“Literal or metaphorical?”

Lark laughs shortly at the question, seen through. “Metaphorical. I’m sorry to disappoint you, doctor stars.”

Oli rolls his eyes. “Sorry. I have gravity of my own. I talk about space all day. So I talk about space all night, too.”

“There are worse patterns,” Lark says. He has not lifted his head from the ground, and he still feels weighed down by this imagined force, the pull of the earth. It comes to him that he is tired, but he knows he’s not so exhausted yet that he could sleep. Still, the prospect of getting up makes his heart sink.

He turns his head, looks through the grass at Oli, and feels the cold slick of dirt against his cheek. Lark says, “I was thinking about being crushed by the dense core of the earth.”

Oli frowns at this, looks away from Lark. “Sounds pretty literal.”

Lark feels bad for making Oli unhappy. He hadn’t meant it to sound so sad, so wrong. He shouldn’t have let his guard down; it was harder when he was tired, and once he started talking, he didn’t always stop. He had to watch himself at the end of his therapy sessions for this reason. Even when the dark things he said had no emotional content for him—being crushed at the center of the earth, for example, was only a fancy, not a desire or despair—they made the people around him worry.

“I was thinking,” he says, trying to turn his last statement into a joke, “about Portland and how I could have stayed with Quinn and Jules, but instead I went with Max because I always went with Max, I guess.”

Lark hasn’t said that much about Max, but Oli has a picture in his head of a kind of dark version of Lark, a shadow self with the same weird fashion sense and gaunt figure. Black hair, not blonde. A guitar instead of a piano. Anger in place of Lark’s deep sadness.

“Did Max do something?” Oli asks. “Something bad?”

Lark shakes his head. “No, no. Not really. Just—we didn’t get along, I guess. We were very different.”

“It’s hard to break out of patterns anyway. You have to learn from them first. It’s why it took me so long to leave home, I think.”

“It’s not the same.”

The way Lark says that makes Oli feel bad for trying to make comparisons. He wants Lark not to feel alone, though, and wishes he knew how to. “No, of course not, sorry,” he says, and Lark closes his eyes, his long pale face reflecting the moonlight, expressionless. “What would have been different, if you stayed with them?”

Lark isn’t sure. Sometimes he thinks not much would have changed. Maybe even all of Jules’ and Quinn’s kindness couldn’t undo his anxiety; maybe he could never have felt secure there, certain he could never deserve that room, those friends. Sometimes, though, he imagines himself in Jules and Quinn’s living room, the three of them watching movies, arguing about bands, pouring over album proofs. Talking and living on and on.

“I don’t know. Maybe I could have been happy. For a while.”

The photos Max showed me didn’t quite capture how depressing my new room was. Concrete walls, the corner of a half-finished basement apartment.

There were silverfish as long as my index finger, too, that sometimes emerged from the gap behind my bed. I caught them crawling up the walls whenever I woke in the middle of the night. Any brush of my sheet, any small movement, convinced me they were in the bed, crawling on me.

Once I’d set up my practice keyboard and stowed the rest of my gear, there was just enough room for me to open the dresser drawers. There wasn’t much space in our living room, either, and being there, on top of Max and Dana, made me weirdly anxious. The weeks we’d spent apart had somehow made them strangers again, and there were new household frictions that came with being new roommates. Max left dishes in the sink and crumbs over the counter, while Dana complained about the damp and Max’s mess and whose turn it was to do chores. I took out the trash and tried to leave no trace of my comings and going, but I was guilty of hoarding mugs in my room.

The two of them had already gotten jobs at the same vintage shop in Hawthorne, were settled in a way I wasn’t. Max had two new songs in the works, and wanted me to sequence them, wanted to make plans.

I fell asleep programming DAWs on my laptop, woke in the early afternoon, waited for Max to come home high. He’d ask to listen to what I’d done; he’d ask if I’d found a job.

It all seemed like too much. I’d drift off while Max was talking to me, unable to keep up.

Max kept asking: what’s wrong with you?

And I kept saying that there was nothing wrong because, really, he was sick of hearing that I was tired. I told Quinn instead, texting him with my blanket pulled over my head to shut out everything else.

He told me to drink green tea and take my time and ignore Max and, then, to come back to his place.

During the last couple of days I was at their house, Jules had come into my room and said that he’d spoken to Quinn. They’d decided I was welcome to stay, to live with them even after I was well, after I got a job. Long term, Jules said. If you want.

I knew Max and Dana wouldn’t be able to afford the apartment they’d found without me, that my deposit was already spent. It was too late for me to accept the offer.

Jules tried to convince me to at least think about it. Said we could work out rent, that we would figure it out. When I asked about Max, they only shrugged, said: he’ll find someone else to move in; he’ll live.

I didn’t think Max would forgive either of us, so I packed my duffle bag, tidied the room I had spent almost a month in, washed the sheets.

Jules was out when Max pulled up in my car, but Quinn followed me to the door. Max waved to him, and he didn’t wave back.

I’ll text you, Quinn promised.

And he did.

He said: put yourself first

He said: citrus spray and a dehumidifier will help with the silverfish

He said: Max can get fucked. Honestly.