Fight

Actually, she’s not sure if there’s any consequences in doing so. It’s pasta, she can’t possibly mess it up. If she does, she sure as heck doesn’t deserve to be amused by video clips of Hell’s Kitchen, which still pop up on her YouTube feed every now and again.

She doesn’t add the pasta, not yet. There’s no rolling boil, and the phantom hands of someone bigger grip her impatient toddler ones. It’s not time yet, the phantom whispers, and she nods. She knows.

Footsteps sound in the hallway, and she perks up, but she knows it’s not him, not yet. Those footsteps are too patterned, too heavy, too broken with intermittent pants. He walks like he plays basketball, dances his feet across the court, and even when he’s tired there’s still a light bounce to his step, as though he waits for a ball. The world won’t ever throw him a ball. Still, he bounces, and she waits in the kitchen for water to boil.

The pullout couch in the living room is his, thrown in when they ended up in an apartment together, stuck somewhere with nowhere else to go. He had a couch and she had some money, and together they make do. The couch is lumpy and old, and only a single step up from the kind of couches people leave forlorn on the side of the road, but at least it's clean. She vacuumed it earlier, while she waited for him to come home.

Usually they barter over who’s turn it is to do chores. Sometimes things make sense. He’s the better cook, she hates dealing in the kitchen. He would rather die than clean a toilet; as long as it’s decent enough she doesn’t think it’s so bad. It’s just a toilet, the porcelain bowel still relatively clean, and neither of them spend enough time in the apartment for it to be stained, for it to get dirty. She scrubs it like she scrubs everything else, fleetingly, jumping from one thing to the next, while she daydreams of being in a relationship, daydreams of owning a house. Scrubbing the toilet makes her nostalgic, and sometimes she wonders if the decisions that led her here were the right ones. The water finally comes to a boil that satisfies. She estimates with her fingers, then shakes the quarter box of leftover pasta into the pot. It’ll do, and if he’s still hungry there’s baby carrots in the mini fridge. Having a bigger fridge would be pointless. He only cooks once or twice a week, and the other days they thrive on lifting meals off of friends and fighting over which day serves which kind of takeout.

The key sounds in the front door, and only years of practice stop her from startling. He pushes open the door soundlessly, and she wonders when he stopped tapping beats on the doorknob.

“Are you cooking?” he asks, two backpacks balanced between his arms.

“Oh just sit down.”

He sits at the only table they own, under the other hanging plant that is definitely her fault. His fingers remain still, and he glances at the TV every now and then.

She pulls out one of five mismatched forks and tests the pasta. Still not done. It’s too firm, too hard, and she has to chew the gritty piece between her teeth. She catches him looking at her, and shakes her head before he even opens his mouth. She is cooking tonight. He is sitting down and doing nothing except for talking.

Finally, finally, the pasta finishes and four pieces come out clean and al dente. She dumps the whole pot into the strainer, and waits for the water to drain. It makes a horribly loud noise as it echoes down the sink pipes, and they both wince and imagine the face of their grumpy neighbor. She scoops it onto two plates and brings over the Parmesan cheese and some more olive oil, and dumps everything on the crooked table in front of him.