“The Nationals. What sport?”
“Ah . . .” I glance around the kitchen, looking for clues. Find a grand total of none. “I have no idea.”
Liam dunks a tea bag in his mug, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “Me, neither.”
We leave the room from opposite doors. I wonder whether he’s aware that we almost smiled at each other.
Five
Four months, two weeks ago
I look out the window, trying to use my engineering degree to approximate how many meters of snow fell overnight. One? Seventeen? Sadly, there was no Ballpark How Snowbound You Are 101 in my grad school curriculum, so I give up to glance down at my phone.
There’s no way I can make it to work, and my entire team at the EPA is in the same situation. Sean’s car is stuck in his driveway. Alec, Josh, and Evan can’t even make it to their driveway. Ted is on his fifth joke about extreme weather events. The Slack channel pings with a few more messages cursing all forms of precipitation, and then Sean makes the call that we all should just work from home. Accessing the secure server from our EPA-issued laptops. Which for me is a bit of a problem.
So I text Sean:
Mara: Sean, I don’t have my EPA-issued laptop at home with me.
Sean: Why?
Mara: You haven’t issued me one yet.
Sean: I see.
Sean: Well, you can just take the day to answer emails and stuff like that, then. We’re just going to try to fix the electrostatic sprayer issue today, so we don’t really need you.
Sean: And next time make sure to remind me that you don’t have a laptop yet.
How passive-aggressive would it be to forward to Sean the reminder email I sent him two days ago? Very, I imagine.
I sigh, text a quick Will do, and try not to grind my teeth over the fact that I’d love to give my input on the electrostatic sprayer issue. It’s actually closely related to my graduate work, but who am I kidding? Even if I were present, Sean would act like he always does: politely hum at my contributions, find a trivial reason to discard them, and fifteen minutes later paraphrase and restate them as his own ideas. Ted, my closest ally in the team, tells me not to take it too personally, because Sean’s a jerk to pretty much everyone. But I know I’m not imagining that his most egregious behavior is always directed at me （“I wonder why,” I muse to myself, stroking my woman-in-STEM chin）。 But Sean’s the team leader, so . . .
Did I say that I love my new EPA job? Maybe I lied. Or maybe I do love it, but I hate Sean more. Hard to tell.
I spend the day doing what work I can without access to classified information—i.e., very little. I briefly FaceTime with Sadie, but she’s on a deadline for some hippy-dippy eco-sustainable project （“I haven’t slept in thirty-eight hours. Please, tie an anvil to my neck and drop me in the Sargasso Sea.”）， Hannah is unreachable （probably frolicking with the walruses on a slab of ice）， and . . . That’s it. I don’t really have any other friends.
I should probably work on that.
By one p.m. I am mortally bored. I nap; I watch a YouTube video on the plate arrangement of the stegosaurus; I paint my nails a pretty red matte color; I write a half-assed post for my Bachelor blog on my expectations for the next season; I practice braiding my hair in a crown; I wonder whether I’m a workaholic, decide that I probably am.
I can’t remember the last time I was inside all day. I’ve always been a bit restless, a bit too antsy. Much too active, my parents would say as they tried to enroll me in every possible team sport to keep me busy. They aren’t bad people, but I doubt they wanted a kid, and I know for sure that they weren’t fans of whatever changes my arrival brought to their lifestyle. Probably the reason they were never huge fans. We talk maybe once or twice a year now—and I’m always the one who calls.
Oh well.
I lean my forehead against the chilly glass of the window, feeling an odd sense of isolation, as though I’m disconnected from the entire world, swaddled in a muffled white cocoon.
I should start dating again.
Should I start dating again?
Yeah. I should. Except that . . . men. No, thank you. I am well aware that #NotAllMen are condescending shitlets like Sean, and I’ve had my share of perfectly nice boyfriends who didn’t feel the need to Actually me when I tried to have a conversation. But even at their best, all my romantic relationships felt like work. In a way Sadie and Hannah and Helena never did. In a way actual work never did. And for what? Sex? Jury’s still out on whether I even care about that.
Maybe I should skip the dating and just visit Sadie in NYC as soon as the weather gets better. Yeah, I’ll do that. We’ll make a weekend out of it. Ice-skate. Get that frozen hot chocolate thing she’s been raving about, the one she insists is not just a rebranded milkshake. But in the meantime it’s still snowing, and I’m still stuck in here. Alone.
Well, not alone alone. Liam’s around. He came downstairs this morning, large hand brushing over the smooth wooden railing, looking . . . not quite disheveled. But he didn’t bother with his usual suit. The faded jeans and worn T-shirt made him seem younger, a more human version of his aloof, stern self. Or maybe it was the hair, dark as usual, but sticking up just a bit in the back. If we hated each other a tad less, I’d have reached up and fixed it for him. Instead I watched him step into the roomy entrance until it didn’t feel quite so roomy anymore. No high ceiling is that high when someone as tall as Liam stands under it, apparently. I stared at him half-mesmerized for a few moments—till I realized that he was staring right back. Oops. Then he looked out the window, sighed deeply, and headed back upstairs. Phone already on his ear as he gave calm, detailed instructions about a project that’s probably aimed at freeing the planet from the evil clutches of photosynthesizing plants.
I haven’t seen him since, but I heard him. Laughter here. Barefooted steps there. Creaking wood and the beep of the microwave. Our rooms are one and a half hallways away. I know he has a home office, but I’ve never been in there—a bit of a tacit Do-not-go-to-the-West-Wing, Beauty and the Beast situation. I’ve considered snooping around when he was gone, but what if he put live traps around? I picture him coming home, finding me wailing, my ankle tangled in a snare. He’d probably leave me there to starve.
Plus, he doesn’t go out much. There are those couple of friends of his who come over to do surprisingly nerdy stuff （which reminds me a bit too much of me, Sadie, and Hannah making brownies for a Parks and Rec marathon—which in turn is vaguely painful—so I pretend it doesn’t happen）。 His workdays seem to be sixteen hours long, even when I’m not being a petty gremlin about signing for his mail, but that’s about it. I wonder if he dates. I wonder if he sneaks a different girl into the house every night and tells her Shh, be quiet. My squatting ginger roommate will key my record player if we’re too loud. I wonder if I’m simply failing to notice the masked orgies he has in the kitchen every weekend while I’m tucked under my granny quilt, carefully composing my blog posts.
I wonder why I wonder.
When I pad downstairs for dinner, the house is dark and silent. And cold. Honestly, how is Liam not freezing? Is it the seventy pounds of muscles? Does he coat himself in baby-seal fat? I shake my head as I raise the thermostat and heat up more food than I need to eat （but, crucially: not more food than I can eat）。