“Do you think he’s lost interest? Do you think it’s because I didn’t get that joke he told, about Han Solo? Do you think he’s annoyed at me because I told him I couldn’t make it out for drinks because I was too tired from tennis? Look! He put a red heart emoji at the end of this text when he said goodnight! Do you think that means something? It’s got to mean something. It means something, right? I know he said he was having a boys’ night but we’ve only been dating for like two weeks, we never said we were exclusive, what if that’s code for something and he’s actually out with another girl on a date?
Ohmigod look at this meme Danny tagged me in, it is so us! Isn’t that amazing that we’ve only been together a little while and we already have an us? I just love that, don’t you think it’s the cutest thing?”
“Isla,” whichever friend I was bothering that day with stories about Danny would say, “can you please, please, chill the fuck out. You’re obsessed. It’s like listening to Carrie freak out over Big, only worse.”
I might’ve been offended, if I wasn’t so loved up with Danny.
Well, “loved up” was maybe the teensiest exaggeration. We’d only been dating for a month. You couldn’t just start throwing around The L Word that early on.
But Danny was exactly the sort of guy I could see myself falling in love with.
I already was falling in love with him.
And I got the impression he felt the same way. I could just tell. It was in the way he kissed me, the way he’d ask when my lunch break was so he could take his at the same time and video call me. I could tell when he brought me flowers last week, and when, the last time I went to visit, the line of beer bottles on the windowsill had disappeared.
I could lie awake for hours replaying a date or phone call with him in my mind, or end up daydreaming at work. I’d think about how his parents would just love me the first time we met—I always make a great first impression on parents. He loved dogs and so did I, we both had golden retrievers growing up and had always wanted one when we were grown-up and wasn’t that just so perfect. He was always so polite, and such a good cook, my mum would adore him, and he was even into car racing just like my dad and brother were; they’d get on so well. And we both wanted three kids, the first by the time we were thirty.
How could I not be falling in love with him?
We were perfect together.
*
Only, it doesn’t feel quite so perfect right now.
It feels, I guess, real.
I’m really starting to see what the Islanders mean in the Love Island villa every year. This whole living together thing is intense. A few days is nothing, really, I know that, and yet somehow, it feels like it’s been forever since Danny “moved in.”
I still don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach it, if the building lockdown extends past this week; tough as it is, I don’t know what will happen if I can’t see Danny. Or even if I should move home, back to my parents? My brother’s just done that, rather than risk ending up stuck at university by himself. Even Maisie moved back in with her parents this week, worried she’d end up totally isolated. Her sister Charlotte lives in the building, too, and us getting put on lockdown totally spooked Maisie—even if she told her parents she was only moving home to help them get the house ready to sell. Should I pack up, once Danny leaves, and retreat to my childhood bedroom too?
Am I supposed to ask Danny if he wants to stay with me, and—do I even want him to?
Although, that said, if the lockdown here does extend for any reason, I’m so glad we’re stuck here in my apartment, and not in Danny’s house share, even if it is currently empty. His two housemates haven’t been around for the last week—one had moved in with his boyfriend when this whole pandemic mess started, and the other is stuck in Sydney with some friends, still trying to get a flight back while Australia starts to shut down too.
I guess I’m also lucky we’re stuck in my apartment, and not back and forth between an airport and a hostel at the other end of the world.
It’s not so much Danny, I guess.
Mainly, I’d just like a little of my own space back.
This morning, I got up as quietly as I could, trying not to disturb Danny. I’d set my alarm late, putting my workout off until after work, but my body clock had me awake before him anyway. I went out onto the balcony with a cup of green tea and my journal and it was just so quiet.
It was blissful.
Right now, I wish I could go back to that moment. I couldn’t stick sharing the dining table to work at, but somehow that means I’ve been relegated to the bedroom. I’m sat cross-legged on my bed trying to focus on a team call, but can hear Danny on the phone in the next room. He’s got the meeting on loudspeaker while he paces around. I can hear every crackly voice, muffled by the bedroom door, and his heavy footsteps tromping back and forth.
(Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it seems selfish of him to claim the dining table when he’s not even using it.) I’m scowling, which I don’t realize until I catch sight of myself in the little window on Zoom.
My boss notices, though, pausing to say, “Everything all right, Isla? C’mon, we didn’t think the new design was that bad.”
There’s a polite chuckle through my headphones, and I make the effort to smile and compose my face. “Oh, no, nothing! Just, er, my boyfriend. He’s on a meeting in the living room and it’s a bit distracting.”
There are murmurs of sympathy.
My colleague Kaylie, who’s about ten years older than me, lets out a brash laugh and says, “Just be grateful you don’t have kids! Honestly, I know I’m supposed to be making the effort to homeschool them right now after their school had some cases and shut down for a while, but I sat them down in front of some Disney cartoon with some cookies just so I could do one meeting in peace!”
As if to prove the point of how distracted we’re all getting right now, my manager’s cat leaps up onto her lap with a noisy hiss, winding around the headphone wire and then stomping all over the keyboard to shouts of, “No! No, no, no, Zee, come on, get—don’t—stop— Salazar Slytherhiss, you get down right now or—”
Our boss vanishes into blackness.
The three of us sit awkwardly on the call for a moment, waiting for her to deal with the cat and come back on the call.
I’m glad for the interruption to be honest: it gives me a moment to check over the slide deck that got sent out and refocus, still doing my best to block out the noise of Danny’s meeting across the hall.
Our boss pops back up.
“All right, sorry about that! Where were we? Right, Joe, you were just talking us through the revamped branding message . . . ”
And Joe, our usually very introverted and shy design guy, blurts incredulously, looking deeply judgemental, “I’m sorry, but Zee the Cat is short for Salazar Slytherhiss? And you never told us this? ”—and just like that, I’m oblivious to all the distractions in my apartment and in fits of giggles.
My phone buzzes a few seconds later.
A text from Danny.
Do you mind keeping it down a little bit, please?
I shoot back a middle finger emoji, but after my meeting I make myself a cup of tea and some coffee for him, and I kiss him on the cheek, and ask him to use his AirPods next time he has a meeting.
I can totally be a grown-up about this, and make this all work.
Hell, with five more days of this to go, I don’t have much of a choice.
apartment #6 – ethan
Chapter Twelve