My straight roommate kissed me

It was a Tuesday. March tenth. I know the date because I had a quiz that Thursday and I hadn't started on it yet.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days off. I work nights out past Power Inn, six to two-thirty, pick and pack. A guy on my line wears one of those watches and he tells everybody you walk eleven miles a shift if you're doing it right.

Cody works days at the same place. He got me on there two years ago and we took the apartment off Bradshaw that same month, because split two ways it's eight seventy-five each and neither one of us could carry it alone. His name's on the lease first since he found it. Mine's under his.

He has a girlfriend. Kayla. She was around before I ever moved in.

When they cut everybody to four nights back in November he put in my half of the rent and never said anything about it.

That Tuesday we had a twelve of Banquet from the Arco on Folsom and he put on the one where the guy climbs the building in Dubai. Not the first one. The one with the building. We'd both already seen it twice.

The AC doesn't reach the living room in that place, so we had the box fan on the floor pointed at the couch, running on three, making that tick it makes.

I couldn't tell you what was happening in the movie. I've tried to get it back and I can't. What I've got is him standing up for the last two beers and then sitting down closer than he'd been sitting.

Then he kissed me.

His hand was on the back of my neck and it was cold off the bottle. It wasn't a quick one. I want to be accurate about that, because when I run it in my head it comes out sounding like a second and it wasn't a second.

Then he got up. He rinsed the bottles out and put them in the bin under the sink and went down the hall and shut his door.

He was gone to work before I got up. Bin was where the bin always is.

That was nineteen weeks ago Tuesday. I counted it off the calendar in the kitchen, the free one from the tire place on Stockton, and then a couple weeks later I went back and counted it again from the start to make sure I had it right.

Nineteen weeks is a hundred and thirty three days. I did that one in my head at work and then again on the calculator on my phone because I didn't trust it.

Neither of us has said anything about it.

I don't mean we sat down and agreed not to. I mean it has never once come up, not sideways and not as a joke. He still texts me to grab him a blue Gatorade if I'm stopping on my way in. I still put his mail on the arm of the couch.

He's awake now. When I come in at three he's on the couch with the TV going and the sound off. He never did that before. He's up at five-fifteen for his shift.

First couple times I asked was he good and he said yeah, couldn't sleep. Now I don't ask. I get my water and go down the hall.

Twice he's said goodnight to me after I'd already gone past him.

Kayla's over most Fridays. Three weeks ago she was in the kitchen while he was in the shower and she asked me if he'd said anything to me about the lease. Her place in Citrus Heights is up in September. She said the two of them had been talking about getting somewhere out toward Elk Grove and he'd gone quiet on it.

I told her he hasn't said anything to me.

Then she said he's been weird for a while and I said work's been heavy, they added the fifth bay. They did add the fifth bay.

There was a Sunday in June where we were both in the kitchen at the same time, which doesn't really happen with our shifts. He had the pan going and he asked did I want the rest of the eggs. I said no. He ate them standing at the counter and put the pan in to soak and went and put the race on.

I stood there a minute after he went in the other room. Then I got my vest out of the dryer.

They run voluntary overtime on Saturdays and we both took it in July. He drove, same as always, and we stopped at the Chevron on Folsom like we always stop at and he got a coffee and I got a Red Bull. Inside the building he was way over on the other side wrapping pallets and I saw him maybe twice all day across the bays.

On the way back he put his arm up on the back of my seat to reverse out of the spot. I looked at the gas gauge. He got us on the freeway and turned the radio on. Then he asked had I turned in the thing for my class.

I've got a sentence I've practiced. I say it in the truck on my lunch, out in the lot with the light towers going, about ten twenty at night. It's four words.

The office put the renewal notices on all the doors on the first. Sixty days to say yes or no. It's a blue half sheet with two boxes and a line for both names on it.

If I'm on my own I go to five nights. I've got one semester left.

He took ours off the door. I know he did because I came in at three and it was on the counter squared up with the edge the way he squares everything up, and there was a pen laying on top of it.

It's still there. That was eleven days ago.