confused me. I made a mental note not to forget it again as he finished up and crossed himself once more, then opened up his phone and started texting someone with one hand while shoveling forkfuls of pasta into his mouth with the other. The texting looked pretty involved, too. Wonder what that was about? Had the little oddball finally found a girlfriend? Or possibly a boyfriend? A them-friend? Hard to say. O’Neil had cimed heterosexuality on a few occasions but I honestly always got an asexual vibe from him. Eh, not any of my business, but still, it was hard not to be a little curious.

  A notification chimed on my cell. Rose had messaged me through the app again. Excellent, hopefully she was on her way-

  Or not, given that it read, ‘Hey, I’m wicked sorry about this, but I actually can’t make it tonight.’

  A cold, festering sensation went through my chest. That… She… I…

  Dammit.

  I leaned back against the fridge, sighing and scratching the back of my head. ‘May I ask why?’ I typed. Seemed like a fair question.

  I stared at the blinking ellipses on the screen for what felt like significantly more than the forty-fivish seconds it took for her reply to actually come through: ‘I have to work. I got called in.’

  I creased my brow. ‘You have to work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You got called into work on a Saturday night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I clenched my jaw. ‘Seriously? This is the best excuse you could come up with?’

  ‘It’s not an excuse! I really got called in at the st second!’

  ‘Uh-huh. What’s your job again?’

  I drummed my fingers on the fridge while I waited. Fucking hell, I should’ve known this was bullshit. I mean, her profile photo looked like it was from one of my mom’s fashion magazines. There was no way she was anything other than a catfish. God, why am I so damn stupid?!

  Finally, she answered, ‘I work at a convenience store, and the person who was supposed to cover me got food poisoning.’

  ‘Yeah, sure they did.’

  ‘No, really! It’s the truth!’

  ‘Didn’t you say you were an influencer?’

  ‘It’s supplemental income.’

  ‘You are very obviously catfishing me,’ I responded. ‘And of course I was dumb enough to buy it. Unbelievable. Well, guess I’ll crawl back into my cave with all the other big dumb cavemen.’

  ‘Can we reschedule?’

  I blinked. Huh. ‘I’m listening. But I’m gonna be less willing to make a home cooked meal for you this time.’

  ‘How about something simple?’

  ‘Like what? A video call?’

  ‘I dunno…’

  ‘Would really help disprove the whole catfish theory,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, if that’s what it takes.’

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ I added. ‘7 PM. I’ll wait for you to call through the app.’

  ‘Sounds good. And again, I’m wicked sorry about all this!’

  She sent me about a half-million heart emojis after that, which I have to admit definitely helped. Something about girls and their emojis… I dunno, it was just so girly that it was wicked charming. Fuck, I hope this worked out.

  I looked up from my phone and exhaled heavily, then looked over at O’Neil. He was staring directly forward, not moving or blinking or chewing despite his pte still being half-full.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice coming out strangely high and squeaky.

  I quirked an eyebrow.

  “I’m fine,” he repeated, voice smoothing over into his usual low monotone.

  “If you say so,” I said. “Oh yeah, my date had to reschedule, so I guess I got nothing else going on tonight. Wanna hang out? There’s probably a game of some sort on, or we could watch a movie or something. What do you say?”

  His smile was inscrutable, but he replied, “Yeah, that sounds great.”

  “Cool,” I said, helping myself to a pte of pasta and making my way over to the table.

  All this would probably be fine, probably work itself out, I’d talk to the girl tomorrow night and take it from there, and if there was anything approaching a spark then maybe my broken heart would start welding itself back together.

  Still, I couldn’t help but notice that O’Neil wouldn’t stop staring at me. I also couldn’t help but notice that whoever O’Neil was texting, he was doing it on his work-phone.

  What the hell?