At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn

Of course, I thought, but I ignored him, fidgeting instead with the edge of the quilt hanging over the side
of the beanbag. I think of her everywhere. She is everywhere, in every moment, and also she’s in no one
moment. She misses every single one of my moments and I’m not sure who that is harder for: me surviving
here without her, or her without me, existing wherever she is.
“Macy?”
“What.”
“Do you think of her in here? Is that why you love this room?”
“I love the room because I love reading.”
And because when I find that book that makes me lose myself for just one hour, maybe more, I forget.
And because my dad thinks of Mom every time he buys me a book.
And because you’re here and I feel about a thousand times less lonely with you.
“But —”
“Please stop.” I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling my palms sweat, heart race, stomach curl into a knot
around itself and all the feelings that sometimes felt too big for my body.
“Do you ever cry about her?”
“Are you kidding?” I gasped, and his eyes widened but he didn’t back down.
“It’s just that it’s Christmas,” he said quietly. “And when my mom was baking cookies earlier, I realized
how familiar it was. It must be weird for you, that’s all.”
“Yeah.”

---

He leaned in, trying to get me to look at him. “I just want you to know you can talk to me.”
“I don’t need to talk about it.”
He sat up, watching me for a few more breaths of silence, and then returned to his book.

---

I
now
wednesday, october 4
leave the warm comfort of bed and shuffle into the kitchen, kissing the top of a head of brown tangles.
Sean should know by now that we can’t be sneaky in the morning: Phoebe is always up before us anyway.
Phoebs is a dream kid. She’s six, clever and affectionate, and boisterous in a way that tells me a little bit
about her mom, because her dad is all mellow containment. Who the hell knows where Ashley, her deadbeat
mother, is, but it stabs something in me to see Phoebe growing up without her. At least I had ten years with
Mom, and her disappearance from my life doesn’t feel like a betrayal. Phoebe only got three before Ashley
went to a weekend retreat for her investment banking job and came home with a taste for cocaine that
turned into a hankering for crack, which eventually led to her giving up everything for speedballs. At what
point will Sean be forced to tell his perfect kid that her mom loved drugs more than she loved them?
I remember walking out of his bedroom the morning after our first tipsy hookup to find Phoebe sitting at
the kitchen table eating Rice Chex, hair already in crooked pigtails, wearing mismatched socks, puppy-dog
leggings, and a polka-dot sweater. In his haze of flirtation, Sean hadn’t mentioned he had a kid. I try to see
it more as a testament to how great my boobs looked in that blue sweater than a huge, dickish omission on
his part.
That morning, she looked up at me, eyes wide enough to easily confirm what he’d said the night before –
that he hadn’t brought a woman home with him in three years – and asked if I was a new roommate.
How could I say no to puppy-dog leggings and crooked ponytails? I’ve been there every night since.
It’s not really a sacrifice. Sean is a dream in bed, easygoing, and makes a mean cup of coffee. At forty-
two, he’s also financially secure, which goes a long way when you’re staring down the barrel at med school
loans. And maybe it was initially the alcohol, but sex with him was only the second sex of my life that didn’t
feel immediately afterward like I’d sent something priceless crashing to the floor.
“Chex?” I ask her, blindly reaching for the coffee filters above the sink.
“Yes, please.”
“Sleep good?”
She gives a small grunt of affirmation and then, after a minute, mumbles, “It was hot.”
So it wasn’t just my body’s claustrophobic response to seeing Elliot and waking up beside Sean; her
dad’s been futzing with the thermostat again. That man was born for central Texas weather, not Bay Area. I
move across the room, turning the heat down. “I thought you were on Daddy Heater Duty last night.”
Phoebe giggles. “He snuck away from me.”
The sound of the shower turning on drifts into the kitchen, and I feel like I’ve just been given a game-
show challenge with a buzzer counting down: Get out of the house in the next two minutes!
I pour Phoebe’s cereal, jog into the bedroom, pull on a clean set of scrubs, pour my coffee, yank my
shoes on, and plant one more kiss on Phoebe’s head before I’m out the door.
It’s crazy – at least it makes me sound crazy – but if Sean asked me about my day yesterday, I know
without a doubt it would all come tumbling out.