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“It’s a pointless argument. Just use the key.”
“I don’t think?—”
“It’s not a big deal,” he says, still so endlessly calm. “It’s just a fucking key.”
And then he’s out the door, and I’m alone.
With a key to his place.
Right.
It’s fine.
Just a fucking key.
My eyes land on the flowers again.
That’s fine, too.
Because those are just fucking flowers.
And I’m just fucking calm.
And this thing? It’s fucking casual.
LAKE
In hindsight, it’s the little things. Those fucking terrible little things. Stuff that accumulates over time. Little gestures here and there, so you don’t suspect anything, because does it matter that he always seems to have the kind of bread you like in his cabinets and your favorite brand of orange juice in the fridge?
Does it matter that on Sundays he drags you to the pool because he remembers you used to swim when you were younger?
Does it matter that you start finding the stupidest jokes scribbled on random pages of your notes when you open them in class? What causes dry skin? A towel. What do you call a fly with no wings? A walk.
Does it matter that he starts giving you a ride home from work every time you have a late shift and he doesn’t have a game? And somehow that ride always ends up at his place? And then it’s late anyway, so what’s the point of going home after? You might as well stay over.
You suddenly have a toothbrush in his place. And somehow, half of your clothes are mixed up with his. You won’t leave clothes at his place because that’s what couples do, and you’re not a couple, but you still need clothes every time you accidentally stay over, so you raid his closet. And then you leave your own clothes behind, and they somehow migrate into his shelves and drawers, but you prefer not to think about that too much.
And those weekends he has an away game, and he’s not at home? You sometimes still stay at his place.
There are a lot of things like those you outright ignore as best as you can.
Like when you’re both sitting on the couch in the evening, studying, and your feet are cold because your feet are always cold. Cold is a design feature of your limbs. And he gets into the habit of putting your feet under his thighs so he can warm them.
Or like how when he’s driving, he puts his hand on your leg.
Or how you somehow end up going out with his friends, and he ends up hanging out with yours.
Or like how you suddenly have tickets to all his home games. And how you watch broadcasts of the other ones if you can. And you now hate that lug of a defenseman from Penn State with a vengeance because you saw that massive bruise he left behind when he slammed into Ryker in their last game.
But that’s all fine.
You’re just having fun.
This is definitely nothing serious.
This is casual.
“What do you mean you’ve never been to New York?” Ryker’s frown deepens. He looks flabbergasted, since New York, apparently, is some sort of meeting spot every person in the world has been to at least once.
