Fight

She waits with a watchful eye, staring at the pasta. It doesn’t boil.

Pacing back and forth across the empty kitchen with the useless pots and pans still in the creaky cupboard, she adds another pinch of salt to the pasta. It still doesn’t boil.

She thinks about putting on a bit of music while she waits, but the downstairs neighbors hate when she does that, and she can’t remember where she last left her headphones. They might be in her coat pocket or they might not, perhaps she left them on top of the back bed in the room with the leftover textbooks. Or maybe she didn’t, maybe she left them hanging off the tiny coat rack, right next to her keys. Wherever she left them it’s too much work to run and find them, especially when the pot might boil soon.

As soon as it boils, she’ll put the pasta in. As soon as it boils.

The tiny apartment is only temporary, and the only burner fizzles on her. She coaxes it, fights it, begs it to make a bigger flame but it does not, settling proudly for the dull little spark that it is. Blowing on a flame coaxes a campfire; she wonders if it’ll help the stove. Probably not. She watches the blue flame dance and stares right through it.

Her phone lights up. She has a notification, another message she’s not going to read. Why bother, when she knows exactly what it will say? Still, she checks the name. She reads the first two letters and flips the phone over, wincing as it lands a bit too hard on the counter. Fortunately, it’s not cracked. Unfortunately, that part of the counter is still covered in uncleaned bacon grease from his disaster yesterday, and now her phone is too.

The television buzzes a commercial from the living area, or whatever passes as such. She cranes her neck to check the ad, but it's not selling anything good, just some sort of medical plan for old people, the kind of thing she couldn't afford even if she chopped off both arms and sold them. When she left home, she swore up and down she wasn’t ever going to be the kind of person who left the TV on. She wasn’t going to eat in front of it, didn’t even need a good model really, just something to use to occasionally watch old cartoons and maybe a new show if he wanted to. Now, the TV is always on, always buzzing, always saying something, just a little too quiet to hear.

The pot on the stove is still not boiling. She thinks she remembered to top the water off with cold water, but maybe she didn’t. She wonders if throwing in a tablespoon or two now will change anything. Probably not; her greasy phone buzzes again. She flips it over, checks the name, and turns it back down. He’s not going to write her. She knows that. Still, she checks, just in case.

Banana bread would probably be a smart thing to make, if they are going to have the conversation they need to have. But banana bread has to bake for a minimum of forty five minutes, plus the time it takes for the oven to heat up, longer than it should with the awful rattling noise anytime she requests a temperature above 250 degrees, and there’s the cooling time to consider too. Pasta would do, pasta would work, if only the water would boil. If only.

He’ll be home soon. Tiny bubbles begin to come up from the bottom of the pot, but not big enough, not hot enough. She waits, fidgeting with the coarse tips of her hair.

When he comes home, she’s going to break their little routine and meet him in the living room. She’ll meet him in the living room and look into his eyes and wait for him to break first. He will. She'll make him.

She glances halfheartedly at the little plant on the windowsill while she waits. One of them picked up the plant, where or when she doesn’t know, but one of them did and it’s always been there. It’s a tiny succulent with little round leaves, the kind that doesn’t need too much water, and is perfect for a household where two people forget basic things. Last week they forgot to buy toilet paper, and the group chat blew up with their friends lecturing them both on the ethics of self-care. If it was a college course, they would've failed it long ago.

The tiny bubbles are a bit bigger now, and she adds a little dollop of olive oil to keep the pasta from sticking. It falls into the pot in one big drop, then separates as the bubbles break it, into one spot, then two, then four, then more. She watches the oil dance and fight itself, making clouds and sheep and spots, and wonders if she can get away with adding the pasta to the water early.