By Eliza Sullivan

In the shower, she moves my head under the water. Rinses the shampoo out and untangles the knots. An ant crawls out of the pink linoleum.

She’s cold, her wet chest pushes against my back. Her knees against the backs of mine. She’s always trying to talk about it.

Have you ever tried talking to anyone? she asked at dinner.

Is there anything I can do for you? she whispered in the theater.

I love you, she says, every day. I love you, do you know that?

And then she’s kissing me but he’s at the other end of the tub. Hairy legs spread. You’re supposed to hold your breath when you drive by cemeteries or lock your doors or something so you don’t invite ghosts and I don’t have a great relationship with my mother who gave me that advice but I can’t breathe.

She sees him too. Gently, she moves me away and back under the water. She sighs.

We eat breakfast. It rains outside. She eats breakfast and I watch her eat breakfast. She still has brown hair-dye on her neck from last night. Eat your eggs, she says. She pauses. And then she says, Look, if you want an apology from me you’re going to have to wait. That’s just the way it’s going to have to be.

That’s fine, I say.

So, you don’t want an apology? I shrug.

She’s silent for a moment. Looks around. This place is a mess, she says. It’s so messy it looks like we’ve lived here for years. School only started up again a few weeks ago.

I turn away. I eat my eggs and then she leaves for class in my sweater, the one with all the toothpaste stains on the sleeves. I sit at the table for a bit longer.

An idea comes to me. When she gets home, I’ll surprise her with a clean house. No more of my mess.

I get up and search for bleach.

He watches me bend over and scrub the tub. He’s not much of a conversationalist.

You know, I say to him. I thought only dead people could be ghosts.

He does not respond.

I called my mom yesterday, I tell him. But every time I call, she tells me I can kick this. The gay thing, I mean. That you aren’t an excuse for dating women. I told her I was gay before all of it.

He stares at me. My hands swell from the bleach and the redness blooms like tiny pretty flowers and it feels good to feel pain at my discretion, to watch it move over my large veins.

And Morgan, I exclaim, did you see how she was in the shower?

I throw up my hands and scrub the metal rim. Pull clumps of our hair out of the drain.

He lolls his head to the other shoulder.

Yeah, man! That’s what I’m saying.

I met Morgan a few weeks into my freshman year of college at the egg station in the dining hall. She was behind the counter with a frying pan that smoked with oil. Bright pink hair.

Let me guess. Scrambled? she’d said.

What makes you say that? I said.

Your shirt is inside out, she said. She laughed. She gave me my eggs and then gave me her number. And I was so flattered and honored that a girl like her who looked like that could like a girl like me with a body like mine that I never got to tell her, I actually don’t really like eggs. The pancake station was out of pancakes.

And now I eat eggs, every goddamn day.

The first time I saw him was a month after Morgan and I moved in together. He stood in the corner of our bedroom. Hands clasped in front of him. Clothes damp from sweat. He shifted in place, looked around the room.

I shook Morgan. Morgan, I said, Wake the fuck up, he’s in our house. I wanted to grab the phone, call the police, but what good had that done before?

She didn’t wake up. I’d woken her up so often that most of her answers were said in her sleep, and in response to something in her dreams. And she wasn’t always happy when she woke up. Sometimes she was quite angry.

I stared at him until he finally stared back. He couldn’t hold my gaze for long. And suddenly, I was no longer afraid. He didn’t look angry or mad or scary. He just looked lost, holding his towel. Like he didn’t know why he was in my room. Taking up so much space in it.

I held Morgan as tight as I could. She moaned in discomfort.

What is it? she said. You want to talk?

I shook my head in her neck. He was at the side of the bed now. I just want company, I told her.

She groaned. She let me warm my cold feet to hers and then drifted back into whatever dream I’d disturbed her from. He was at the side of the bed now. I turned to look at him. And I talked, for a long time. I swore at him and I shoved my hands through his body in violent swings and I laughed and I cried. All he could do was take it.

He wasn’t floating like a ghost or gliding like a ghost or loud like a ghost. But after we spoke, after I acknowledged his haunt, it was almost as if I’d put a white bedsheet over him and cut the eyeholes myself: you’re mine now.

After cleaning, I stare. Then I go back to the kitchen to pour myself a mimosa and, before settling on the cushions that already have mimosa stains, I turn on the television.

He sits on the other side of the couch, the side that perpetually has a popped recliner because Morgan and I broke it the first time we ever tried it. He really leans back and everything.

I say, I’m just not really sure she gets it, you know?

He sighs.

Yeah yeah, I know she asks questions. But why can’t she just know? It’s too hard.

The TV glitches.

Stop doing that. I know it’s not all about me. I know it’s about my mother, too.

The lights flicker. It’s sort of hard to tell with the sun streaming through the windows with the curtains open like that. Morgan always leaves the curtains wide open in an attempt to dispel him. But I can tell; the lights twitch like legs open for too long.

I didn’t ask your opinion about it, I snap. Fuck. Fuck, my mimosa. Fuck, I’ve spilled it everywhere.

Morgan and I grew closer quickly. She was more brazen than me. She dragged me to parties every weekend that first year. In those basements, she’d pull me to the dance floor. I had a bad habit of spilling my drink on her clothes. That way, I had an excuse to touch her.

You know, she said after my fifth drink spill, if you want to touch me you know you can just touch me. I’m getting tired of walking home cold and wet.

I feigned stupidity. I’m just really clumsy, I said.

It’s college, she said. What are you worried about?

Morgan was brave. Morgan’s parents knew she was gay and gave her regular how-to-have-safe-gay-sex talks. My mother never said she hated gay people. She never held a picket sign at a pride parade. But she did tell me to stay away from blond boys because they don’t make good husbands. You’re a sweet girl, she’d always tell me. Any boy would be lucky to have you. She told me, Don’t become one of those girls who just puts all of themselves out there. Don’t become one of those girls who dyes their hair some crazy color. Don’t become one of those girls who dates other girls just because they can’t find a nice boy. College is where you find your husband, she said as she sent me off. Go find your husband.

My mother did not hate gay people. She was not religious either. But to me, all of that made it worse.

I put my hands in Morgan’s orange hair. Your hair is glowing, I said.

Morgan pulled me deeper into the dance floor. Pointed to a girl a few feet from us who was dancing on her own. Her hair was buzzed, her jeans hung low.

Do you think she’s cute? Morgan asked me.

Me? I said. I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?

She’s cute, Morgan said.

Morgan danced away from me and toward the girl. I couldn’t stop staring at them as they moved together but I looked away when they kissed.

I stared at my shoes until she came back to me after another few songs. She grabbed my hand. Twirled me around. I smiled a small smile.

What’s wrong? she said. Jealous?

You left me! I shouted over the music.

Oh no, not really, Morgan said. She brought me close to her. I was thinking about you the whole time.

We danced for a few more songs before going home. She slept in my bed and I slept on the floor. But for a few minutes, I did climb up to her in bed to lie next to her, my hands stiff and close at my sides and the only thing I could feel was her breath on my shoulder but it may as well have been her mouth, that’s how good it felt.

Then I ran to the bathroom and threw up all over the place.

I strip the couch cushions and throw their covers into the washer. I leave the cushions on the floor and sit on the bare-boned couch with a new mimosa. He’s traveled somewhere else, maybe to the bathroom again or to the bedroom but he’ll be back. He doesn’t stay away for long. This makes me nervous. I lean into the hard couch. If I could be a ghost, what would I do? I ask myself. I look around the room.

But the answer I come up with is boring. Die, I tell him when he reappears. I think I’d just want to be dead.

I asked Morgan to be my girlfriend five months after we first met. In the communal showers. I’d leaned against the wall and prodded the curtain with my foot again. It was late at night. She was sticky from alcohol. We were alone. We turned off the lights so we could hear the soft pulse of the music from the speaker better. She hummed along. Occasionally, I heard the whop of her hands against the wall killing shower flies.

I prodded the curtain with my foot. Morgan, I said. I have something I want to ask you.

She stopped humming. What’s up? she said. She turned off the shower. Pass me a towel.

I took a deep breath and handed her a towel over the curtain. I told her, I want you to be my girlfriend.

She opened the curtain. What about your mom? she said.

She’ll get over it, I said.

Does she even know you’re gay?

You know, I was hoping this would be more of a romantic thing—

I want to be invited to holidays. Thanksgiving, she said. Or Easter, or New Year’s or your grandma’s birthday, I don’t care. I don’t want you to be ashamed of me.

I stepped forward. Used my fingertips to move a wet piece of vibrant blue hair behind her ear, and my thumb to clear away the water dripping from her lips. I already have your Christmas gift picked out, I said.

I kissed her. She sighed.

Okay okay, she said. Call your mom if you’re serious.

I thought for a moment. Then I lied and said I already did.

And I could say that it came out like vomit, that it was unstoppable, that the fear in me overcame the love I was growing for her, but it was calculated. The moment was an hour, and in that hour I decided truth and trust were not the same.

She tried to speak once more so I just kissed her again, her face all slippery and wet between my hands. Already sliding away from me.

There’s no evidence of him on me anymore. The bruises on my wrists, the teeth marks on my neck, all those are gone. If there is anything, I can’t see it anymore. If there is his hair, it’s tangled inside of me like my intestines inside of me, you could never really imagine that they could be so long, could you?

But the shower stays with me; the linoleum scars on my knees. Some of them are so deep I can brush the walls of my own ragged flesh.

Sometimes I hold her in my arms at night, and I think to myself, you are pushing against all my graves. The dirt is loose. And instead of pushing her away I pull her closer—without these holes, would she even be able to know me at all?

I’m on my third mimosa and the couch cushions are finally clean when I see my phone light up. It’s my mother.

Speak of the devil, I laugh.

He stares at me.

I sigh. Don’t be jealous, I say. You’re still number one to me.

The recliner pops back into place.

Oh my god! I scream. You fixed it! Don’t fucking move. Mom, mom, hey, be quiet for a second, you won’t believe what just happened.

At first, Morgan was suspicious that my family didn’t really celebrate holidays or birthdays, and the events we did have, she couldn’t come to because one of my family members, see, well they were really sick, so they were exclusive events—family only.

But I tried my best to distract her. When we came back from summer break for our second year and desperate for touch, we had picnics inside graffitied underpasses and tunnels where we could hear all the conversations that passed over us. I climbed trees outside of her dorm and would sit with her while she smoked outside her window. In the hot early hours of the morning, we’d sit in the campus fountain in all our clothes and pretend we were in one of those isolation salt pools. During these moments, if I didn’t kiss her a thousand times over, if I didn’t always have my hands somehow around her, fingers tracing the space between her ribs, it wasn’t a successful date.

We did normal activities too, traditional activities. It was important to her that we do the things other couples did or were allowed to do, the pictures she saw all over social media and on those medical commercials. We went apple picking. We went to museums. We went bowling, mini-golfing, painting. Even just strolling. But I was too nervous to hold her hand, so she’d hold my pinky with her entire fist. In public, it was all I could give her. For a bit, this was enough.

One day, we sat eating sandwiches inside one of my favorite underpasses, the one where the sun just slightly crept into the long tunnel, illuminating all of her little purple baby hairs into a halo around her head. The weather was changing. Fall-colored leaves tumbled in and out of the tunnel at the pace of the wind.

Morgan leaned into me, said, What sort of cancer does your aunt have?

I shrugged. Colon, I think?

I hope she dies soon.

I almost dropped my sandwich. Excuse me?

Even though the concrete was probably rough on her skin and her jutted bones, she put her head on my lap. I’d like to hold your hand in front of people, sometime, she said.

You do, I said.

In front of people that matter.

I hoped that her head could not feel my stomach twisting in on itself. I ran my fingers through her hair and picked the crumbs of my sandwich out of it. It was getting late, the underpass darkened. I took a deep breath.

Listen, I have something to tell you—

Wait. There are people walking above us, can you hear them?

I could. They were arguing and then they were laughing. The scuffle of shoes and yelps of joy. By the gruffness of their voices, it was two men. I stiffened. They were not walking over us but walking toward us. I turned to look at their approaching figures.

Morgan—

Babe, it’s fine, she said. You can’t tell?

They approached us and I tried to get up but Morgan held my legs. The two men paid no attention to us. They continued to laugh and shove, telling each other dirty things and then sweet things, holding not just each other’s hands but also arms and elbows. As they walked by us time slowed down. Morgan gave a little wave. They little-waved back. A mutual understanding. We watched them go, leaves swirling around their feet in the wind.

I looked around us. I’d cleared all the underpass garbage away so that we could sit but the styrofoam cups kept rolling toward us and back, rolling toward us and back. Morgan’s eyes were still stuck on the tunnel exit, on where they used to walk and exist.

What did you want to tell me before? Morgan said, after a few minutes had passed.

Oh, I said. I put my sandwich down and held her full face in my hands, I held it so hard I could feel her teeth under my fingers. I just wanted to tell you that I love you.

Then I kissed her, obviously. She said it back a few moments later. Then she just stared at me in a way she hadn’t before.

What? I said.

I can’t wait to tell my mom about our first I love you, she said. And then she looked hard at me, like she could see right through me, through all my layers and knew the truth. But I also felt that she did not understand me, still.

Oh, me too, I said. For sure.

She stared at me.

I will, baby, Jesus. I just want to keep it special for a while, you know, something just between me and you.

She nodded but I knew her attention was on the two men that had passed. The way they’d been holding hands, laughing, shoving each other, kissing in front of us. Thinking about how much they did not look like us, and how much longer she could be this way.

Weren’t they cute? she asked.

Yes, I said.

Didn’t you hear me? I say on the phone. You’re always complaining about the furniture in this place and I’m telling you—

Why don’t you tell me how you are instead, my mother says.

I’m fine, I say.

Is the house helping? Being away from campus?

Yes, I say.

Silence from the other end of the phone. Is she helping? my mother asks.

I pause for too long.

Sweetheart—

I love her mom, of course she’s helping, I quickly say into the phone.

Okay.

Okay.

After the phone call with my mom, I re-cover the cushions and strip the living room of everything that makes it unwelcoming. I open the curtains even further. We have no mop so I grab a kitchen sponge and a bucket of soap, roll the carpet out of the way, and scrub the wooden floor.

My knees dig into the wood panels and my elbows keep locking but there is so much dirt and it’s not clean enough. He watches me on my hands and knees like he had watched me crawl for my glasses, all those months ago.

The first time Morgan saw him she screamed so loud I thought she’d broken a bone. I ran to her from the backyard garden and threw open the shower curtain.

Are you okay? I asked. What’s wrong?

She pointed to the tub floor. He sat there, knees to chest. She’d covered herself with a towel. You can see him, right?

I blinked. You can see him too?

She climbed out of the shower, closed the curtain, and dragged me into the hallway. How long has he been here?

Since we moved in, I admitted. That’s him, right?

I nodded.

What are we going to do about this?

I frowned. Do about it?

We stared at each other. Her naked and me dirty from gardening. We were two very, very different people.

I’m sorry you saw him, I finally said. I’ll keep him away from you. I promise.

She nodded slowly. She went into the bedroom, soap still in her hair. But she left the door open and after a moment I followed her and shut the door myself. I crawled into bed with her and pushed myself against her sticky body in apology.

After I finish scrubbing, I’m aching and sore. I drift to the bedroom where I lie down in our bed on all our dirty laundry in the dark. She always smells so nice. He stands in the corner of my room. Somehow, even he knows the bed is not his territory.

I wish she couldn’t see you, I say to the ceiling fan.

He nods. The fan goes around and around and around. I try to keep my eyes on it but I just get all dizzy.

I curl into a ball with all her clothing. Some of it smells like her perfume and some of it smells like sweat but it all smells nice to me. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I look behind me and see him standing there. I stare back at the mirror where his reflection should be.

I say, It’s easier to talk to you than it is to talk to her. I mean, you were there. I don’t have to explain anything to you. And I hate you. That makes it easier too.

It’s around that time of day, barely afternoon, that I realize I’ve drunk too much. I’m sad and I’m sleepy.

I drag my hands down my face, my fingers catch on deep eye sockets. I say, I can’t tell if you’re the worst thing that has ever happened to me or not. Isn’t that terrible?

The ceiling fan switches on.

I think I am the worst thing, I say.

Holding her clothes close to me I imagine that she’s in them. I wrap one sleeve around my waist, the other I rest on my neck. I put a pantleg between my thighs and the other around my hip. I bury my face in her hood and I put a pillow against my back, too, so I can imagine and have her everywhere.

Something stirs inside me that I haven’t felt in a long time. I ignore it. I don’t want to ruin it.

I look up and around the room. He’s not there. I sit straight up in a panic and oh, there he is. Among the closet hangers.

I start folding laundry and that feeling ebbs away. I try to miss it, aching for her that way, but it’s too late. The ceiling fan turns a little faster.

I know, I say. Don’t you think I know?

The second year blurred. I had trouble keeping track of what I told Morgan and what I did not. I couldn’t even remember what my favorite color was. Soon I just changed my favorite color based on whatever her hair looked like that month.

Yellow, I told her. That’s my favorite color.

She laughed. She kissed me. You are the perfect girlfriend, she said. Look! There are my parents! Dad! This is her.

It happened in the late winter of our third year. I sat on a little bench inside the police station. They’d given me one of those aluminum foil blankets to keep me warm. Snow fell slow and thinly outside, tainted red by the sun coming up. They’d wanted to take me to the hospital but I’d refused. I didn’t want to take more of my clothes off. I let a female police officer bandage my knees and lift my shirt enough to gauze my back, but that was it. I sat with the rest of my hurt, bleeding into pants from the lost-and-found bin, and she sat with me and held my hand and patted my head.

My eyes burned from all the bright light and my hair still wasn’t dry from the shower. It dripped on my shoulders and I fought the urge to rip it all out of my head. All my limbs itched at the joint, traumatized, they bounced, trying to detach themselves. There was another me inside of myself, wanting to crawl out. A new me deep down that none of this had happened to. I sucked on the piece of candy the nice woman had given me, and waited for my mother.

Do you have holiday plans? she asked. You gonna go home soon?

I shrugged.

Oh baby, she muttered. You poor thing.

A few hours later my mother burst through the door, her winter coat open and swinging and her hair wild from the lazy snow. She snapped her head back and forth. Where is she? Where is she? she cried. She was hysterical. Once she cleared all the hair out of her face she finally saw me.

She knelt in front of me and drew me into her arms. I curled into her lap like I don’t even remember doing as a little girl, my head continuously burying into her shoulder. She rocked me back and forth and put a hand out to the police officer walking toward us. Not now, she said. Give us a few minutes.

She murmured to me as she rocked me. You’re never going back to that place again, she muttered. She moved her hands up and down my back. I’ll get you a safe apartment off-campus, she said. You can commute to school. Or you can come home for a bit. Fuck this place.

I raised my head. Rarely did she ever swear in front of me. But even though I raised my head I still could not look at her, which made her cry harder.

The station doors opened again but my mom was holding me in a way that made me feel as though I was back inside of her, where nothing touched me but the food she touched first and it was a very calming feeling. To feel like you haven’t been born yet and you could just restart again, whenever you wanted to.

A hand pushed its way between my mother’s shoulder and my cheek.

Baby, Morgan said. I came as soon as they called me. It fucking took them long enough.

My mother looked up at her, incredulous. Looked at her fingers full of rings and stared long at her bright, red curly hair. And who are you? my mother finally said.

Morgan knelt down next to us and I tried catching her eye, tried to touch my foot with hers, anything to get her to go back home.

I’m sorry, we’ve never formally met. I’m Morgan, she said.

My mother stared at her. Morgan rambled nervously, A police officer called me. I’m one of her emergency contacts.

My mother did not say anything.

I’m so sorry about your sister by the way, your daughter told me about her condition—

My mother’s grip loosened. Excuse me?

I felt Morgan take hold of my body, trying to shift it over to hers because of course, hers would give me comfort like it always had after three years. She even followed our in-public rules, grabbing my pinky to see if I’d open my palm to her.

I’m Morgan, she repeated. Her girlfriend?

I felt myself shrinking further and further into my mother. Anything anyone said after that I don’t remember and they didn’t say much. When my mother went to finish up with the police Morgan went to hold me. Still pushed my hair back from my face and cooed in my ear but she couldn’t help that her hand movements were rough, she was slapping my forehead instead of petting it, she was tugging my hair instead of detangling it, she was shaking my shoulders instead of massaging them.

It’ll be okay, she whispered to me and also, it seemed, to herself. It’ll be okay, you’re gonna be okay. I love you baby, do you know that?

I nodded. When my mom was finished signing some papers she came back to us and I slid away from Morgan. Let’s go home, my mom said. She reached out her hand to me. I took it. Morgan stood up to follow and suddenly I was word-vomiting, whispering, Don’t don’t don’t don’t.

Morgan sat back down on the bench, and we left her there.

I went back home for a month. Did all my schoolwork from home. For the first week, Morgan texted and called constantly. I would listen to her but when she asked questions, I didn’t have anything to say, or rather, not anything to say that I knew she needed to hear. After that first week, I didn’t hear from her as often. I stopped eating. Everything hurt my stomach but I couldn’t tell where the panic from him ended and the anxiety from her began.

I slept in my mother’s bed at her request. It was always a false sleep with no dreams. I’d shut my eyes and pretend to drift off for my mother’s comfort. One night, she took the opportunity to take my phone from my still hand and call Morgan.

Hey—

It’s her mother, she said into the phone. Jaclyn’s sleeping.

Oh, Morgan said.

Can I ask you something? she said. Can I ask you how long you girls have been dating?

Three years, almost.

My mother began to cry. Can you tell me more? Please?

And so I heard our love story for the next twenty minutes. Morgan’s ver- sion. This version had more tears than I remember ever seeing. More nights awake. Not as many I love yous as I thought there would be. Not from me.

When Morgan finished, all my mother could do was repeat: You seem really nice. You seem like a really nice girl.

The next morning I told my mother I would go back to school on the condition that Morgan and I could live together. She agreed. A few weeks after that, Morgan agreed as well.

Even the itch of something deeper inside of me longing to escape has dissipated entirely.

I am not myself but when was I ever.

Morgan and I moved into our new off-campus apartment the summer before our senior year. We sat in the kitchen that night eating the only food we had, eggs. My mother had saved me the lecture. All she had said was, If she’s the only person you’ll let look after you, then okay.

I craved to eat in silence but I knew she had things to say, so I asked her, Are you all right?

The metal prongs of her fork slid across the plate. Your aunt doesn’t have colon cancer, she finally said.

No, she doesn’t, I said.

And you never told your mother about me?

No, I didn’t.

Why?

I shrugged.

Why? she said again.

So I shrugged again and then she threw her dish against the wall, hard. I jumped. I jumped so high I knocked my chair over, tripped over it and fell chin first into the refrigerator. I couldn’t tell what was louder, the silence of the night outside or the silence of her holding me afterward, with finally nothing to say.

I clean the kitchen and find myself absentmindedly handing him dishes to dry. I break at least eight glasses this way.

Morgan doesn’t think I love her anymore, I say. But I’m going to change that.

The garbage disposal whirs.

What’s better than a clean house?

Last night, while I was still sleeping, I heard Morgan talking to him in the bathroom in a language I couldn’t understand while she colored her hair back to brown.

I tip-toed to the bathroom and opened the door as quietly as I could.

She’ll be upset with me, she said to him. But she’ll understand. And that’s what I’m here for. I’m here to help her do the things she wouldn’t ever do herself. Isn’t that what I’ve always done?

She started reading something from her phone. Something in Latin. At first I couldn’t help but laugh, but then he started to shimmer. I burst open the door entirely. I ripped the phone from her fingers.

What do you think you’re doing? I said. She stood there, shivering in her pajamas.

She grabbed her phone back. I found this thing online, she said, like, an exorcism chant or something. It was working.

No, I know what you were doing, but what do you think you were doing?

She put the phone on the sink and grabbed my shoulders. I’m helping you.

The faucet turned on.

Can we have some goddamn privacy? she snapped. The faucet turned off. He floated away. Do you want him around? she asked.

I sighed. No, I said. Of course not. This was a lie. It was also the truth. It was that blurred line between the two—it was me. With a sheet over my head.

Morgan groaned. He’s in my room while I sleep, he’s in the tub while I shower, he’s in the kitchen while I eat, he’s in the doorway waiting for me to come home—

Not you! I shouted. Me! He wants nothing to do with you.

Apparently neither do you, she said.

I sat down at the edge of the tub. That’s not true, I said. I love you.

Did I say you don’t?

She shoved past me and went back into the bedroom. I followed. I don’t understand, I said.

She went into bed and under the covers. She used the mirror to look at me. I’m not your girlfriend, she said. At least it doesn’t feel like it. I’m not even your friend. I can’t be your mom, and now I can’t be your exorcist either. So what am I?

I tried sitting down next to her but she moved me away. No, she said. You can sleep on the couch. If you’re in here, he’s in here. I could barely get him to stay in the bathroom with me. And I want to be alone.

Are you serious? I said.

Go away, she told me. Sleep on the recliner.

I slept on the recliner.

Morgan comes home from class and I parade her around the house. He follows like some weird festival float. I lift the couch cushions to show her that not only is one side clean but also both sides. I pull her into the bathroom, encouraging her to drag her hand across the tub; she would find no filth there. She walks around the bedroom and gingerly touches the folded clothes and feels the heat of the candles I had lit.

Ta da, I say. I wiggle my fingers with all the jazz I can muster.

She places her backpack on the floor. After a moment she says, It looks very nice. He nods. Stop nodding, she says. He stops nodding.

Do you like it? I ask.

She walks out of the room. I follow her. Her favorite movie plays quietly on the television. She stares at the couch and points at the fixed recliner. Did you do that? she asks.

I shake my head.

He did that?

I nod. He holds his towel, like always.

I love you very much, she says. But I don’t think we’re working.

I nod. But my nods turn to shakes once I realize where she’s going with this. Don’t, I say.

I sit down on the couch and she kneels in front of me. She jerks her chin at the television. This movie is depressing, she tells me.

Right, I say. But we’re close to the end.

The next day, I watch as she packs her suitcase. I can’t watch the door shut as she leaves.

I move to the bedroom. I lie down on the toothpaste-crusted sweater that she loved. He does not lie next to me. I call my mother but she doesn’t pick up the phone. And there’s no one else to call.

I close my eyes. There’s no one there.

One day early on in our relationship, we lay in the grass outside of our dorm. Our hearts pounded. We were still very nervous around each other, but the lateness of the night and our sleepiness eased our anxieties.

I can’t believe this, she laughed. You wouldn’t sell an organ for me?

I would die! I said. Then what would I do?

She turned to me. You’d haunt me, she said. That’s what you’d do.

---

Eliza Sullivan is a recent MFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Her work can also be found in Grim & Gilded and The Normal School.