So I stayed over. I was asked to. So I didn’t have anything to wear to work the next day and my cell phone battery was dead and I didn’t have a charger. I couldn’t leave. It was already too late. We had spent too long talking and now our indecisiveness had left us with no plan at all. B. went for a run. I had already planted myself on the vintage velour sofa, under the lamp, finishing up a collection of short stories I had been reading. I ate walnuts and drank sparkling water while the sky grew darker outside. This apartment was dingy and smelled old. The wood floor creaked no matter where you walked or stood. The walls were that dirty sort of white that you only see in urban buildings adorned with the kind of grand crown molding that is too expensive and unnecessary to put in new buildings. This apartment building was nestled in the very urban part of downtown. Here everything is so close that you spend so much time at home because you feel that it is the most central place in the city. There are a few trees outside and lights of all colors and motions outside, bouncing off of the bare dingy walls.

Something about this place reminds me of the downtown apartment I shared with my ex-fiancée, only four blocks away. I think that these two buildings had to have been built during the same decade for sure. The walls held so many coats of paint that it had textured the wall where it had cracked. The wall’s great height was accentuated with external wiring and there were never enough outlets. The windows are always grand and large usually closing and opening on magnificent hardware and latches that you never see at hardware stores anymore except in boutique ones. Even our black rod-iron balcony was ornate against the art-deco inspired brick of the building’s exterior. We joked that we were in a tree house there on the fifth floor above those trees that made everything sticky in the summers.

Everything about that time in my life was happy and grossly sad all at once. He was a pack-rat. Unorganized and haphazard, he’d strew papers, plant seeds, and socks all over our tree house apartment. I worked so hard cleaning up after him. I had an idea of what I wanted this domesticated partnership to bloom in our shared little nest, and it didn’t involve any dirty socks. We shared the cooking; I did the cleaning and laundry. Sometimes he’d draw me a bath just because he knew it would make me happy. Although he never made it quite hot enough. This was an argument that we had played out a hundred times before when we showered together during those first few months at a previous address. Every Saturday we’d go to the farmer’s market four blocks away and sip on coffee and share some breakfast fair while he educated me on every type of exotic fruit, vegetable, or plant. I would watch him smile as proudly as he always did when he thought he was smarter than me.