The snow is falling in big chunks, disguising the somber gray of the neighborhood I hate, Bushwick. I thought it’d grow on me by now, our second winter here; it hasn’t. On the street below is a bright red GRAND OPENING awning, tattered, there long past the bodega’s novelty.
“It’s the first snowfall of more than two inches in New York in 700 days,” my boyfriend informs me. He is rejoicing on YouTube with other people who are into that stuff.
Outside our window, the M train sails past quieter than ever. We’re so close to the tracks I can see the people inside, wrapped in scarves and caked with snow. While we’re trapped here, Patrick says:
“I want you to cool it with Greer.”
I hold my breath, like the Manhattan-bound train will take this mention of my fling with it.
I’d counter, what does ‘cool it’ mean? But I am too busy thinking: it’s funny cool keeps popping up. Greer says he wants to make me lose my cool, as in orgasm. The thought makes my cheeks flame red, while I’m folding my and Patrick’s matching pajamas, and when I send Greer selfies from the bathroom of my office in Columbus Circle, lifting my business casual skirt.
“I feel like we’ve already broken up and you’re with Greer,” Patrick points out.
Patrick works upstate, gone three nights a week; this creates plenty of time to crawl into bed with thoughts of Greer, when I am not straddling Greer on the couch Patrick and I bought off Facebook marketplace.
***
This week, we let our tea go cold. Greer exalted at my naked body:
“You are so fucking hot.”
“I’m being so uncool,” I said.
“Are you?”
“I just crawled over here.” It’s true: I had crawled on my hands and knees from the couch to the kitchen chair, where he was putting on snow-soaked boots.
“I think that’s pretty cool.”
Trekking to my apartment, Greer almost ate shit on the ice. There is only one reason someone would brave such conditions: sex.
***
It was summer when Patrick and I moved here in shorts and t-shirts. The roar of the train, Dominican music, and screaming twenty-somethings at last call paired constantly with the clanging and squelching of Patrick at the kitchen sink. It seemed there were always dishes to be washed on repeat forever.
We purchased a countertop dishwasher. Now we listen to it spit water from the pressure valve with whatever record spins, and the soft clacking of Patrick’s fingers against his Xbox controller.
We turn on the heat and our one-bedroom is pumped with the smell of burning dust before it warms. Here I’ve become someone whose bedside is covered in gadgets – an electric blanket, a mug warmer, a stand for my iPhone. Under my bed plugs and wires sit in a heap with dust bunnies and discarded socks, turned inside out, hiding their pilly ruin from even me.
Patrick washes his hands to touch me under my clothes; they’re ice cold now. I jerk away.
***
I feel like we’ve already broken up and you’re with Greer. I can’t help but think: if only this were true. I wonder how Patrick and I will divide the furniture and our kitchen items. Why did we get rid of all our doubles last year, when I suspected we wouldn’t last? There’s a reason I gave up my coffee pot and spatulas but held onto my record player, which Patrick had gifted early in our relationship, though we used only his. We do not own a microwave; I wonder if Greer will want one.
I reheat our coffee on the stovetop, pouring it into a pot I know will fit inside the dishwasher; at least I am giving Patrick some thought here. I stare into the black liquid, remembering a watched pot never boils, my back turned to the apartment and to Patrick. I think about the friction of Greer’s cock against my underwear. I think about coming into his hand. The coffee roils and bubbles. The bottom of the pot is going to burn; this crust won’t come off in the dishwasher. I will put it in anyway, while I sip the coffee that’s gone bitter and scalds.
