AllFreeNovel
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I open a bag of corn chips. Put some in a bowl so she can share if she wants.
She plucks out a chip. “What’s your job like?”
“Boring.”
“What do you do?”
“Whatever they tell me.”
“What’d you do tonight?”
“Measured stuff. They won’t let me cut yet.”
“Is cutting more fun?”
“It would be different. I’ve never used a miter saw, but you can do tricky cuts, like when you’ve got to cut 30 degrees on the X axis and 45 on the Y—I want to see how that works. Or I’d like to drive the forklift.”
“When do you get to do that stuff?”
“Not for fucking ages. What are you writing about?”
“Victorian periodicals.”
“Fascinating.”
“No, it’s good. We had to pick a topic that there were lots of articles about and read a bunch of different journals. I picked the Irish problem.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Basically, they wanted independence.”
“Such a fucking hassle, those Irish.”
She smiles.
“You want a beer?”
I ask without thinking about it. I don’t want to think tonight. I’m sick of it—sick of everything being difficult all the time. I want to do something easy. Beer, couch, Caroline.
“At two in the morning?”
“I’m all jacked up. Probably won’t sleep for a while.”
“Why are you jacked up if work was so boring?”
“Those Monsters you bought me.”
It’s only partly true. I’m jacked up on her being here, and I’m jacked up because Frankie still won’t talk to me.
I stayed up all last night writing the last of my final projects to clear my incompletes. I’m so far behind on sleep, I don’t feel like I need it at all.
“You want a beer or not?” I ask.
“Sure. I’m about out of brilliant thoughts for the night anyway.” She rolls her shoulders.
I snag two beers from the fridge and find a napkin to spit the gum I’ve been chewing into so I can eat. She’s raising an eyebrow at me when I turn around. “What’s with the gum?”
“Helps with not smoking,” I admit.
