Luna

  I stared down at my monitor, clicking the refresh button just in case a new listing had become avaible since I’d loaded the website thirty seconds earlier.

  No luck…

  Because I checked them almost every day, it felt like the apartments up for rent were static, refusing to budge even as my life slowly became unrecognisable compared to just a handful of weeks ago.

  Sure, I still had the same job and was still living in an apartment with my girlfriend, but it was a different apartment and a different girlfriend. Even through this change, however, my prospects for moving out were the same: either I’d have to endure a commute over an hour both ways, or I’d have to quit my job and move away entirely.

  Perhaps the tter wouldn’t be such a bad escape pn for when Sarah inevitably dumped me and kicked me out.

  I huffed a sigh as I closed out the tab and spun my chair around to the door so I could head towards the break room and eat my lunch. I didn’t encounter anyone on the way over, nor did I bother poking my head into any of the offices I passed.

  In the break room I strode over to the freezer where my week’s worth of frozen meals was, pulled one out, and slipped it into the microwave with the practice that came with unchanging routine; if I never changed what I ate for lunch, I never had to waste brain power on it.

  My thoughts drifted back to the impending doom surrounding my living situation while the dirty gss pte spun in the humming microwave.

  Even if this retionship had started differently than my others – given that we were living together before starting to date – I had no reason to think it would end any differently. Every person I dated did the same thing: they’d tell me how cute my awkwardness was in the beginning, but eventually, either when we’d spent enough time together or after we moved in together, they’d start getting annoyed.

  As they discovered more and more of my idiosyncrasies, it was inevitable that at least one would rub them the wrong way, and they’d compin about it or ask me to change. Regardless of how it went down, there would be new friction and suddenly all of the weird things I said and did weren’t cute, they were annoying, and then I’d get dumped.

  And yes, of course I had things I could work on to be a better person and a better partner, but I couldn’t change the fact that I needed routine, I couldn’t change the fact that it's difficult for me to read other people’s emotions, nor could I change the existence of habits I don’t notice.

  So my retionship, the one I’d just started with my best friend – whose apartment I lived in and whose sister was one of my only other IRL friends – was already on a timer. But the idea of leaving the city that had become so familiar to me, of quitting the job that I’d tried so hard to get used to, of losing the longest mainstays in my life?

  “Damn, what am I doing?” I cursed under my breath, stabbing a fork into the steaming tray of slop that had come out of the microwave and stirring.

  A cleared throat from across the stark white room brought my gaze up, passing over the flimsy chair and tables in front of me as I leaned against the counter. One of my coworkers, someone in another department, was watching me while leaning up against the opposite counter, near the coffee machine.

  He was tall and broad, his pursed lips almost looking like a pucker above the purple and pink striped tie. Based on the white button up and bck pants, he was probably from one of the more business-focused departments, but I couldn’t recall which one.

  Is his name Adam…? Or was that the name of someone in the book I was reading?

  After a moment of silence had passed, and his expression remained frozen, I spoke, sending him a questioning look. “Can I help you?”

  “Just checking on you, Luna, you were making quite a bit of noise over there,” he answered, as if that expined anything.

  “Sorry,” I responded. I’d learned long ago that it was much more efficient to apologise when someone pointed out something I was doing rather than admit I had no idea what they were talking about.

  Thankfully, he simply nodded and left the room after refilling his coffee, eliciting a sigh of relief out of me. I finished up my own lunch break and shuffled back into my office before anyone else could talk to me.

  Between thinking about the constantly changing requirements for the project I was coding and thinking about the prospect of losing my best friend, I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  —

  Regardless of where I lived or who I lived with, walking through my front door after work was always an event.

  When I lived alone I had to contend with the pile of things I hadn’t managed to fit into my routine: the undry left undone, the ck of food in my pantry. On the other hand, when I was living with someone else, those chores all still needed to be done – unless my roommate was a literal angel like Sarah was – and I had to keep my social face up until it was time for bed and I could finally unwind.

  There were plenty of days where I just felt like colpsing into indistinct goo next to my cat and letting my worries float off like unheard radio signals propagating endlessly across the cosmos…

  But humans weren’t supposed to act like that, at least not as functioning cogs in the machine, so ever since I’d left the hellhole that was my parents’ house, the nightly step across the threshold into my apartment was accompanied by a heavy sigh, one that said that there was always more work to be done.

  This time, however, on the day after I started dating my best friend, I was surprised to find that the usual resigned dread was missing.

  I was never the best at figuring out what emotions were running through me, needing a lot of time to turn over a feeling in my hands before I could get a decent bel for it, but the inexplicable smile forcing itself onto my face and the giddy bounce propelling my steps forwards as I dropped my bag and crept towards the back of my oblivious girlfriend painted a signal that even I wasn’t stupid enough to miss.

  As I got closer to Sarah, my breaths, quick with anticipation and full of the aroma of the sauce she was simmering, shallowed, each quiet puff threatening to give me away. Once I was within reach of her back I stilled, taking a moment to appreciate her form and stifling a giggle as her tail wagged behind her, barely avoiding brushing me.

  In one motion I took a step forwards and poked my fingers into Sarah’s sides, delighting in the jolt and gasp I forced out of her, but that happiness quickly shrivelled when I wondered if I’d gotten carried away – it wasn’t like this was something I’d done before with her.

  She spun around in the narrow space between the kitchen counter and my body, a petunt look on her face that I couldn’t determine the seriousness of.

  Even as I worried about a potential rebuke from her, I imagined going further and taking pleasure in the body that, not long ago, I’d thought was impossible and even more recently, I’d thought I was doomed to admire from afar for the rest of my life.

  I pictured pressing forwards, pinning Sarah to the counter with my hips, and taking a fistful of her hair to keep her head still while I fucked her mouth with my tongue. An involuntary shiver ran through me as I held myself back, the desire to love Sarah with all of my being almost overpowering my desire to make sure she continued liking me by avoiding doing anything dumb.

  “You scared me,” she pouted, eyes turned up at mine.

  “Sorry…” It suddenly became much easier to hold myself back when she turned her ire towards me.

  Her eyebrows danced down and then up before her expression changed altogether, shifting too fast for me to read. “No, sorry… I’m not actually mad.” She sighed, turning her eyes to the side and fixing them to the corner. “I actually like that you’re comfortable enough with me to touch me so casually, I was just trying to tease you.”

  “Oh.” And now I had no idea what I was feeling as the lingering apprehension faded and I stood inches away from Sarah, absolutely no clue what I was doing. “I– Well–” I stammered, eventually pointing behind me towards the door. “Bag,” I finished, turning away and retrieving my bag, avoiding Sarah’s gaze as I stashed it in our room.

  By the time I came back, after taking a moment out of sight to take a few deep breaths, Sarah had returned her focus to whatever it was that she was cooking.

  I stood out of view for a moment, watching her, before speaking up. “So what’re you making…?” Despite the mundanity of the question, my delivery was somehow unsure, as if I was questioning if I was even allowed to ask in the first pce.

  Sarah turned to me and her lips twitched, doing a little dance above her mouth. “Just veggies and pasta, it’ll be ready when this stupid sauce finally finishes reducing.” She rolled her eyes and went back to stirring, her movements carrying a rhythm with them that implied a hidden song pying in her mind.

  “Okay,” I muttered, more to myself than to her, and steered myself over to the couch. As I plopped down into the worn cushions, a resounding sense of ‘now what?’ flowed through me.

  How was I supposed to act around Sarah?

  Sure, I’d spent time around her for years, in more contexts than I could count, but how was I supposed to be her girlfriend? I’d dated before, but none of my exes were Sarah. It was like the difference between doing a speedrun segment in practice and doing it on world record pace. No, even that was an understatement; it was more like doing it while on pace to break a minute barrier, in a marathon setting, with the fate of humanity resting on your shoulders.

  Point was that I had a lot of pressure to not mess things up. I had a propensity to say and do thoughtless things or miss obvious social cues, and that would be unacceptable with so much on the line.

  So with all of that said, what was the result? What was the actual action I took after all of my pontificating and simile-ing?

  Well, the only way to avoid doing something dumb would be to not do anything at all, right?

  “Um, so how is it?” Sarah asked me from across the table, her words piercing a long silence.

  I nodded, responding, “It’s good,” before returning my attention to the food, moving carefully curated forkfuls into my mouth with efficiency.

  A few moments ter I was standing up and carrying my bowl over to the sink, scanning the kitchen for what else I needed to clean up before I could escape for a moment of solitude. What that would accomplish beyond giving me a short window where it would be impossible to make a mistake with Sarah, I wasn’t sure, but if I was going to figure out a better pn, I needed a clear head and a quiet room.

  Unfortunately for me, my girlfriend had other ideas, finishing her own meal just as I finished washing the pots and pans she’d used to cook. “So did you want to watch a movie or something?” she asked, watching me carefully.

  I nodded. “Sure, whatever you want, just give me a minute to change out of my work clothes.”

  “What’d you want to watch?” she called after me.

  I turned back in the hall to respond, “Whatever you want, go wild.”

  “What if I want to watch straight romance?”

  “Sounds lovely,” I lied, continuing my way to our bedroom so I could throw on some PJ’s. As soon as the door shut behind me I blew out a sigh and groaned.

  Being in a retionship is hard.