Lexi norjka

Your rice is far beyond its expiration date, and you’re really not high enough to ignore how it tastes too soft and stuck together to be fresh, how it’s almost a paste between your teeth. You’re the only customer in this little strip mall restaurant; everyone else in town ordered in tonight because it never rains and when it does, drivers are scary. Cars tear past on the boulevard outside, because they can’t conceive of changing their habits when water falls from the sky.

You prefer it this way—the solitude, the silence. You’ve gotten so used to eating with Jordan that you never do this anymore. You can catch up on your podcasts here, you can brainstorm and sketch without everyone asking you questions…or wanting you to talk. You don’t want to debate their petty little ideas, you don’t want to discuss their stupid problems—you just want to exist and eat your dinner. Even if it isn’t fresh, even if it’s getting late and the guy behind the counter has been hinting that he wants you to leave by slamming his Tupperware shut and heaving deep sighs every few minutes. You plan to give into these passive demands, but you really want to finish this episode before you have to go home and listen to your mother, or to your best friend if he shows up unannounced, once again. You’re fine with your family adopting him after his parents kicked him out, you really are. You just wish he’d leave you alone.

The podcast fades out in your ears, and you realize that you missed the end of it, so you shamefully promise yourself to play it back when you get to your car. You dispose of your half-eaten tray and gather your bag, mumbling farewell to the guy behind the counter, who looks utterly relieved by your departure and wheels out his mop and bucket before you’re even out the door. The pavement outside is slick and rainbow-hued from months of oil buildup, the light of the street lamps painting cold swirls beneath your feet.

Your car is filthy, because you can’t be bothered to clean it; sketchbooks and art supplies are littered throughout, the seats stained from paint spills and melted oils and acrylics. And it permanently smells like weed and peppermint, from the time your vape exploded from the summer heat a week after you lost it between the seats. You never found it, but the smell continues to remind you that it’s there, buried somewhere under all your shit.

You take a hit off one of the roaches in your door’s window well, and you check your phone for a text from Jordan, but he’s working tonight, so chances of contact are already slim. There’s nothing from him, or anyone—to your surprise, your mother hasn’t texted. Your father is out playing billiards and getting hammered, but upon scrolling, you see that you’ve left both of your closest friends on read for two straight weeks. Jesus, two straight weeks. You wonder, for just a moment, how you came to prefer your loneliness to these people. But that moment passes swiftly, like those cars on the boulevard, and you turn up the volume on the podcast.