I had been folding his boxer briefs for nine minutes when I realized I was making a face at them.
Not a bad face. Not the face I’d make at a stale sandwich or a clogged drain. The face you make at a kitten in a teacup. The face you make when something small and soft has wandered into your life and is now your responsibility. I was looking at navy boxer briefs with a thin red waistband, and I was making the teacup face at them, and I was folding them in thirds the way my grandmother folded my grandfather’s undershirts because he liked them folded that way.
The apartment was quiet. Sunday at three p.m. quiet, the way it gets when the fridge has been humming for long enough that you stop hearing it. Cody was on the couch. He was in the gray sweatpants he wore on Sundays and a T-shirt that was older than me and a backwards baseball cap he didn’t take off indoors because I had told him, in a soft voice, three months into our roommate arrangement, that I liked the backwards baseball cap.
I liked it because it meant I could see his face without seeing his hair, and his face was the part I was trying not to stare at, on account of his face was the part that kept looking back at me.
“Luna,” he said, from the couch.
“Yeah.”
“You’re folding my underwear.”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you folding my underwear.”
“Because you left them on the bathroom floor and they were getting wrinkled.”
“I don’t care if they’re wrinkled.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
I considered. I considered a lot of things. I considered because I want to, which was true. I considered because I like taking care of you, which was also true. I considered because the laundry room is the only room in this apartment where I can be alone with something that belongs to you, which was the truest.
“Because it’s Sunday,” I said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I’m giving you.”
He made the small noise he made when I did that — the noise that lived halfway between a sigh and a laugh, the noise he made when he was annoyed by me and also liked being annoyed by me, which is the only real form of liking anyone.
He went back to his phone.
I went back to the boxer briefs.
I had been doing this for a while. Not just the laundry. The Sunday afternoon laundry, and the Wednesday dishes, and the Friday night grocery run where I bought the oat milk he liked because he could not, he had admitted once, remember the name of oat milk between the store and the kitchen. I had been doing this for three months, and in those three months the apartment had gone from the apartment of two strangers who happened to share a lease to the apartment of two people who had negotiated the temperature of the butter drawer and the brand of dish towels and the rule that one of us always takes out the recycling on Thursdays.
I was the one who took out the recycling on Thursdays.
I was also the one who had, in March, replaced the bath mat with a softer one and not told him until he noticed, in May, and then not explained why I had done it, and then watched him stand in the bathroom doorway for a long time looking at the mat and not saying anything, and then, the next morning, found the bath mat folded in a specific way on the counter that meant he had been thinking about it.
The specific way he had folded it was the way I folded his boxer briefs. He had learned how I folded things, by watching me, and he had folded the mat that way. He had not told me he had done this.
I told him, two days later, by folding the mat the same way back down.
That was the rhythm of us. Things got folded, and the folding was the sentence, and the sentence was never spoken out loud.
I finished the underwear. I moved on to the socks. He had good socks — thick ones, the kind with the cushion at the heel, the kind I would have bought for my own feet if I had thought to. I rolled them in pairs, left-right together, because that was how you did socks, and I thought, while I rolled them, that I would like, very much, to put the socks on his feet for him. The thought arrived and I let it stay.
In the living room, Cody had switched from his phone to the TV. He was watching something I had been pretending not to watch with him for six weeks. He was watching it on the couch with his legs spread and a blanket over his knees and the baseball cap still on, and he was, without knowing it, making the face at the screen that he made when he was interested but did not want me to know he was interested.
I sat down on the couch next to him. I did not sit close enough to touch him. I sat close enough that if either of us moved six inches, we would.
“You’re on the couch,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“By me.”
“Yeah.”
“On purpose.”
“Cody.”
“On purpose next to me.”
“On purpose not touching you.”
He didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t either. The TV did the talking. After about three minutes he moved the blanket so it covered my knees too. After about another minute, my knee, the one nearest to him, moved about four inches. After about another minute, his hand moved about two inches. After about another minute, his pinky was on the outside of my knee.
We sat like that for forty-five minutes. Neither of us moved except to press pause on the show when one of us had to get water. The blanket stayed on both our knees. The pinky stayed on the knee.
In the morning I would make him coffee. He liked the coffee a specific way — two sugars, half a splash of cream, in the green mug because the green mug kept the heat in better than the others, which I had noticed, and I had bought, and I had not told him I had bought. I would hand it to him at the kitchen counter and he would drink it without looking at me and he would say, good coffee, Luna, and I would say, it’s the same coffee I always make, and he would say, I don’t know why it tastes better today, and I would say, maybe because I’m making it, and he would look up from the mug, finally, and we would look at each other, and the looking would be the sentence, and neither of us would say anything else.
But that was the morning. The afternoon was the laundry.
I had moved on from the socks to his T-shirts. He had a lot of T-shirts. Some of them were old enough to be soft in a way that the new ones could not be. I folded them in thirds, then in half, and I stacked them by size, because that was how you did T-shirts. While I folded, I was, very quietly, talking to him. Not out loud. Inside my head. The conversation in my head was the conversation I could not have with him on the couch, the conversation I could not have at the kitchen counter, the conversation that lived, instead, in the things I folded.
I’m folding your T-shirts because I want to be the person who folds your T-shirts, I said to him, silently, across the room. I’m folding them the way I fold them because the way I fold them is the way I want you to know me by. I’m folding them in front of you because I want you to know that I am folding them, that I’m not pretending to be in here for any other reason, that I’m not pretending to be helpful in the abstract. I’m helpful for you. I want to be helpful for you. I want to be helpful for you on a Sunday afternoon in the apartment we share while you watch TV without looking at me.
Cody, on the couch, did not hear any of this. He was watching the show. He was eating the popcorn I had made for him earlier. He was, occasionally, in small ways that I think he did not notice, looking at me. I saw it in the corner of my eye. I did not turn to confirm.
I folded the T-shirts.
When the laundry was done I carried the basket to the bedroom and set it on the bed. I did not put the clothes away yet. I stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at the bedroom for a moment. The bedroom was not my bedroom. The bedroom was Cody’s bedroom, and I had, very deliberately, not crossed the threshold into it without permission. The bedroom was the only room in the apartment that was fully his, and I respected the line. I had been respecting the line for three months.
Today I was thinking about the line a little differently.
I went back to the living room. Cody had paused the show. He was looking at his phone. He looked up when I came in.
“Laundry’s done,” I said.
“Okay.”
“I’ll put it away.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want me to put it away in your room?”
He looked at me for a long time. The baseball cap cast a small shadow across his forehead.
“Yeah,” he said, finally. “Put it away in my room.”
“Okay.”
“While I’m watching this?”
“Yeah.”
“So you need me to pause it?”
“No, you can watch. I’ll just be in and out.”
He paused it anyway.
“Go ahead,” he said.
I went. He didn’t follow. He sat on the couch with the paused show on the TV and the popcorn bowl on his lap and the blanket over his knees and he waited for me to come back. He didn’t come with me. He waited.
I came back six minutes later. I sat down on the couch, not as close as before. He unpaused the show.
I watched the show. He watched the show. After about a minute, his hand moved the same two inches it had moved before, and his pinky went on the same outside of the knee, and after another minute his hand moved a quarter inch closer, and after another minute the quarter inch was on the inside of my knee instead of the outside, and the inside of the knee was warmer than the outside, because the inside of the knee was where the blood was, and the blood was where the warmth was.
“You’re on my inside knee,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“On purpose.”
“Yeah.”
“On the inside.”
“Yeah.”
“Cody.”
“Yeah.”
“Your hand is on my inside knee.”
“Yeah.”
“I noticed.”
“I noticed you noticing.”
The TV played. Neither of us looked at the TV.
“What time is it,” he said, finally.
“Four thirty.”
“Do you want to keep watching.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, but I also want to make dinner.”
“You want me to make dinner.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you want.”
“Anything.”
“Be specific.”
“Pasta.”
“What kind.”
“The kind you make.”
“The kind I make is the kind with the lemon.”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Okay.”
His hand didn’t move. My knee didn’t move. The TV kept playing.
“Cody.”
“Yeah.”
“Is this okay.”
“This is fine.”
“Is it just fine.”
“It’s a little more than fine.”
“How much more.”
“Enough more that I’d like you to stop asking me and just sit here with me.”
“Okay.”
I stopped asking. We sat. His pinky was on the inside of my knee. The fridge hummed. Sunday afternoon turned into Sunday evening. Neither of us moved to make the pasta. Neither of us moved to do anything at all. After a long time his hand moved off my knee, and I thought he was going to get up, and instead his hand moved to the back of my neck, and he pulled me toward him, gently, and kissed me on the temple.
“Make the pasta later,” he said, into my hair.
“Later,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
The fridge hummed. The TV played. The blanket was over both our knees. The pinky was gone. The hand was on the back of my neck, which was the place where the warmth was.
I stayed.
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