Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [16]
The next morning, she asked him if he was sure, and he said yes; he loved her, wanted to wake up next to her every day. She asked if his roommate would be okay with that. Ben Cunningham was one of Gabe’s two best friends from childhood, along with Rich Hayes. Gabe mostly referred to them only as a unit: “Cunningham and Hayes,” or more often, “the Goons.”
Gabe said he was the one who had found the place, so it was his call. Besides, Ben, like Gabe, was thirty-four, and had been making rumblings for some time about the fact that he was getting a bit old to be living with another dude and should probably bite the bullet and move in with his girlfriend of seven years, Shauna. No matter that he had cheated on her countless times since leaving their hometown in Connecticut, where she still lived.
Maggie believed the move would improve their relationship, in ways small and large. No more arguing about who was going to spend the night at whose place, no more schlepping her blow-dryer to and from the office three days a week. No chance that she might be standing in his kitchen cooking pasta, hear the door open, and see a man other than her boyfriend walk through.
In the past, she had felt like she was pulling Gabe along in her little red wagon, but not anymore. He wanted them to live together. They hadn’t had one of their nasty blowups in months.
Now, his suitcase packed and stacked neatly beside hers in the bedroom, they sat on the couch, eating pancakes and bacon that Gabe had made. She watched TV and he read Sports Illustrated. Cunningham hadn’t come home the night before, and she willed him to stay in whichever girl’s bed he had landed, not wanting him to shatter their nice day. He often clambered in after a basketball game with a friend or two in tow, eating all the groceries (which she had bought and paid for) out of the fridge without asking, and switching the channel to ESPN, even if they were watching a movie. It was his apartment, so she couldn’t really complain. And Gabe—always annoyingly passive and laid-back when it came to his friends—never said a word.
Once, she and Gabe had hosted a dinner party, and she had gone to extravagant lengths: a linen cloth on the big table in the living room, roasted chicken and strawberry pie, bottles of champagne they couldn’t afford. Cunningham was supposed to be in Chicago that weekend, but at the last minute he had decided not to go. After the salad course, he bounded in in his sweaty gym clothes and sat down on the couch, two feet from their dinner guests.
“Can I get you a plate?” she had asked him reluctantly.
“Sure,” he’d said.
Not Yes, please or Thank you, just Sure.
He didn’t join them at the table. Instead, he ate off his lap on the couch. He filled a coffee mug with Veuve Cliquot, and turned on Sports Center, muting the volume since they had music on. Maggie felt enraged, giving Gabe a pleading look.
He was drunk, watery-eyed, and just laughed.
She mostly disliked Cunningham because he was Gabe’s partner in crime, the person Gabe was inevitably with when he lied about where he’d been or drank so much he had to call in sick to a job the next day. Cunningham brought out the bad teenage boy in Gabe, as she imagined he had in high school, when they’d sneak out of chemistry class together and go jump in the old stone quarries that, years later, their hometown filled in after some other fearless teenager accidentally fell to his death.
Now she imagined what it would be like here, after Cunningham had gone: her pale blue couch and love seat in place of his two oversize pullouts. (“Why do straight men always make it their mission to fit as many sofas into a room as possible?” her friend