“No.” Bo walks farther into the room, presses his shoulder against the wall next to my dresser, and crosses his arms. “What about you?”
“No. Do you normally cook or order in? What time do you eat? About now?”
“I like to cook, but I’m not any sort of chef. I normally eat around six since I finish work at five. Are you okay? You seem a little—”
“I feel like I’m unravelling, maybe… a tiny bit. I appreciate you cooking, obviously, but I just don’t know what the expectations are moving forward. I guess it’s been a while since I lived with someone…”
Bo nods thoughtfully, his eyes holding on the lamp on the bedside table. “This seems like the same spiral I was having about an hour ago.” He points to the bed, and I nod, shuffling over so he can sit next to me. “I don’t want to overstep,” Bo says, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands between his open legs. “If you want to share this space like roommates—buy our own food, cook for ourselves, share some basic necessities, split costs down the middle—that’s cool with me. But I think a different arrangement would make more sense.”
“Different?” I ask.
“Less separate, I guess. I think I worked out a solution for the bills and money side of things. As far as the household chores go, cooking or whatever else, I think we should take turns.”
“So, like, every other night, I’ll cook dinner?”
“But sometimes you close at the café, right? So why don’t I cook, since my schedule stays the same?”
“Then what do I do?”
“Clean up after dinner?”
“And what about the rest of the house? Do you keep things super clean? Do you have some sort of routine I should know about? A task you hate that I could do?”
“After my surgery, I hired a company to send someone to clean once a week, so it’s more just that we have to tidy up after ourselves.”
I add that to the list of expenses and wonder how much this home, Bo’s lifestyle, costs to maintain. Does he shop at the type of grocery stores with butcher counters and organic produce or the kind where you can buy lawn furniture alongside your milk? That may be a determining factor in how we proceed. Can I even afford half of his life?
“So what about money? Splitting everything in half seems right to me, but I don’t know what your bills are.”
“My suggestion is a bit more complicated than that.”
I raise a brow, waiting for him to continue.
Bo rises off the bed slightly, taking his phone out of his back pocket. “I know you said you wanted to pay half, and I don’t want to dismiss that, but I think this solution is something we can both agree on.” He holds out his phone between us, showing me a pie chart with a list of numbers below it that mean absolutely nothing to me.
I stare at it for a few long seconds before I give up. “What am I looking at here?”
He moves closer, our thighs touching, as he enthusiastically shows me around the screen. “Okay, this is our total yearly household income.” He circles the entire pie chart with his finger. “And this is the percentage of that income that I make.” He points to the much larger portion of the chart, coloured purple. His knee nudges mine, and I have to reset to focus on what he’s saying. I’m glad my math teachers weren’t as distractingly handsome as Bo. I’d have never gotten my diploma.
“This system splits everything proportionally. I put in our expected monthly expenses, including two additional savings accounts I’ve set up that we’ll both contribute to. One is for housing and moving costs you have in the future, whatever you decide to do. The second is for the baby—furniture, diapers, clothes, whatever else. I then multiplied the total of our expenses by each of our percentages to see how much each of us should contribute overall.”
I nod, looking at the screen when I spot my name below the chart, highlighted in green. “So this number, six hundred and seventy-four, that’s mine?”
“Yeah,” Bo answers.
“That’s way too low for housing, food, bills, and everything else. There’s no way.”
“The percentages do not lie.”
“You obviously fudged the numbers!”
Bo laughs softly. “I swear I didn’t. I can go over the math with you, but the only expenses I left off were my car’s costs—because I wasn’t sure if you’d want to use it or not. But I could total that in too if you want to.”
“What do I do with all the extra money I make from the café? I should definitely contribute more, given how much I’ll have left over.”
“Well, I didn’t include your phone bill. Plus spending money, I guess. Another savings account. Invest some if you’d like.” He shrugs, as if to show his complete indifference. “And when you’re on parental leave, we’ll readjust the percentages of our income so it’s all still fair.”
I snatch the phone from him, scrolling until I see his number below mine. “Robert! Three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-two?” I sigh, glaring at him. “This is not even close to even.”
Bo’s eyebrows shoot up, widening his eyes. “Robert?” he asks, smirking. “I’m Robert now?”
“Well, Bo seems rather informal, considering you’re now my sugar daddy apparently!” I say, exasperated.
Bo rolls his eyes.
“I’m serious. I want this to feel fair.” I’ve been taken advantage of before. I know how it feels. How quickly you can begin to resent someone for everything they don’t do.
“It’s exactly fair, Fred. These numbers are proportional. It’s equity, not equality. Trust me. If it was solely up to me, your number would be a lot lower. Zero. Your income is about 15 percent of the household’s total, right? The expenses of having you live here only rose by an additional six hundred and thirty dollars, which your portion is covering. Now that doesn’t seem fair, considering you’re also growing my kid. This is me compromising.”
I whine, looking at the vast difference between our two numbers. I only make 15 percent of the household’s income. I’m not great at math, evidently, but that must put Bo’s income somewhere above one hundred thousand a year. I didn’t expect that to feel quite so mortifying. How little I have to offer.
“Bo, are you sure? Absolutely sure? This feels like too much.”
“Yes,” he nods desperately. “Entirely, definitely, absolutely, and whatever other adverb you’d like, sure.” His simple boyish grin levels me some. The way he tilts his head to catch my eyes, the way he nods as if he’s trying to get me to do the same. The way this all seems so… unimportant to him. As if he truly could not care less.
“I’m a mooch,” I say, sighing as we hold eye contact, our faces as close as our shoulders’ widths and height difference allow us to be.
“You’re not a mooch. You’re an asset.” He bumps his shoulder against mine, wrangling a smile out of me.
“An asset?” I ask, blinking up at him.
“Of course. You’ve definitely upped the house’s value by adding decor and giving this boring room a makeover. Not to mention you’re increasing the number of household members by 50 percent. Plus, you’re good for morale,” he teases with a wink.