She catches me looking and grins. “What?”
I looked at her. Really looked. And for the first time, I saw the cracks in her armor. The same cracks I had. Just hidden differently.
But living with Vicky is also coming home to a warm apartment. It’s someone remembering to buy milk. It’s having a witness to your small, ordinary days—the ones that don’t seem to matter until you realize they’re the only ones you get. living with vicky
“Then why don’t you?”
Tonight, she’s making pasta. I can hear her singing in the kitchen—still badly—and the rain has finally stopped. I’m sitting at the table, watching her dance around the stove with a wooden spoon in her hand, and I think: This is it. This is what it feels like to be alive with someone who loves you. She catches me looking and grins
I used to think she was dramatic. Now I think maybe she’s just braver than me.
“That’s because I’m really good at pretending.” She took a long sip of her shake. “But sometimes at three in the morning, I lie awake and think about how I’m almost thirty and I work at a job I don’t care about and I’ve never been in love and what if that’s just... it? What if this is all it ever is?” And for the first time, I saw the cracks in her armor
But she also makes pancakes on Sundays. The kind with chocolate chips arranged in smiley faces. And when I come home from work, exhausted and quiet, she doesn’t ask what’s wrong. She just hands me a mug of tea and sits next to me on the couch, close enough that our shoulders touch, and scrolls through her phone until I’m ready to talk.