“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, absolutely. We’ve been together for two years now; it’s about time.”

The apartment was small, she thought. Ridiculously small, in fact, and their boxes were filling it to the point where it was a squeeze just to get in the front door. Was this really the best they could do?

From the bedroom she heard him cursing, and sighed. Yes, she loved him, and yes, he was an angry pain in the ass. “What is it now?” she called.

“I can’t find it,” he called back. “I remember putting it in one of my bedroom boxes, and it isn’t here!”

“What are you even looking for?”

“My toothbrush!”

This was starting to give her a headache. “Your toothbrush? We can buy a new one.”

“No! It’s a waste of money.”

This wasn’t a conversation she was going to continue, and she turned back to her own boxes. They were going to have to get rid of a whole lot of stuff, and it was probably going to be mostly her stuff. She was a little worried when he realized how many boxes were filled with her clothes. And shoes.

They hadn’t really talked about possessions when the conversation came up to move in together; it had mostly revolved around money (mostly brought up by him), and the idea that if they were both paying rent on one apartment, they’d have a lot more money left over to enjoy life. It had certainly seemed tempting at the time.

In which case, she wasn’t quite sure why their apartment was so small. It was in a nicer part of town, yes, but not that nice. There were still beggars on the corner — just not prostitutes.

She took the last pile of plates out of the box and put them on top of another pile of plates which were balanced on a tea tray that hung half off the edge of the kitchen counter, then tossed the box onto the floor. Shelby screeched.

“Sorry!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t see you there. Can’t you keep out of the way for now?”

Shelby mewed disapproval and scowled at her, and slunk back to the windowsill. It had taken a lot of convincing to get him to accept her cat. Her pussy, as he vulgarly called him sometimes. She hated him when he did that. He wasn’t allergic — he just didn’t much like cats. It didn’t really matter though, because Shelby didn’t much like him.

She reflected that they weren’t even supposed to have him here. The landlady had a bizarre rule forbidding male pets. Technically, Shelby wasn’t really a boy anymore, but she didn’t think the landlord would debate the difference. They just called him Shelly when she was around.

She stripped and flatted the box, and started on a new one. Damn, there really wasn’t much room.

Suddenly, there was a cry from the bedroom, and he burst out, holding some little box in his hands. […]

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If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was a setup. Considering where things ended up leading, it might as well have been. All of it, just to meet that one girl.

Marlon was crazy. He owned a huge apartment in the expensive part of the city, and no one really knew where he got the money; he worked at a divorce attorney office, the kind that don’t require a spouse’s signature. He had first met Marlon when he still worked at the big law firm, and he’d fallen in with him right away – the guy knew how to throw a party.

He never quite figured out why Marlon left; something to do with his boss, who Marlon had never really liked. In his mind, that didn’t really justify leaving a cushy job with an almost infinite upward path for a downtown crap shack that got people out of your life for $300. There was no way he was making any decent money there, even if they kept things off the books (which was pretty likely). It didn’t change a thing; he’d kept the apartment, the expensive TV and white leather couches, and he still threw mad parties.

Most of the people who’d shown up were young urbanites fresh out of college (some still in college), starting their career and living the good life in a big city. There was always something to do on a Saturday night, and apparently this was the thing to do this night. There must have been fifty people crammed into that apartment, and there was wine and champagne and expensive beer. The music was loud, the people were louder, and there was a lot of laughter, a lot of joking, and a whole lot of flirting.

He’d come because Marlon had invited him; he liked the atmosphere, when people started getting hammered, when their hair and their guards came down. A lot of the girls were single, and it was a good place to pick someone up (or get laid, if the mood was right). At any given time, there was something or other going on in the bedroom.

Tonight, though, he wasn’t really all that into it. He’d just come off the back of a week of fifteen-hour days, and frankly was planning to stay an hour, get wasted, and go back to his apartment to sleep for twenty-four hours straight.

He’d secured himself a comfy seat in a corner near the windows, having made sure it was only big enough for one. He had a glass of scotch in his hand – no ice – and had surreptitiously liberated the bottle from the little bar shelf in the open-plan kitchen. If he didn’t finish it, he told himself, he’d be taking it with him. It was Marlon’s, and it was expensive, and he didn’t give a shit. […]

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My parents are divorced, and that’s probably all you need to know about me. They split when I was seven, and it kind of fucked me up. I never thought it was all my fault like everyone wants to believe – they both talked to me a lot about it. It was my dad’s fault, and we all know it. My feelings were a lot more complicated, and I guess I still haven’t got it all worked out.

My dad’s an alcoholic. I guess I didn’t really know what that meant when I was seven. He just drank a lot of beer, which is what I thought all dads were supposed to do. Maybe he didn’t know what it meant, either. Either way, what I do remember is that he and mom fought a lot, and she’d scream at him just as much as he did. He never beat her – he never laid a hand on either of us – but I always got scared when they fought, and I’d hide in my room and cry.

I never felt like it was my fault, but I did feel guilty. When dad took a day off work and we hung out, we had such good times that I thought days with dad were what the world was made for. Sometimes it was just a simple trip to the park; sometimes he took me into the city and we’d go to a museum. Not the boring kind, though – he knew the ones that had dinosaur bones and medieval armor and children’s boots from a hundred years ago. Sometimes, on a rainy day, we’d just stay at home all day and play Monopoly and listen to heavy metal.

And my mom…she was just there. She was there when I needed her, and there when I didn’t. Sometimes she was there even though I didn’t want her to be; I still hate cleaning my room. My mom was the one I talked to when Keila tripped me in the hallway and laughed when my stockings split right in the back.  She was the one who made a cake for me when Jess didn’t invite me to her birthday. She was the one who screamed down the phone at Rob’s parents because he called me a bitch, even though I didn’t know what it meant.

It wasn’t the last time I’d be called that.

No; I love my parents, and I’m pretty sure they love me too. The reason I felt so guilty about the divorce is that there wasn’t anything I could do. My parents had always told me I could do anything I put my mind to, and here was something I couldn’t do anything about. Nothing. […]

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