Funny Story

HONESTLY, MILES NOWAK is a good roommate.

Aside from occasional invitations to watch a movie, or texts to ask whether I need anything from the market, he leaves me to my own devices. After my request that he only smoke outside, he really must have stopped merely sticking his head out the window, because weeks pass without me smelling weed in the hallway. There’s no more mournful blasting of Jamie O’Neal either. In fact, he seems totally fine. I never would’ve guessed he was a man fresh off a horrible heartbreak if I hadn’t seen his face six weeks ago, on the day it happened.

Without discussing it, we pretty easily figured out a bathroom schedule that works. He’s a night owl, and I usually get up around six thirty or seven in the morning, regardless of whether I’m working the library’s opening shift or not. And since he’s rarely home, he never leaves stacks of dirty dishes “soaking” in the sink.

But the apartment itself is tiny. My bedroom is a glorified closet.

In fact, Petra used it as one, when she lived here.

A year ago, the meager dimensions wouldn’t have been a problem.

As long as I could remember, I’d been a staunch minimalist. From the time my parents separated, Mom and I had moved around a lot, chasing promotions at the bank where she worked, and then, eventually, helping open new branches. We never had professional movers, just the help of whichever guy was trying and failing to score a date with Mom at the time, so I learned to travel light.

I made a sport of figuring out the absolute least amount of things I needed. It helped that I was such a library kid and didn’t have metric tons of annotated paperbacks. Books were the only thing I was gluttonous about, but I didn’t care about owning them so much as absorbing their contents.

Once, before a move in high school, I convinced Mom to do a ceremonial burning of all the A+ tests and papers she’d been stockpiling on our fridge. We turned on the little gas fireplace in the living room—the only thing we both agreed we’d miss about that mildew-riddled apartment—and I started tossing things in.

It was the only time I’d seen her cry. She was my best friend and favorite person in the world, but she wasn’t a soft woman. I’d always thought of her as completely invulnerable.

But that night, watching my old physics test blacken and curl, her eyes welled and she said in a thick voice, “Oh, Daph. Who am I going to be when you go off to college?”

I snuggled closer to her, and she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “You’re still going to be you,” I told her. “The best mom on the planet.”

She kissed me on the head, said, “Sometimes I wish I held on to a little bit more.”

“It’s just stuff,” I reminded her, her own constant refrain.

Life, I’d learned, is a revolving door. Most things that come into it only stay awhile.

The men hell-bent on proving their feelings for Mom eventually gave up and moved on. The friends from the last school who promised to write faded from the rearview in a month or two. The boy who called you every day after one magical summer night outside the Whippy Dipper would return to school in the fall holding someone else’s hand.

There was no point clinging to something that wasn’t really yours. Mom was the only permanent thing in my life, the only thing that mattered.

When she put me on a plane to send me off to undergrad, neither of us cried. Instead we stood hugging each other so long and tight that later, I found a bruise on my shoulder. My entire wardrobe of solid-colored basics fit into one suitcase, and we’d shipped the jute rug we’d found on clearance, along with a mug, bowl, set of silverware, and hot pot, which Mom joked would allow me to make all of my major food groups: tea, Easy Mac, and Top Ramen.

That was two states and five apartments ago. In all that time, I’d managed to accumulate very little clutter.

Then Peter and I moved into the Waning Bay house, with its wraparound porch. That day, he scooped me into his arms, carried me over the threshold, and said three magic words that changed my little minimalist heart forever.

Welcome home, Daphne.

Just like that, something in me relaxed, my gooiest parts oozing out beyond my heretofore carefully maintained boundaries.

Until that moment, I’d carried my life like a handkerchief knapsack at the end of a broom handle, something small and containable I could pick up and move at the drop of a hat. And I never knew what it was I was running from, or to, until he said it.

Home. The word stoked an ember in my chest. Here was the permanence I’d been waiting for. A place that would belong to us. And yes, our uneven financial situations complicated that ownership, but while he paid the bills, I could focus on cozying the place up.

My minimalism went out the window.

Now all that stuff—furniture intended for a three-bedroom house—was stuffed into Miles’s guest room. Furniture wall to wall, all of it butting right up against each other, throw pillows utterly covering my bed, like I was some unhinged Stephen King villain who might handcuff you to the headboard and mother you to death.

I should’ve left all of this shit behind, but I felt too guilty about the money I’d spent, outfitting a home that wasn’t even mine.

Then there was the wedding paraphernalia, shoved into every closet the apartment had, the overpriced dress hanging on the other side of a thin laminate slider door—a telltale heart, a Dorian Gray portrait, a deep dark secret.

In theory, I’m going to sell the dress and the rest of it online, but doing so would require thinking about the wedding, and I’m not there yet.

In fact, I’ve spent the first seven hours of my Saturday morning shift pushing any thought of the Wedding That Never Was out of my mind.

Then my phone buzzes on my desk with a text from Miles: ur working

This is how he texts. With abbreviations, very little context, and no punctuation.

Is he asking me or telling me that I’m working? Neither makes sense. I have a detailed whiteboard calendar in the kitchen where he can clearly see exactly where I’m going to be and when. I check it against my phone calendar nightly, and I invited him to add his own schedule, but he’s never taken me up on it.

Yep, I say.

Another text: U want Thai

I’m guessing that’s another implied question mark, though it’s unclear whether he’s asking about ordering dinner or if it’s more of an existential question.

I’m good, thanks, I write. Every day on my lunch break, I go to one of the three food trucks at the public beach across the street. Saturdays are a burrito day, so I’ll be stuffed for hours.

K, Miles writes.

Then he types some more and stops. I wonder if he’s fishing for an offer to pick up the aforementioned Thai on my way home.

Anything else? I write back.

He replies, I’ll just c u when u get home.

Strange. On Saturdays, he’s usually in his room or out for the night by the time I get back. My phone vibrates again, but it’s just my ten-minute warning for Story Hour. I gather my supplies and head to the sunken-living-room-style Story Nook at the back of the library. Kids and their keepers are already gathering in the little pit, claiming carpet squares or heavily Lysoled gymnastic mats. Some of the older caretakers, grandparents and great-grandparents, ease themselves into the scoop chairs arranged around the outer ring of the nook, the regulars greeting each other.

The library’s back wall of windows bathes the nook in sunlight, and I can already tell who will be nodding off by book two.

Still, a chorus of ridiculous little voices rises as I approach, cries of “Miss Daffy!” and other adorable mispronunciations of my name. In my heart, it feels like little kernels are bursting into fluffy blossoms of popcorn.

One little girl announces, as I walk past, “I’m three!” and I tell her that’s awesome, and ask how old she thinks I am.

After brief consideration, she tells me I’m a teenager.

Last week she said I was one hundred, so I’m taking this as a win. Before I can respond, a four-year-old named Arham I’ve literally never seen not in a Spider-Man costume flings himself at me, hugging my knees.

No matter how foul my mood, Story Hour always helps.

“Sweetie,” Arham’s mother, Huma, says, reaching to peel him away before we topple.

“Who here likes dragons?” I ask, to near-unanimous cheering.

There are a lot of sweet families who’ve become regulars since I started here a year ago, but Huma and Arham are two of my favorites. He’s endlessly energetic and imaginative, and she rides that magical line of keeping firm rules without squashing his little weirdo spirit. Seeing them together always makes my heart ache a little bit.

Makes me miss my own mom.

Makes me miss the life I thought I’d have with Peter, and the rest of the Collinses.

I shake myself out of the cloud of melancholy and settle into my chair with the first of today’s picture books in my lap. “What about tacos?” I ask the kids. “Does anyone like those?”

Somehow, the kids manage even more enthusiasm for tacos than they did for dragons. When I ask if they already knew that dragons love tacos, their shrieks of delight are earsplitting. Arham jumps up, the heels of his sneakers flashing red as he shouts, “Dragons eat people!”

I tell him that some maybe do, but others just eat tacos, and that’s as good of a segue as I’m going to get into Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri.

No part of my week goes as fast as Story Hour does. I get so sucked into it that I usually only remember I’m at work when I close the last book of the day.

Just as I predicted, the energy that greeted me has fizzled, the kids mostly settling into pleasant sleepiness in time to pack it in and head home, except for one of the Fontana triplets, who’s tired enough to devolve into a minor meltdown as her mom is trying to get her and her siblings out the door.

I wave goodbye to the last stragglers, then start tidying the nook, spraying the mats down, gathering trash, returning abandoned books to the front desk to be reshelved.

Ashleigh, the librarian responsible for our adult patrons and programming, slips out from the back office, her gigantic quilted purse slung over one shoulder and her raven topknot jutting slightly to the right.

Despite being a five-foot-tall hourglass of a woman with Disney Princess eyes, Ashleigh is the embodiment of the scary-librarian stereotype. Her voice has the force of a blunt object, and she once told me she “doesn’t mind confrontation” in a tone that made me wonder if maybe we were already in one. She’s the person that our septuagenarian branch manager, Harvey, deploys whenever a difficult patron needs a firm hand.

My first shift working alongside her, a middle-aged guy with a wad of dip in his cheek walked up, stared at her boobs, and said, “I’ve always had a thing for exotic girls.”

Without even looking up from her computer, Ashleigh replied, “That’s inappropriate, and if you speak to me like that again, we’ll have to ban you. Would it be helpful if I printed you some literature about sexual harassment?”

All that to say, I admire and fear her in equal measure.

“You good to lock up?” she asks now, while texting. Another thing about Ashleigh: she’s always late, and usually leaves a bit early. “I have to pick up Mulder from tae kwon do,” she says.

Yes, her son is named after David Duchovny’s character from The X-Files.

Yes, every time I remember this, I inch closer to death.

I’m now old enough to have kids without anyone being scandalized by it.

Hell, I’m old enough to have a daughter named Renesmee on one of those U-5 soccer teams where the kids take turns kicking the ball the wrong way, then sitting down midfield to take off their shoes.

Instead, I’m single and unattached in a place where I only know my coworkers and my ex-fiancé’s inner circle.

“Daphne?” Ashleigh says. “You good?”

“Yep,” I tell her. “You go ahead.”

She nods in lieu of a goodbye. I circle the library one last time, flicking off the fluorescents as I go.

On the drive home, I call my mom on speakerphone. With how busy she is with CrossFit, her book club, and the stained-glass class she’s started taking, we’ve started opting for more, quicker calls these days, rather than twice-a-month hours-long catch-ups.

I tell her about how things are shaping up with planning the library’s end-of-summer fundraiser (ninety-one days to go). She tells me she can now deadlift one hundred and sixty pounds. I tell her about the seventy-year-old patron who asked me to go salsa dancing, and she tells me about the twenty-eight-year-old trainer who keeps trying to find reasons to exchange phone numbers.

“We lead such similar lives,” I muse, parking on the curb.

“I wish. I don’t think Kelvin had salsa dancing in mind or I might’ve said yes,” she says.

“Well, I’m happy to pass along this guy’s number to you, but you should know my coworker Ashleigh calls him Handsy Stanley.”

“You know what, I’m good,” she says. “And I’m also sending you pepper spray.”

“I still have the can you got me in college,” I say. “Unless it expires.”

“Probably just gets better with age,” she says. “I’m almost to book club. What about you?”

I open my car door. “Just got home. Same time Monday?”

“Sounds good,” she says.

“Love you,” I tell her.

“Love you more,” she says quickly, then hangs up before I can argue, a bit she’s done as long as I can remember.

Miles lives on the third floor of a renovated brick warehouse at the edge of Waning Bay, in a neighborhood called Butcher Town. I assume it used to be the city’s meatpacking district, but I’ve never Googled it, so I don’t know, maybe it’s named after an old-timey serial killer.

By the time I climb the stairs and reach the front door, I’m clammy with sweat, and inside I drop my tote and wrestle out of my cardigan before toeing off my loafers. Then I check my phone calendar against the whiteboard. The only thing that’s changed since last night is, I agreed to host the Thrills and Kills book club on Thursday while Landon, the patron services assistant who usually runs it, recovers from his root canal.

I scribble the book club onto the board, then grab a glass and fill it with cold water. As I chug, I amble toward the living room. In the corner of my eye, a sudden movement surprises me so badly I yelp and slosh half my glass onto the rug.

But it’s just Miles. Lying face down on the couch. He groans without so much as lifting his face out of the squashy cushion. His furniture is all comfort, no sex appeal.

“You looked dead,” I tell him, moving closer.

He grumbles something.

“What?” I ask.

“I said I wish,” he mumbles.

I eye the bottle of coconut rum on the table and the empty mug beside it. “Rough day?”

I’d been caught off guard by the Bridget Jones incident three weeks ago, but now it’s almost a relief to see him looking how I’ve spent the last month and a half feeling.

Without lifting his face, he feels around on the coffee table to grab a piece of paper, then holds it aloft.

I walk over and take the delicate square of off-white parchment from his hand. Instantly, he lets his arm flop down to his side. I start reading the elegant script slanting across it.

Jerome & Melly Collins along with

Nicholas & Antonia Comer joyfully invite

you to celebrate the marriage of their children,

Peter & P—

“NO.” I fling the invitation away from me like it’s a live snake.

A live snake that must also be on fire, because suddenly I am so, so, so hot. I take a few steps, fanning myself with my hands. “No,” I say. “This can’t be real.”

Miles sits up. “Oh, it’s real. You got one too.”

“Why the hell would they invite us?” I demand. Of him, of them, of the universe.

He leans forward and tips more coconut rum into his mug, filling it to the brim. He holds it out in offering. When I shake my head, he throws it back and pours some more.

I grab the invitation again, half expecting to realize my brain had merely malfunctioned while I was reading a take-out menu.

It did not.

“This is Labor Day weekend!” I shriek, throwing it away from me again.

“I know,” Miles says. “They couldn’t stop at simply ruining our lives. They had to ruin a perfectly good holiday too. Probably won’t even decorate this year.”

“I mean, this Labor Day,” I say. “Like, only a month after our wedding.”

Miles looks up at me, genuine concern contorting his face. “Daphne,” he says. “I think that ship sailed when he fucked my girlfriend, then took her to Italy for a week so he didn’t have to help you pack.”

I’m hyperventilating now. “Why would they get married this fast? We had, like, a two-year engagement.”

Miles shudders as he swallows more rum. “Maybe she’s pregnant.”

The apartment building sways. I sink onto the couch, right atop Miles’s calves. He fills the mug again, and this time, when he holds it out for me, I down it in one gulp. “Oh my god,” I say. “That’s gross.”

“I know,” he says. “But it’s the only hard liquor I had. Should we switch to wine?”

I look over at him. “I didn’t have you pegged for a wine guy.”

He stares at me.

“What?”

His tipsy-squinting eyes narrow further. “Can’t tell if you’re kidding.”

“No?” I say.

“I work at a winery, Daphne,” he says.

“Since when?” I say, disbelieving.

“For the last seven years,” he says. “What did you think I did?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I thought you were a delivery guy.”

“Why?” He shakes his head. “Based on what?”

“I don’t know!” I say. “Can I just have some wine?”

He pulls his legs out from under me and stands, crossing to the kitchen. Through the gap between the island and the upper cabinets, I watch him dig through a cupboard I’m realizing I’ve absolutely never opened. The slice of it that I can see from here is filled with elegant glass bottles: white wine, pink, orange, red. He grabs two, then comes back to flop down beside me, pulling a corkscrew key chain off his belt loop.

The windows are open, and it’s starting to sprinkle, the day’s humidity breaking as he pops the cork from one bottle and hands the whole thing to me.

“No glass?” I say.

“You think you’ll need one?” he asks, working the other bottle’s cork free.

My eyes wander toward the expensive card-stock invitation still lying on Miles’s threadbare kilim rug. “Guess not.”

He clinks his bottle to mine and takes a long drink. I do the same, then wipe a drip of wine from my chin with the back of my hand.

“You really didn’t know I worked at a winery?” he says.

“Zero idea,” I say. “Peter made it sound like you do a ton of odd jobs.”

“I do a few different things,” he says noncommittally. “In addition to working at a winery. Cherry Hill. You’ve never been?” He looks up at me.

I shake my head and take another sip.

The corners of his mouth twitch downward. “He never liked me, did he?”

“No,” I admit. “What about Petra? Did she hate my guts?”

He frowns at his wine bottle. “No. Petra pretty much likes everyone, and everyone likes Petra.”

“I don’t,” I say. “I don’t like Petra even one tiny bit.”

He looks up at me through a half-formed smile. “Fair.”

“She never . . .” I twist my feet down in between the bottom seat cushions and the back ones. “I don’t know, acted jealous of me? Did you have any idea she was . . . into him?”

Another wry, not-quite-happy smile as he turns in toward me. “I mean, yeah, sometimes I wondered. Of course. But they’d been best friends since they were kids. I couldn’t compete with that, so I left it alone and hoped it wouldn’t be a problem.”

Somehow, out of everything, that’s what does it: I start to cry.

“Hey.” Miles moves closer. “It’s okay. It’s . . . fuck.” He pulls me roughly into his chest, his wine bottle still hanging from his hand. He kisses the top of my head like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

In actuality, it’s the first time he’s touched me, period. I’ve never been super physically affectionate with even my close friends, but I have to admit that after weeks of exactly no physical contact, it feels nice to be held by a near–perfect stranger.

“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “It’s unbelievably fucked.” He smooths my hair back with his free hand as I cry into his T-shirt, which smells only very faintly of weed, and much more of something spicy and woodsy.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should’ve thrown the invitation away. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

“No.” I draw back, wiping my eyes. “I get it. You didn’t want to be alone with it.”

His gaze drops guiltily. “I should’ve kept it to myself.”

“I would’ve done the same thing,” I say. “I promise.”

“Still,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I insist. “You’re not the one marrying Petra instead of me.”

He winces a little.

“Shit! Now I’m sorry,” I say.

He shakes his head as he sits back from me. “I just need a minute,” he says, avoiding my gaze. He turns his head to stare out the window.

Oh, god. He’s crying now too. Or trying very hard not to. Shit, shit, shit.

“Miles!” I’m in a panic. It’s been a while since I comforted someone.

“I just need a second,” he repeats. “I’m fine.”

“Hey!” I crawl across the couch toward him and take his face in my hands, proof that the wine has hit my bloodstream.

Miles looks up at me.

“They,” I say, “suck.”

“She’s the love of my life,” he says.

“The love of your life sucks,” I tell him.

He fights a smile. There’s something adorable about it, so puppyish that I find myself tempted to ruffle his already messy hair. When I do, his smile just barely slants up. The movement makes his dark eyes glimmer.

It’s been six weeks since I last had sex—by no means a personal record—but at his expression, I feel a surprising zing of awareness between my thighs.

Miles is handsome, if not the kind of man to make your jaw drop and hands sweat on sight. That was Peter—TV handsome, Mom called it. The kind that knocks you off balance from the start.

Miles is the other kind. The kind that’s disarming enough that you don’t feel nervous talking to him, or like you need to show your best angle, until—wham! Suddenly, he’s smiling at you with his messy hair and impish smirk, and you realize his hotness has been boiling around you so slowly you missed it.

Also, he smells better than expected.

Counterpoint: he’s my roommate and was just crying over the love of his life.

There are surely more pragmatic ways to take our minds off this mess. “Do you want to watch Bridget Jones’s Diary?” I offer.

“No.” He shakes his head and I release my hold on his face, surprised how my heart flags at the rejection, or maybe just the thought of shuffling to my bedroom to be alone with these feelings.

“We shouldn’t mope,” he goes on, with another shake of his head.

“But I’m getting so good at it,” I whine.

“Let’s go out,” he says.

“Out?” It sounds like I’ve never even heard the word before. “Out where?”

Miles stands, stretching a hand out to me. “I know a place.”