My usual going-out clothes: I look like I'm going to Broderick's. I am not going to Broderick's.
I texted Dylan.
Me:if u were going somewhere nice and u wanted 2 look good but not like u were trying 2 look good what would u wear
Dylan:did you mean to text me
I put my phone face-down on the bed.
I picked an outfit. I stood in front of the mirror. I looked fine. Good, objectively. I knew I looked good.
I changed my shirt.
I put the first shirt back on.
I changed my jacket.
I had been standing in the middle of my living room for at least twenty minutes holding two jackets and sayingokayto myself in the tone of someone who had made zero progress on anything when someone knocked on my door.
I opened it.
Dylan?
"Hey," I said. Normal. Easy. A person who was definitely just standing in his apartment holding two jackets for completely ordinary reasons. "What are you doing here?"
"I was close by," Dylan said.
Dylan had dropped by my apartment approximately never in two years of living in the same city. He was holding something. It looked like it might be food from our parents, one of mom’s containers that made the rounds. His eyes had already done the thing where they moved to the two jackets in my hands and back to my face.
Knox walked in behind him.
Not invited. Just in, moving through the doorway like the concept of a threshold was optional, and then he was in my living room, and he was looking at it.
"Huh," Knox said, kicking something—a shoe, maybe—on the floor.
"What?" I asked.
"It's cleaner than I expected."
"Yeah, well, I cleaned."
"Morrison." Knox turned in a slow circle, taking inventory. "There are still takeout containers on the counter."
"Those are recent."
"There's a jersey on the floor."
"That's—"
"Is that a skate?" Knox asked, pointing at the corner, "Just on the floor. By itself. Where's the other one?"
"I don't know," I said. "That's not the point—"
"How do you live like this?" He said it without judgment, genuinely curious, like he was observing a habitat.
“Like you can talk?” Dylan asked him. “I saw your apartment before Matthew moved in.”
Knox huffed and pointed. "There are three phone chargers on this idiot’s couch, and none of them are plugged into anything."
