Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
The musical chime indicated an incoming text. Melissa turned down the television and flipped over her phone.”Joshua?” She tapped open the message, Can I come in? glowed in the dark living room. “In, as in, now? Hmm. I guess.” A quick type of “sure” and send resulted in a knock at her apartment door.
“Agh, I didn’t think this through.” Escaping her carefully created burrito-blanket fort, Melissa pushed back the furry fabrics covering her legs and body. Her two cats and dog made mild protesting noises, deprived of her body lumps, as she tucked her feet into the slippers beside the coach. Shuffling in the oversized slippers so they wouldn’t fall off, Piglet-Too her dachshund-pit mix following, she made her way to the door and opened it to discover Joshua on the other side with two bags of Chinese, a plastic container with mini-cupcakes, and a small container of chocolate chip ice cream. “Hi,” Melissa said, the surprise of a weekday visit from one of her gaming buddies coloring her alto voice.
“Hey, rough day at work. Can I cuddle?” He dipped his head down. “No chill, no cap, I just need human touch. Brought Mongolian beef and your spicy chicken and egg thing.”
“Yeah, I got you.” She stepped to the side and let him in, watching him duck under the door jam.
He ducked again to get into the kitchen, his afro skimming the top of the casing. Melissa let him pull down her plastic bowls while she dug out some forks. White rice on bottom and the dish of their choice on top filled both bowls, with the excess going into her fridge as trade for two beers coming out. The ice cream got dumped into the freezer. She shuffled back into the living room, with Joshua following.
“Big spoon or little spoon?” she joked considering their height differences.
“Little spoon, if I can.”
She jerked to a stop and looked over her shoulder at the man having over a foot of height and nearly a hundred pounds.
“It was a very bad day.”
“Okaaaay then.” Melissa kicked off her shoes, setting her beer and bowl on the end table, then snuggled into her blankets. “Put those down,” she tapped the glass top beside her food and then opened her arms, “and come here.”
He set down his Mongolian beef, toed off his shoes and curled into her arms, a sob escaping.
Melissa pulled him deeper into the hug, letting him wiggle closer on the couch. Chaos, Dimwit, and Piglet adjusted around them. After debating a moment, not knowing how long he would need to cry it out, she changed the channel to her Spotify “No Shade Today” list, set aside her remote, and held him against her shoulder. “A Hazy Shade of Whiter” had cued up when he ran out of steam.
“Ready for food?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so.” Shifting, he reached for their cooling food. Rearranged to sit on the middle cushion, cross-legged, he started moving the food around in the bowl, getting the rice covered in the beef sauce.
Melissa took a couple bites of her Chicken Egg Foo Young. “You want to talk about it, Josh?”
“Nah, not really.” He shrugged. “It was just a typical day at the call center. It just hit hard today. How about you? How was your day?”
“You see how big my burrito pile is.” She waved a chopstick over sofa and blankets. “And I was watching Beale Street when you got here.”
Joshua grunted a small curse. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Not a bother, this is what friends are for.” She gave him a slight smile. “Besides, I forgot to eat. Too much trouble. To cook. I would have paid for that tomorrow. Now I won’t.”
“Life was easier in school, we could just pile whenever we needed.”
“But as grownups, we are expected to life alone with no connection. It’s not healthy.”
“Not even a little.” He sucked in a piece of onion.
“Can’t live with your parents, can’t live with your friends, can’t get married, can’t live in sin.”
“Frustrating as hell, no cap.”
Melissa leaned back against the sofa cushions, setting her bowl of leftover rice aside and picking up the beer. “We are human. We need the human touch.” After taking a deep pull, she transferred the beer to her left hand and picked up the remote. “Wanna watch Beale with me?”
“Yeah.” He laid out on the couch on top of the blankets, resting his face on her thigh. “You don’t mind?”
“Stay the night.” Melissa said, “We both could use it.” She clicked back to her movie and threaded her fingers through Joshua’s springy hair.
(words 787; first published 12/27/2023)