“Babe,” he says. “I’m glad you’re home.” He comes over to me in the kitchen. “Not to be a dick, but I’ve been meaning to ask. Did you smoke all the weed? Because that’s not chill…” He rubs his face. “And yo, did you kill the rest of my ginger ice cream…？”
“What?” I’m blindsided by his gall. “Are you serious?”
“It’s a seasonal flavor,” he explains gravely. “They only made, like, thirty pints. It’s for tastemakers. I’m supposed to social it.”
“I saw your article,” I snap. He takes a half step. I wonder if he’s always had such weak shoulders. If they’ve always sloped at this unbecoming, defeated angle from his neck.
“The reporter was a moron,” he says, pulling out his phone. I know he’s checking how the post is doing. “And thanks for sending the photo,” he says sarcastically. “It would have taken you a second. I wouldn’t even mind you eating all my special stuff, but the least you could—”
“You have to fucking leave my house,” I tell him.
His tiny peanut head jerks back. “Now, hold on,” he says, palming the air between us. His attention flicks down to his thumbed screen one final time as he pointedly puts it facedown on the coffee table.
His expression hardens when I roll my eyes. “You owe me twenty-one hundred dollars in rent,” I continue. “And I don’t know what the fuck happened to your precious limited-edition douchehole ice cream.”
The lie comes out smooth. It was delicious. Especially when I was high on his weed.
“Wait a minute—” He stammers.
I cut him off again. “I’m kicking you out.”
I shuck off my sneakers and head for the bedroom, but as I do, a single, hot tear crests over the ridge of my right eye and tumbles. I brush it away and sniff hard. He gives me a simpering look as I push past him, misreading my traitorous rage-tear.
“Is this about the other night?” He reaches for me, but I shake him off, pulling the suitcase from the closet. “When I had… company?” A belabored sigh. “You knew I’ve been seeing people. Polyamory is important to me. I’ve been abundantly clear on my truth.”
I pull out two blazers, a tangle of cardigans, and some silky things for going out. Jeremy’s dirty clothes are in my white plastic hamper, so I shake them out and slide his flannel shirts off my flat black velvet hangers and drop them in heaps.
“What are you doing?” he calls from the hall. “You don’t have to be an asshole.”
I drag the suitcase and the hamper filled with hangers, backing into him forcefully. I start packing in the living room.
“Can’t we talk about this?”
I turn to glare just as he brightens, as if struck with a genius idea. “We can switch,” he declares, nodding toward the couch that I’ve been sleeping on for the past few nights. “I’ll take the sofa.” Then he smiles indulgently. “Look, it’s healthy for us to move through this. Honestly, living with you hasn’t been good for me, either, what with the hostility and the silence. You know she was just some Raya chick.”
That’s when I tune out. I lose myself in the packing. I love packing. Always have. When I was little, I was constantly gathering hobo bags with Mom’s tablecloths and scarves, tying them to the end of broomsticks, filling them with snacks and toys. Mom would always remark on how keen I was to leave.
Later, I’d laugh at her hypocrisy.
The packing isn’t as tidy as I’d like. My school books take up half the suitcase. The Spacesaver bags are in the high closet, and I’d sooner eat my own eyes than ask Jeremy for help. I mash everything together and zip it up. I head to the kitchen with the hamper and press every Trader Joe’s cooler bag I have into service.
“Jesus, what is with you and food?” I unzip the first bag. “You’re lying about the fucking ice cream. I know it. The way you lie about my cereal. Bread, Beyond Burgers, everything. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you talk like an adult? You don’t get to shut down right now. Jayne. Jayne? God dammit. This is important. Look at me.”
There’s a lot to do in the pantry. I grab sesame seeds, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, Chinkiang vinegar, red chili flakes, soy sauce, fish sauce, and seaweed. I seize both Maggi sauces, the giant Jeroboam one and the mini because I deserve them.
I pop open the fridge, removing every banchan and condiment. Prepared Korean food is extortionate, so I hoard it like a pepper flake coveting Gollum. Every kimchi jar, even the wack white cabbage garbage that hipsters eat for the probiotics, the preserved dried squid, the marinated soybeans, seasoned radish, the fermented bean paste, frozen dumplings, frozen rice cakes, and the stupid fucking frozen edamame that I buy from Trader Joe’s to illustrate a point even when Jeremy keeps ordering edamame from Seamless for eight bucks, and splitting the bill down the middle when he’s done.
“How many times have I told you, it’s the same fucking soybeans.” I wave the bag of pods in his face. “Japanese curry comes from a brick. Restaurant udon isn’t from scratch, either. Jesus.”
Why is he so dense? I take the almond milk and his oat coffee creamer.
On my tiptoes, I fling open the snack cupboard and hit pay dirt. I grab the economy-size five-pack brick of Shin Ramyun Black by the corner of the plastic bag and fling it onto the counter.
“You’re not taking that,” he says, stepping closer, trapping me between him and the counter behind me. He’s wearing his Birkenstocks in the house, which he swears he doesn’t wear outside when he totally does. “I bought it. You don’t even eat ramyun anymore, remember? It makes you bloated.”
That he calls it ramyun, the way Koreans pronounce it, sets me aflame. I shudder at Jeremy’s entire schtick. The way he was so proud of how he knew how to use chopsticks before we met. Or how showy he was about loving spicy food until the time we got hot pot and he ordered stunt-spice levels and had fire shits for a week. Plus, he’s constantly passing off my tastes as his own. I overheard him tell a girl that Kinokuniya was his favorite bookstore though he’d never even heard of it until I took him.
“Are you breaking up with me?” He runs his hand through his hair, riffling it out a little. This tic of preening almost makes me shudder. Watching him self-consciously finger his eroding hairline disgusts me. I let him see my revulsion.
“I can’t break up with you,” I tell him, shoving everything into bags. “We obviously aren’t together. It’s like how you can’t fire me.”
“Wow,” he drawls. “Okay. But you’re legally obligated to give me time. I paid rent.”
“You paid rent once. Two months ago. It’s October.” I’m light-headed that we’re finally talking about money again.
“You have to give me at least thirty days,” he says crisply. “It’s New York law.”
“I’ll give you a week.”
He nods at the neck of the bottle sticking out of my blue tote. “Maggi’s European, you know. Knorr’s Swiss.”
I can practically hear the fissure in my brain. It’s as if every splinter of frustration from every nonconfrontational moment in my entire life forms this dense thorny morning star of rage that I’m desperate to hurl at him.