I woke up the next morning feeling free and fresh and like I had an entirely new outlook on life.
Okay, maybe not exactly.
I woke up the next morning knowing I’d had way too much ice cream, not enough actual food, and I was too old to combine dairy and sugar in those quantities. My only consolation was Dec sending me a snap of him looking miserable with a little bird flying around his head like in an old cartoon.
We need to lay off the ice cream, babe, I sent back.
He sent back vomiting emojis, which, yeah, fair.
I was not, however, going to give in to the doldrums. Screw that static. I showered and shaved and wore one of my favorite ties to work. When I caught a moment with my supervisor I told her that I was wondering if there was anything I should be doing if I wanted to pursue growing in my role.
She seemed...genuinely delighted? Not in a fake “Oh, um, yes, of course, well...” way, but she got smiley and sounded happy and talked to me for half an hour about different paths she could see for me. Did I want to go more into sales and marketing? I could become a product specialist. Or maybe I wanted to focus more on community relations, in which case I might end up on the more corporate side of things, but given what I’d demonstrated with my work supporting local organizations, maybe that was a direction I’d be interested in taking my career?
And like—I had a career? Apparently? I mean, I knew that, sorta. But part of me had always expected to move on to something else eventually. The bank was the first job I’d had out of college and it was meant to be temporary. But maybe...it wasn’t.
Anyway, that was an ego boost, which was good, because whenever a minute or two passed with nothing specifically happening I remembered Diego’s voice in my ear and almost started to feel something, which I did not have the energy or time to deal with. The name of the game was: never stop moving, never start feeling. So I didn’t. Though I did manage to shoot an email to Perri explaining that something unavoidable had come up and I wouldn’t be able to continue on with the GFW socials, but all the passwords were the same as they had been and all the raw videos I’d recorded and clips I’d edited were in the shared drive. I also offered to help out until they could find someone to take over my job. The event was still two months away, but I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. Within three minutes she’d sent back one word: Understood. No request for any additional help.
Which, okay. That was that. I was...done. With all of it. Understood.
Since it was Saturday I got off work earlier than usual and headed to Ikea, texting the Motherfuckers thread from a stoplight. Ikea’s basically like Disneyland but with home furnishings and before I knew it Ronnie and Mia and Dec and Sidney were there, sitting on different couches, contemplating different bookshelves. Ronnie and Mia volunteered to test out all the beds for quality control purposes.
Finally we all settled into a living room we liked and pooled our ideas for my apartment.
“I’ve got it.” Mia pointed at a couch. “That sectional, that chair over there, this coffee table, two of those bookcases along the wall between your windows. Rearrange so the sectional faces the far window, then you can get that cute little bistro dining set and you’ll have a dining room.”
Dec nodded but Ronnie didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t that make it feel like you were kind of making part of the living room into a hallway if the back of the couch was to it?”
“Hadn’t thought of that. You would be kind of walking right into the back of the couch. But over that you’d see a cute little living room!”
“True.”
“Unless you maybe emphasize that?” Sidney suggested. “Instead of making it incidental, make it intentional. That could be your entryway.”
“The foyer,” Dec said. “Yes! Classy.”
I tried to picture it and couldn’t. “How, though?”
They closed their eyes for a moment. “You walk in and you’ve got the back of the sectional. So you could add a little cabinet or even just a coatrack and a small table or something—a place to take off your shoes and put your keys. That plus the back of the couch would make it feel very entryway, but without being too crowded or losing the openness. Maybe a mirror on the wall.”
Dec clapped and kissed them. “You’re super hot, FYI.”
They went pink. “Quiet.”
“Shan’t.”
“I love that,” Mia said. “Also I was spending money like you’re rich, but you can do the same stuff with your current furniture and just add a few smaller pieces. Though I really love that sectional. And you really could use more space to sit that isn’t the floor.”
I’d checked all of my accounts and my budget. I couldn’t afford a ten-thousand-dollar apartment remodel, but what the hell, I could treat myself to some home decor. “Everything I’ve got now is stuff we found on the street or was passed down from other people when they upgraded. And anyway, I like building flat-pack furniture. Let’s go crazy. And then you’re all going to have to come back to my place for load-in because I won’t be able to fit everything into the car.”
In the end, we did get the armchair, but not the sectional, to Mia’s sadness. (By the time we’d made it to the cashier she’d already gone online and bought a slipcover for the futon I currently had to make herself feel better. “If you’re going to keep that thing but change everything else, it should at least look decent!”) We did pick up the bookcases, a longer coffee table than the one she’d originally found, a legit kitchen island, a couple of stools, and all the things I’d need to give myself a fake entryway.
And, okay, a huge rug, some kitchen stuff Dec claimed I needed, new towels, new sheets, a bedside table that matched the one I had so I could feel like an adult with one on each side, and a few other odds and ends. It didn’t come to ten grand (or realistically anywhere close), but let’s just say it was more than I’d planned to spend.
Since we only needed two cars for the stuff I’d gotten, and since Ronnie and Mia had gone on a mini spending spree of their own, we loaded all the stuff into my and Dec’s cars. He dropped Sid at their place so they could get some work done while the rest of us went back to my apartment and unloaded all my goodies.
“Still think you should have gone with the bistro set,” Mia said after we’d rearranged everything that didn’t need to be built to her satisfaction.
“But now you have an island.” Dec caressed the box. “I’ve always wanted an island. With butcher block on top. And stools! Look how cute your stools are, Mase!”
“Agree.” Ronnie righted the one she’d just finished building and sat down. “And comfy. So. Now that we’ve thoroughly cluttered the place, I think Mia and I will go home.”
I gestured to the boxes we’d piled everywhere. “What, take me shopping, instigate my purchases, and leave me with all the boxes? What kind of friends are you?”
Mia kissed my cheek. “The very best. We have some boxes too, you know.”
Dec sighed longingly, still fondling my not-yet-built island. “I think I’ll take off too. I like lurking creepily nearby while Sid edits videos. Unless—” He glanced at me. “Do you want me to stay? I mean—”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m not fragile, I’m fine, go ahead. Thanks for Ikea-ing with me.”
Mia shot a look at Dec. “Wait, why would you stay?”
“No reason.” I did shoo motions with my hands. “Go on, get out.”
“No, but—”
“Everyone can leave now,” I said loudly over Dec whispering, “I’ll tell you later.” With friends like these. “Oh my god, fine, I broke up with Diego. Or he—we—broke up. It’s really not a big deal, I’m not sad, I’m not fragile, everything is fine. Now go so I can get building.”
Mia’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, Mase, I’m so—”
“Don’t. It’s completely okay.”
Ronnie got up from the stool and gave me a hug. “Now this all makes sense. I hope the retail therapy and building help, Mase.”
I gritted my teeth. “There’s nothing to help, it wasn’t retail therapy, I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, and now I have, so everybody wins.”
“Right, yeah.” But she tossed A Look at Mia and Dec.
“I’m really fine,” I insisted, only it was one of those times where you heard yourself say something and the pitch of your own voice made it sound like a lie. I forced myself to take a deep breath and said to my dearest friends (minus Oscar), who were all shooting me Sympathetic Faces, “It was fun, now it’s over. No need to worry about me. I have a lot to do. I’m going to make a sandwich and get to work.”
“Do you want me to bring some dinner over—”
“No. I really just want you all to stop looking at me like I’ve been diagnosed with something. Everything is fine.” How many times had I said the word fine in the last five minutes? Ten? How many more times would I have to say it to make it true? Maybe a thousand.
But no, don’t think about that. I herded them to the door and sighed with relief when I finally closed it behind them.
Then I turned back to the Ikea-flavored apocalypse that was my apartment. Time to get to work.
I built furniture until two in the morning. I had Sunday off and nowhere to be, so furniture building it was. The armchair went fairly easily, the coffee table took more finagling than I’d expected, and the bookcases took half of forever. I forced myself through putting together the bedside table, by which point I was so tired my vision was blurring.
Still, I wanted to wake up and see pretty things, so I kept going. I’d leave the kitchen and entryway for the morning, but I added the new bathmat to the bathroom, and put up the new towels. I also changed the sheets and duvet cover, fluffing everything and repositioning the bed to account for the second nightstand, which looked damn good.
I always slept on one side of my bed, the side toward the door. As if it mattered. As if anyone spent the night long enough to have the other side. So tonight I decided to sleep right across the middle, diagonally, taking up all the space.
If I was going to be alone, I might as well enjoy it, right?
I’d also picked up a little runner rug for beside the bed, which looked even better than I’d thought it would with the new duvet. After all that I took a shower, said goodnight to my refreshed-looking bathroom, wiggled my toes on the new rug, and climbed into new sheets, stretching my feet all the way to the far corner and flopping around a little until I could find a comfortable spot.
I should have slept hard after all that. The long day. Ikea. Building. Decorating. I should have hit the pillow and slept like a damn rock.
But I didn’t.
The moment I closed my eyes it all hit me, all of these emotions, all of this loss, all of this...this fear. That I’d never be happy. That I’d always be lonely.
I tried curling into a tight ball and ordering myself to go to sleep. When that didn’t work, and it was nearly four a.m., I got back up.
Ikea instructions should come with a warning to never build when tired. By the time I had that dumbass island finished I’d probably fucked up and had to redo eighty percent of the steps. Also I low-key hated the thing. But that was just an association from the drama of building it. Right?
I made coffee and drank it while standing at my new kitchen island, which wasn’t as wobbly as I was worried it would be, surveying my domain. Mia had been on target; I needed a new couch. A real couch. A non-futon couch. Especially with the bigger coffee table I’d bought mostly because I knew a bistro table wouldn’t be someplace my friends could eat, so we actually did need a bigger table in the living room. But now the table threw the balance off wildly unless I wanted to keep both armchairs and sort of position them at the short ends...
No. No way. For one, it would look terrible. And for two, Mia would probably haul the old one out when I wasn’t looking and leave it on the curb with a FREE sign.
Still. Now I really wish I’d picked up the sectional. What’s another seven hundred bucks?
I stomped, folded, and haphazardly stacked the boxes to take down to recycling. It was easy enough to bag up the trash and leave it in a corner with the armchair. I had the little hanging entryway organizer deal halfway built when my body hit a wall.
Went back to bed. Slept. Got up again. Made more coffee. Wondered what I’d been thinking to buy all this stuff. And also why I hadn’t gotten new coffee cups because I’d had the ones I was using since Dec and I got them just after college. Just before our ill-fated wedding.
He’d let me keep everything. Made me keep everything. Out of penance or whatever. As if I wanted to look at that stuff and all the memories it held. These days most of the memories were just endless days like this one, getting up, making coffee, waiting for something to happen. Waiting to start my life.
I worked on the apartment the rest of the day and fielded numerous sympathetic inquiries into my well-being and offers of food, which were really coded requests to drop by and make sure I was really okay, not just claiming to be okay. I said no and kept plugging away until I was more or less satisfied with my space.
I did tell Mia to cancel her slipcover order. I was for sure getting a new couch. I did some shopping on the Ikea website to make sure I knew what I wanted and where I’d find it in the warehouse so I wouldn’t have to go through the store, then went back to Ikea and picked up a sectional. One slightly longer than the original that Mia had pointed out, in dark leather, for a bit more than seven hundred bucks. But you know what? I had the money and I wanted it.
And it looked damn good in my living room. Then, finally, I was done. Two days, a lot of money, two trips to Ikea, and a brand-new apartment. More or less.
Now with entryway. Excuse me, foyer.