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3,
“I’m spending the night at Ren’s,” Goro says, rather pointedly, “so we can spend some time together. You know. Since we’re dating.”
And Ann, a particularly stubborn sunflower in the face of Goro’s darkening thunderclouds, says cheerfully, “Sounds like fun! What time should I come over?”
2,
“You can spend alooooone time together any old time,” Ann insists over the phone. “I haven’t seen you guys in ages—don’t you love me?!”
“Of course I do,” Goro says impatiently. “But—”
“Oh, hush,” Ann coos. “You have so much to catch me up on! I swear I’ll leave you alone on your next date. Or, if you’re reeeeally desperate, I’ll just put on headphones and squeeze my eyes closed real tight for—what, twenty seconds?”
Goro hangs up while she’s still cackling.
1,
“You know she knows exactly what she’s doing,” Goro mutters.
“Hm?”
“Ann,” says Goro. “She knows what she’s interrupting.”
The corner of Ren’s lip twitches and he makes eyes at Goro.
“What’s she interrupting?” he asks, doe-eyed and lashes fluttering, and Goro just looks at him through judgemental slits until Ren laughs and kisses the side of his head. “Ah, classic Ann. The more the merrier, right?”
“I hope you mean that innocently.”
“Relax,” says Ren, nudging Goro aside to prop a foot against his lap and continue painting his toenails a garish, glossy green. “I love Ann. It’ll be more fun with her around anyway.”
Let’s jam.
Ren is snoring on the carpet by 9PM.
Goro wastes glare after baleful glare on him for the duration of the evening. And later, much later, when the moon is already high and the clock hands teetering on 3, Ann remarks into the dark, “It kinda looks like you guys wouldn’t have had any fun anyway. I forgot how early Ren conks out.”
Something like a noncommittal mutter sprouts from Goro’s direction.
Ann, from the lone bed she’d been quick to claim and shameless to keep, hisses, “Goro! Are you asleep?”
“Nnnmmnngg,” is the disgruntled reply.
“Sorry,” Ann whispers, somehow louder than her regular speaking voice. “Did I wake you up?”
An obstinate silence, which means no, because if the answer were yes, Goro certainly wouldn’t have shut up about it.
Ann maintains the quiet for another polite few seconds before saying, conspiratorial, “Hey, do you ever think about death?”
A muffled sort of pleasant chuckling emanates from the mound of blankets nearest the door. “Only at 11:11.”
Ann doesn’t seem to know how to respond to this.
After a few moments, Goro sighs. His futon rustles as he shifts around; Ren, next to him, grunts in his sleep when a foot catches him in the ribs, but he makes no complaints but to mutter something incoherent and rest an unconscious hand on Goro’s leg.
Instead of acknowledging this, Goro throws an arm over his eyes, tangled in blankets.
“You can’t sleep again?” Ann asks, hushed.
Goro sounds like he’s smiling. “I’m used to it,” he answers, slightly slurred. There had been bags under his eyes all evening, even deeper than usual, and he certainly sounds tired now. Frustrated, too, sinking deeper and deeper into exhaustion but never hitting the sand.
Ren has begun snoring.
“He doesn’t help,” Goro says, snide, reaching to flick Ren’s nose. Ren wrinkles it and mumbles something that sounds like achoo.
“Doesn’t he?” Ann wonders pointedly.
Goro’s eyes are round and bright in the dark; resting on his side, propped on his elbow, gazing at Ren’s face with a sleepy kind of softness Ann’s only seen on plush.
“Well, he does,” Goro says quietly.
Ann pumps a fist in the air and he shakes his head at her.
“I know you had your assumptions,” Goro says, low so he doesn’t wake Ren, who is currently not a foot from his face. “About what we were getting up to tonight.”
“And I was right.”
Goro does not answer this. “Honestly, I was just looking forward to spending the night with him,” he says. He flops onto his back again, limbs akimbo, and stares at the ceiling. “You’re right. I always feel better with him here.”
He reaches for Ren’s hand and curls fingertips around his, just barely, and Ren makes a soft humming sound and turns his face in Goro’s direction. And keeps snoring.
Ann is quiet.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says finally, sounding contrite for the first time.
Goro lifts his head up and smiles at her. “No, it’s alright. Really. I’m glad I got to spend more time with you, too. You were right; it’s been too long.”
Ann beams back at him.
They lapse into quiet again; outside, light nighttime noises mingle with the low sounds of bicycles and people talking in the streets. It’s peaceful, for an enduring moment, and then Goro heaves a vehement sigh and kicks off his blankets. “I’m going to go get some milk,” he announces in a stage whisper, dumps his sheets on Ren (who wiggles) and stands, hopping his futon and yanking open the door.
Ann sits up. “Aren’t you lactose intolerant, though?” she calls after him.
Goro’s already halfway down the corridor and his voice drifts back through the open doorway: “If god wants me dead he’ll have to do better than half-and-half.”
Goro’s still half bathed in cool light from the fridge he’s nudging closed with his foot; the microwave door is clicking shut when Ann comes charging down the corridor after him.
“I want snacks too,” she demands.
“It’s three in the morning,” Goro says halfheartedly. Ann tugs the fridge back open and stares into it. “…He keeps chocolate in the back.”
Ann wrinkles her nose. “He refrigerates chocolate?”
“I know, he’s a heathen.”
Ann’s reaching for the back of the fridge and setting off a domino effect of toppling water bottles in the process. “Why does he have so much water?!”
“That’s mine,” Goro says.
“But it’s like half his fridge space!”
“He loves me,” Goro says, matter-of-factly.
“Why do you have so much water?!”
“Because, Ann,” says Goro, sniffing, “I’m human, and I need water to live.”
Ann glares at him. “No one needs four different kinds of water,” she declares, and then pulls a horrified face when she glances back at the fridge door. “You drink sparkling water? What kind of monster are you?”
“I have taste.”
“You literally don’t.” Ann retrieves a half-eaten block of chocolate and looks at it, forlorn. “It’s all cold and… bricky…”
“Ren eats like garbage,” Goro agrees, and snatches up some loose crumbs of blue cheese to snorf down while he waits for the microwave.
Ann gnaws sadly at the defiled chocolate, still gazing into the fridge.
“You guys have come a long way, huh,” she says suddenly.
Goro pauses.
The microwave beeps happily into the silence. He pops it open and retrieves his mug. It smells of warmth and a bit of honey.
“How do you mean?” he says carefully.
Ann leans on the open door. “You know,” she says.
Ren’s little coffee table clock is ticking steadily away from the next room; they can hear it over the eerie calm that’s settled over the dark apartment, over the muffled sounds of 3AM traffic outside. The window lights them up blue and hazy, the clouds outside tinted by smudged glass and the moon gone gauzy and strange.
“Just saying,” Ann says, bright eyes fixed on his, in turn fixed on the floor. “You seem really happy together. You have so much stuff at his place, and… all that. It’s… nice.”
Goro doesn’t say anything.
“I’m really happy for you both,” she adds, voice soft. “Really.”
“Thank you,” he murmurs. He puts his mug up to his lips and lets his eyes flicker up to her over the rim of it, crinkling in a small smile. “I appreciate it.”
“Oh my god, Goro,” she says, laughing. “You don’t have to be so formal.”
He laughs with her, a little more subdued. She turns her attention back to the fridge.
“Do you ever regret it?” he says suddenly. “That… things… didn’t work out between you two.”
“Between me and Ren?” Ann says incredulously. “That’s ancient history, Goro, come on.”
“I know…”
She nudges him. It jostles his arm and makes him spill milk on his shirt (Ren’s shirt) but he doesn’t say anything, unwilling to break the surface tension and let the atmosphere spill away.
“I don’t have any regrets,” she tells him. “It didn’t… not work out. We’re just better as friends.” She grins suddenly. “And I met you. So I think it worked out okay.”
“Oh, yes,” Goro says, breaking into a grin of his own. “The origin story of our friendship. How could I forget.”
“You were such a bitch,” Ann says, delighted. “God, I love us.”
“Every good friendship should start with jealous infiltration,” Goro agrees, amused.
“You’re not still jealous, are you?” Ann teases.
Goro sniffs.
“You were getting pretty cozy back there,” he says, eyes dancing, and Ann swats him. “Oh, I’m joking, relax.”
“I know!” Ann sinks to sit cross-legged in front of the still-open fridge. “What were you even trying to do back then? Break us up?”
“No, no,” Goro protests. “I’m not a homewrecker, Ann.”
Ann raises an eyebrow.
Goro gives up. “Well, not exactly,” he says weakly. “I just wanted to get closer to you.”
“To Ren.”
“To both of you,” Goro argues. “It—well. It didn’t seem like anything was ever going to get between the two of you, so I thought… If I could just, you know, make myself a part of the equation, somehow… I’d get to, you know. Spend more time with him.” He scuffs his toe on the tile, suddenly sounding very small. “I wasn’t homewrecking.”
“You were a bit homewrecking,” Ann says very conspicuously out the side of her mouth.
“I wasn’t!” He glares at her and she actually chortles. “He would have been sad if you’d broken up. I didn’t want… If we were going to be in a relationship I wouldn’t have wanted it to start like that.”
“Good thing we broke up naturally,” Ann chirps, overly chipper.
Goro looks at her with big, sad eyes.
“Oh, relax,” she scoffs. “We’re over it. And I’m teasing, Goro, I know you wouldn’t homewreck. Besides, don’t you remember? I was jealous of you, too.”
“Yes, and learning that was our first bonding moment, if you’ll recall,” Goro says drily. “How wholesome.”
Ann snickers. “Nowhere to go but up!” she says. “I mean, I was ready to just… absorb you so Ren would stop mooning over you so much.”
“He didn’t moon. He never mooned,” Goro objects to Ann’s scrunched up, unconvinced face. “He only ever had eyes for you, back then.”
Ann looks like she’s about to protest and then gives up. “Okay, yeah, we were pretty insufferable.”
“Understatement,” Goro says with a snort. He stares down into his mug. “Beyond your relationship, you had such a close friendship,” he murmurs. When he looks back up at her, his eyes are warm. “I wanted to be part of it. It looked so fulfilling… to be part of something like that. But I didn’t ever think you’d end up becoming one of my best friends. I’m still grateful.”
“Aw,” says Ann. She punches him in the ankle, making him wince. “Love you too, you heinous bitch.”
Goro smiles, eyes somewhere far away, and slides down the cabinet to sit next to her on the floor. He pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, mug resting on the floor beside him.
“I’m glad things are so good between the two of you,” he says.
“Oh my god, are we still on me and Ren?”
“Sorry,” he says, sparkling at her. “Should I not be preoccupied with my boyfriend’s ex sleeping over at his house?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says, striking a dramatic pose by sticking her seated leg out on the tile. She looks like a weird crab. “Gonna seduce him back in my sexy sleep shirt and booty shorts.”
“They are sexy,” Goro says, cackling.
“Are they?”
“Yes,” says Goro, and sticks his leg out to match her. “I’m wearing the same pair, so they must be.”
She collapses into him, giggling, a sprawled mess of limbs and and food crumbs on the dusty kitchen floor.
“A commemoration of our friendship,” she crows, smacking him in the chin with a flailing arm. “I’m getting this printed on them: The Time You Invited Me Out To Kill Me Probably But We Just Got Matching Booty Shorts Instead!”
“That’s too many words. Your ass isn’t big enough.”
She shrieks at him in furious despair and grabs for his mug, but he manages to slide it out of her grasp before she can tip it over his head.
“How have you been,” he asks her, several minutes later and after she’s given up and draped herself sadly across his thighs. “Tell me what’s been going on with you.”
“Nothing,” she wails. “You know I’d tell you if anything happened!”
“I don’t know that,” Goro points out. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”
“Yeah, because nothing’s happened!” Ann pronounces, losing a bit of pep to the guilt she looks at Goro with. “It hasn’t been that long,” she needles, prodding him. “Only a few weeks.”
“That’s a long time for us.”
Ann hums in reluctant acquiescence.
“I miss us,” she says, turning to bury her face in his belly. “I know you’re busy with work, and I’m busy with work, but I get scared we’re gonna drift apart.”
It’s a moment before Goro admits, “Me too,” and she doesn’t say a thing when his hand tightens at her back.
“I got really worried I was gonna lose you,” she chirps. “When me and Ren broke up, I mean. I thought, maybe you’d take his side.”
“There weren’t really any sides.”
“True,” she allows. “I won’t ask who you’d choose if there were, though.”
Goro laughs. “An unfortunate child in the divorce,” he says.
“No, don’t say that, you’re in love with him, it doesn’t work.”
Goro reddens at the word ‘love’ and she politely doesn’t see.
“Don’t think I don’t see you dodging the question,” he says, nudging her. “How have you been?”
“Since when can’t I distract you by talking about you?” she complains, making him laugh. “I mean it, nothing’s really happened. Life.”
“Love,” he prompts.
“Nada,” she answers, and he slumps dramatically against the cabinet doors with a disappointed groan. “There’s more to life than relationships!”
“One day”—he pokes her in the cheek and makes her yell—“you’ll find someone”—pulls her hair, and she shrieks his name in protest—“who makes you realise that’s a sack of shit.”
“Watch your fucking language,” she says, dissolving them both into giggles of the uniquely post-4AM variety.
“Man, but you got lucky with Ren,” Ann says, when they’ve subsided. “Not that there’s anything still there, don’t worry, we were never right together anyway—”
“It’s fine, I trust you, so you can shut up rambling -”
“—he’s really great,” she finishes, grinning. “I’m glad you got him, he’s really one of a kind.”
He nudges her. “Someday your prince-slash-princess will come.”
“Will you hunt them down for me,” she beseeches, gazing up at him from his lap, and he presses a solemn hand to his heart. “Love you.”
“I love you too.”
She reaches up to tug his hair. “I really do miss you,” she says. “It’s great that we don’t need to talk all the time to stay friends. But… I gotta admit, I still wanna talk to you all the time.”
Goro sighs. “I know,” he says. “I’m… really s—”
“Don’t you dare apologise!” She smacks his leg, making him kick out involuntarily and narrowly missing the cooling cup of milk. “It’s not your fault, it just happens, you know? And—” she fidgets—“I dunno. I don’t wanna bother you when I know you’re busy, so I just—but I miss you.”
Goro narrows his eyes. “Don’t give me that crap,” he says.
She jerks back, affronted. “What?”
“‘Bother me’,” he repeats. “You couldn’t. Don’t you remember college? I skipped class for you all the time.”
Ann snorts. “Not all the time, you goody-two-shoes.”
“More than I’d skip it for anything or anyone else,” he corrects himself.
“Which was never, you nerd.”
He ignores her. “I always want to make time for you,” he insists. “I’m—sorry I haven’t been able to lately. But you could never bother me, no matter how busy I am. I promise I’ll make more of an effort from now on.” He hesitates. “I missed you too. A lot.”
“Not enough to invite me yourself,” she sniffs.
Goro snorts. “Well. I missed Ren, too,” he says stiffly.
“I’ll bet you did,” Ann says slyly, and sticks her tongue into the side of her cheek.
He cuffs her over the head.
“Tell me about you,” he says. “Everything I’ve missed. Spare no detail.”
“On Tuesday I went to Big Bang Burger,” says Ann. “And then, on Wednesday, I went to Big Bang Burger. And on Thursday, I went to the bookshop. Then I went to Big Bang Burger.” She makes a face at him. “Bored yet?”
“Nope. I want to hear every second,” Goro proclaims. “Genuinely. Why are you spending so much time at Big Bang Burger?”
“Well.”
By the time Ann’s languid murmuring is starting to trail off, Goro’s eyelids are drooping. She buries her face in his shirt; he smells of warmth and sleep.
“Did you even hear any of that?” she accuses him in a vague mumble.
“Every word,” comes the low reply.
She sits up and presses against his side. He leans his head against her shoulder.
“I’m getting sleepy,” he says quietly.
“D’you think you can sleep now?”
He tucks himself more firmly into the crook of her neck.
“Maybe,” he says.
She slips an arm around his shoulder and squeezes him. They sit there, in the slightly unreal haze of a recent and sleep-deprived DNM by the calming light of Ren’s cheese drawer. The fridge hums happily at their side.
The kitchen clock reads 4:37AM.
Goro’s eyes are already half-closed, Ann curled drowsily around his shoulder, when the sound of faint footsteps rouses them both. They look up to see Ren padding out into the kitchen, hair mussed and rubbing his eyes and looking extremely nonplussed to find them sitting in an existential pile front of his fridge.
“I woke up and everyone was gone,” he says, pouty and disgruntled and voice thick with sleep.
Goro reaches a hand out from his spot on the dusty floor and Ren wanders toward him, dozy and placid. He sits down on the cold floor and tucks himself against Goro’s side. Ann leans around Goro and yawns in Ren’s face. Ren winces, turning away to stare into the open fridge. “What are you guys doing out here…?” he asks, bordering on petulant with Goro nodding off against the top of his head. “You’re letting all the cold air out…”