Marcus noticed the date first, circling it mentally while pouring coffee on a Tuesday morning. Five years since Dani had shown up at his apartment with two duffel bags and a rice cooker, saying she'd figure out the rest later.

"So," he said, when she came into the kitchen with her hair still wet. "Sunday."

"I know." She took the mug he handed her. "I've been thinking about it."

They'd never landed on a good tradition. Their first anniversary of living together, they'd gone to a restaurant that turned out to be too loud and too expensive, and they'd eaten cereal at midnight afterward. The second year, Dani had food poisoning. The third and fourth had passed with a card and a good bottle of wine, which was fine, but Marcus had started to feel like fine wasn't enough for five.

"I could get us a hotel downtown," he offered. "That place with the rooftop."

Dani made a face. "That's four hundred dollars to sleep in a different bed."

"It's supposed to be romantic."

"It's supposed to be expensive." She sat on the counter, feet swinging. "What if we did the drive?"

He knew immediately which drive she meant. The route out to the coast they'd taken when she first moved in, stopping at every terrible roadside attraction between here and the water. The world's second-largest ball of twine. A gas station that sold homemade jerky and airbrushed t-shirts.

"That's six hours round trip," he said.

"So we leave early." She was already grinning. "I'll make the sandwiches. You make the playlist, but no ska this time."

"One ska song."

"None."

"Half of one."

She threw a dish towel at him. He caught it, and he was already thinking about which exit had the good jerky, and whether the twine place was still open.


The apartment smelled like burnt garlic when Dana got home, which meant Marcus had started dinner without her again.

"Ten years," he said, not looking up from the pan. "You realize that's a decade."

"I can do math." She set her bag on the counter and peered over his shoulder. "You scorched it."

"I salvaged it. There's a difference."

They'd been debating for two weeks. Marcus wanted to go back to the Italian place in Providence where they'd had their first real fight—the one about whether she'd move in with him—and then made up in the parking lot. Dana thought that was maudlin. She wanted to drive up to Vermont, stay somewhere with a fireplace, not answer their phones.

"Vermont's four hours," Marcus said, sliding the pasta into bowls. "Four hours each way for two nights."

"That's the point. It's far."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had become a repository for tax documents neither of them wanted to file. Dana pulled her feet under her on the couch.

"What if we didn't leave?" Marcus said after a while.

She looked at him.

"I mean it. We take Friday off. Both of us. We sleep in, we get the good bagels, we walk down by the water. We cook something ambitious and probably ruin it. We don't do anything." He shrugged. "Ten years of this place. Seems weird to celebrate it somewhere else."

Dana considered. Their apartment had a radiator that clanked and a bathroom door that didn't quite close. It was where his father had died and where she'd gotten the call about the job. It was where they'd decided, silently and repeatedly, not to get married—not out of doubt, but because it had never seemed necessary.

"The good bagels," she said. "Not the ones on Sixth."

"Obviously not the ones on Sixth."

She put her feet in his lap. "Okay."


Every year Priya insisted the anniversary date was March 12th, and every year Dev insisted it was March 14th. The disagreement had become its own tradition, older now than the argument that started it — something about whether the first date counted as the night they met at the loading dock behind the theater, or the following Saturday when he'd actually asked her out.

"Ten years," Priya said, standing in the kitchen doorway with her laptop balanced on one forearm. "That's a real number. We should do something."

Dev was scraping burnt rice off the bottom of a pot. "Define something."

"I don't know. Vermont? Everyone goes to Vermont."

"In March? It'll be mud season." He set the pot down. "What about the thing you keep almost booking. The pottery class."

She made a face. "That was a joke."

"It was three separate joke browser tabs."

They ended up compromising, which was how most decisions got made in the house on Fenwick Street. Priya booked the pottery studio for the twelfth. Dev made reservations at the Ethiopian place on Warren for the fourteenth, the one they'd gone to when they were both broke and had split a single combination plate.

The pottery was a disaster. Priya's bowl collapsed twice. Dev, who claimed no artistic ability whatsoever, produced something the instructor called "genuinely lopsided in an interesting way." He gave it to her in the parking lot, still wet, and she carried it home in a shoebox.

At dinner two nights later, Dev said, "So we're just never resolving the date thing."

"Why would we." Priya tore off a piece of injera. "It gets us two anniversaries."

"That's twice the pressure."

"That's twice the dinner." She reached across the table and took his hand, briefly, the way she had a thousand times. "Ten years."

"Ten years," he agreed, and let her steal the last of the lentils.


The Fifth of October

Marisol found the receipt while cleaning out the junk drawer—a faded slip from a taqueria in Sacramento, dated five years ago almost to the day.

"You kept this?" she called toward the living room.

Dev appeared in the doorway, dish towel over his shoulder. "That was our first date. You ordered wrong and I let you eat half my burrito."

"I ordered correctly. You just have bad taste in salsa." She turned the receipt over. "Sunday's the fifth."

They'd talked around it for a week. Their friends Tomás and June had gotten engaged over Labor Day, and the question had been hovering in their apartment ever since like a smoke detector chirping in another room.

"I don't want a whole thing," Dev said, sitting down at the kitchen table. "Not that I don't want to celebrate. I just don't want to do the reservation-and-nice-shirt version."

Marisol pulled out the chair across from him. "Good. Because I already looked and everywhere decent is booked."

He laughed. "So what, then?"

She thought about it. They both worked Saturdays now—she at the clinic, he at the shop he'd taken over from his uncle. Sunday was the only day the apartment was quiet.

"We could drive up to Sacramento," she said. "Get the burritos. It's two hours."

"Four hours round trip for burritos."

"For the burritos where we met." She shrugged. "Or we stay here and I make the mole. The one that takes all day."

Dev considered this. "Both. We drive up, we get the burritos, we come back and you start the mole and we eat it at ten at night like animals."

"That's a terrible plan."

"It's a great plan."

She was already writing the grocery list on the back of the receipt. He watched her hand move and didn't say anything about rings, and she didn't either, and that was fine.


The Fifteenth of October

Every October, Dana pretended she'd forgotten the date, and every October, Marcus pretended to believe her.

This year she came home from the clinic to find him at the kitchen table with a spiral notebook, the kind he used for grocery lists and half-finished poems he never showed anyone.

"Twelve years," he said. "I made a list."

She dropped her bag by the door and read over his shoulder. *Dinner at Nomi's. Drive to the coast. Ferris wheel? Do nothing.*

"Ferris wheel has a question mark."

"Ferris wheel is a bad idea. I put it down because it sounded romantic, then I remembered you get sick on the swings at the park."

She pulled out the chair beside him. The radiator ticked. Outside, someone's leaf blower whined against the afternoon.

"Nomi's is eighty dollars a person now," she said.

"I know. I looked."

"And the coast is four hours and the forecast is rain."

"I know that too." He tapped the last line with his pen. "Which leaves us."

Dana thought about the twelve years. The apartment above the laundromat. The year his mother was sick and they didn't leave Ohio once. The wedding they kept deciding they didn't need, mostly because neither of them could articulate what it would change.

"Do nothing," she said, "but with the good wine. The bottle Anthony gave us."

"We were saving that."

"For what? This is the what."

Marcus considered. Then he crossed out everything above the last line, closed the notebook, and got up to find the corkscrew.

They ate leftover chili out of mismatched bowls and drank forty-dollar wine on the couch, and around nine she put her feet in his lap and he complained about it and didn't move them.

"Same thing next year?" he asked.

"Same thing," she said.


Mara found the receipt in a shoebox while looking for winter gloves: two tickets to a Tuesday matinee, October 14th, seven years ago. She brought it into the kitchen where Devon was scraping the last of the oatmeal into a bowl.

"You kept this?"

He squinted at the faded thermal paper. "That was the movie where you fell asleep."

"I did not fall asleep. I closed my eyes during the loud part."

The anniversary landed on a Thursday this year. They'd never been consistent about it—some years a nice dinner, one year nothing at all because Devon's mother was in the hospital, one year a weekend in a rented cabin where the heat didn't work and they'd laughed about it for months afterward.

"We could do the cabin again," Devon offered that evening, feet up on the coffee table.

"The one with no heat?"

"A different cabin. A functioning cabin."

Mara considered it. She was three weeks from a project deadline and the thought of driving four hours made her tired. "What if we just did the movie theater? The same one. It's still there, on Grand."

Devon set down his book. "They only show new stuff now."

"So we see whatever's playing. Matinee. Tuesday, even, if you can move your afternoon."

He liked that she'd remembered it was a Tuesday. "I can move my afternoon."

So they did. The theater had new seats—reclining ones, absurd and enormous—and the film was mediocre, some thriller with too many twists. Devon bought popcorn they didn't finish. Halfway through, Mara's eyes drifted shut during a shootout, and Devon nudged her, and she said "I'm listening" without opening them.

Afterward they walked six blocks to a taco place and ate at the counter, coats still on. Devon said the movie was bad. Mara said the movie was irrelevant. They walked home in the cold, arguing amiably about whether the twist had made sense.


Marisol found the receipt in the junk drawer while hunting for batteries—a faded slip from a diner in Bakersfield, dated seven years ago that Saturday.

"You kept this?" she asked, holding it up.

Devon looked over from the couch, where he'd been failing to fix a lamp. "That's the night you told me you hated my truck."

"I said it smelled like feet. I stand by that."

They'd talked vaguely about the anniversary for weeks, the way they talked about repainting the hallway. Neither of them wanted a restaurant with cloth napkins. Devon had suggested a weekend in Monterey, but the transmission on the Corolla was making a noise, and Marisol's mother was coming through town on Sunday.

"We could just drive out there," Devon said. "To the diner. It's three hours."

"It's probably closed. Places like that close."

He looked it up. Still open, four stars, someone in the reviews complaining about the coffee. Marisol read that aloud and laughed, because the coffee had been terrible then too, and she'd drunk four cups anyway because she hadn't wanted the night to end.

They left at six that Saturday morning with a thermos and a bag of tangerines. Devon drove the first half; Marisol took over near Buttonwillow and put on the country station he pretended not to like. The diner had new booths, red vinyl instead of brown, but the same laminated menus with the pie list stapled inside.

They ordered what they'd ordered before, more or less. Marisol couldn't remember exactly. Devon claimed he could and was probably lying.

Afterward they sat in the parking lot with the windows down, not in a hurry.

"Seven years," she said.

"Feels like less."

"Feels like more, some days."

He took her hand across the console. "Same diner next year?"

"Different pie," she said.


Ten years to the day since they'd met in the laundromat on Fulton Street, Nadia found the note on the coffee table: *Don't cook. I have a plan.*

She texted him from work. *Should I be worried?*

*Very*, Desmond wrote back.

She came home at six to find him on the floor of the living room with the rug rolled up against the wall and a cardboard box open beside him, records fanned out in loose arcs. Some of them she hadn't seen in years — the ones from the first apartment, the ones with water damage on the sleeves from the leak in the Clinton Hill ceiling.

"I was going to make a reservation," he said. "Then I thought about how we'd just sit there and talk about the reservation."

"So instead we're going to sit on the floor."

"We're going to sit on the floor and I'm going to make you listen to that Ohio Players album you claim to hate."

"I don't claim. I hate it."

He put it on anyway. She got two beers from the fridge and a bag of the salt-and-vinegar chips he pretended not to eat, and lowered herself down beside him, back against the couch. The needle caught, hissed, found its groove.

They talked about the year Desmond's mother stayed with them for four months. About Nadia's failed pottery phase. About whether the tenth anniversary counted if they'd broken up for six weeks in 2019, which Desmond insisted didn't count and Nadia insisted did, because she remembered every day of it.

Around ten she said, "We should do something bigger. Next year. Take a trip somewhere."

"We say that."

"I know."

He reached over and turned the record, and the room filled up again, and neither of them moved for a long time.


Marguerite found the calendar reminder while looking for something else entirely — a note she'd typed into her phone four years ago that said simply *first apartment, Oct 12.*

"That's Saturday," she told Dev, who was standing at the stove pushing a spatula around a pan of eggs he'd already overcooked.

"Four years since we hauled that couch up the stairs."

"Three flights. In August."

"You cried."

"I sweated. There's a difference." She leaned against the counter. "So what do we do about it?"

Dev turned the burner off. He had opinions about anniversaries, mostly that other people's versions of them — the tasting menus, the surprise trips — felt like performances for an audience that wasn't there. But he also knew that four years of shared rent and shared groceries and shared silences was not a small thing, and that Marguerite kept the note in her phone for a reason.

"There's that place on Delaney," he said. "The one with the good bread."

"We go there all the time."

"Right, but we could go there and order the expensive fish."

She considered it. "Or." She pulled a stool over and sat down, which meant she was serious. "Or we drive out to the lake and walk around it, and then we come back and cook the mushroom thing you made when we didn't have any furniture yet."

"We ate it standing up."

"We ate it on the floor. Off a moving box."

Dev nodded slowly. "We'd have to buy mushrooms."

"That's the plan. Mushrooms, the lake, and the floor, if you're up for the floor."

"My knees have opinions."

"Chairs, then. A compromise." She held out her hand, and he shook it like they'd closed a deal, which was more or less how most things got decided between them. Saturday, then. The lake, the mushrooms, four years, and no audience but themselves.


The Fifth Year

Nadia found the reservation confirmation still open on Emmett's laptop when she came home Thursday, and she closed the tab without saying anything, because she knew what it cost him to plan things.

But over dinner he brought it up himself. "I made a reservation at Corvo. For Saturday."

"The place with the tasting menu?"

"Nine courses." He was watching her face the way he did when he wasn't sure he'd done the right thing. Five years in the same apartment in Somerville, and he still checked.

"Em." She set down her fork. "That's four hundred dollars."

"It's five years."

"I know it's five years." She reached across and turned his wrist so she could see the time, an old habit, though there was a clock on the microwave. "Can I say what I actually want?"

He waited.

"I want to drive out to Wingaersheek. Bring the camp stove. Make the terrible coffee you make and sit on the rocks until we're cold."

Emmett laughed, short and relieved. "In November."

"Especially in November. Nobody's there."

"You want to spend our anniversary being cold on a beach."

"We spent the first one being cold on a beach. I had that awful gray coat." She pulled her knees up onto the chair, which he hated and never mentioned. "You said something. About how you weren't going anywhere."

"I remember what I said."

"I want to see if you still mean it."

He got up and started clearing plates, which was how he bought himself a moment. At the sink, with the water running, he said, "I'll cancel the reservation tomorrow. But we're stopping at the good bakery on the way, because I'm not eating gas station food on my anniversary."

"Deal."

"And you're bringing a better coat."

"That coat is a piece of history."

"That coat is a piece of felt."

She came up behind him and put her forehead between his shoulder blades, and he stood there with his hands in the dishwater, not moving, letting her.


Maya found the receipt while cleaning out her wallet — a faded slip from Nguyen's Diner, dated three years ago to the day. She'd kept it because it was the first time Theo had paid for her pancakes without making a thing of it.

"We should go back," she said, holding it up to him across the kitchen island.

Theo squinted at the paper. "That place closed. Remember? They put in a vape shop."

"Right." She set the receipt down beside her coffee. "Then what?"

He leaned against the counter, thinking. Three years. Two apartments, one badly behaved cat, a spectacularly failed attempt at growing tomatoes on the fire escape. It didn't feel like something you marked with a reservation and a bottle of wine, though he suspected some part of her wanted that.

"What if we cooked?" he said. "The pancakes. Here."

"You burn pancakes."

"I burn the first one. That's tradition."

Maya laughed, and he watched her decide to be pleased instead of disappointed. She got that look sometimes — a slight recalibration behind the eyes — and he'd learned to notice it, and to let her have it.

They shopped that afternoon at the Korean market on Ninth, arguing amiably about whether buttermilk mattered. Maya insisted it did. Theo bought it to be agreeable and then, secretly, agreed. At home she found the good plates, the ones from his grandmother, still wrapped in newspaper from the move eight months ago.

He burned the first pancake. She photographed it.

They ate at the coffee table because the dining chairs held laundry, and the cat sat on the arm of the couch judging them both. Around nine, Maya put her feet in Theo's lap and said, "Same thing next year?"

"Sure," he said. "But we're unpacking the plates for real."

"Deal," she said, and meant it, and they left the dishes in the sink until morning.


Marisol had been circling the date on the calendar for a month, though she pretended not to. Eight years since the night they'd met at that terrible open mic in Somerville, where Dev had played three songs and forgotten the words to all of them.

"So," she said Tuesday morning, leaning against the doorframe of the second bedroom he used as an office. "Friday."

Dev didn't look up from his monitor. "I know what Friday is."

"Do you, though."

He spun the chair around. "I was thinking Oleana. I called. They have a seven-thirty."

Marisol made a face she immediately regretted. Not because Oleana was wrong—it was lovely, it was where they'd gone for their fifth—but because she'd been carrying around a different idea for weeks and hadn't found the courage to say it out loud.

"What," Dev said.

"Nothing. Oleana's great."

"You did the thing with your mouth."

She sat down on the futon that never got used. "I want to go back to the Cantab. The open mic. It's still Wednesdays, I checked, but they do a Friday one now too, and it's the same guy running it, the one with the vest."

Dev laughed, then stopped. "You want to watch people be bad at music."

"I want to watch you be bad at music."

"Absolutely not."

"You still have the guitar. It's under the stairs behind the Christmas boxes."

He was quiet for a second, doing the thing where he pressed his thumb into his palm. "Two songs," he said. "And you have to sit in the back so I can't see your face."

"I'll sit wherever you want."

"And we're getting dinner first. A real dinner."

"Obviously."

Friday, he forgot the second verse of "Thunder Road." From the back of the room, Marisol didn't correct him. She just watched him find his way to the next line, the way he always did.


Maya found the receipt in a shoebox under the bed, faded to the color of weak tea. Nine years ago, a hardware store in Bloomington: one deadbolt, one set of keys cut, $18.47.

"You kept this?" Devon said, taking it from her. He was still in his work clothes, the smell of the print shop on him — toner and hot paper.

"I keep everything. You know this about me."

They had never gotten married, and by now the not-doing-it had its own quiet momentum, like a house settling. But they marked the day they'd moved in together, which was easier to remember than any other date because it had rained so hard the U-Haul flooded and they'd spent the first night on a bare mattress in the middle of the living room, listening to water hit the windows.

"So what do you want to do," Devon said. "Actual question. Not a trap."

Maya sat down on the edge of the bed. Last year they'd done a restaurant with a tasting menu and she'd been hungry afterward and too polite to say so. The year before, a cabin with no cell service where Devon got a migraine.

"Honestly? Nothing. Stay here. You make the thing with the short ribs."

"That takes four hours."

"I know. That's the point. Four hours of you standing in the kitchen and me pretending to help."

He considered this. Outside, someone's dog was barking at nothing.

"I want to invite Rosalie and Tam," he said. "Not for dinner. For after. Cake, maybe."

"You want a party."

"I want two people. That's not a party, that's a quorum."

Maya laughed and lay back on the bedspread. The receipt was still in his hand.

"Fine," she said. "Two people. And you're not allowed to give a toast."

"I'm absolutely giving a toast."

"Devon."

"Short one."

She let it go, which was, she thought, most of what nine years was.


Nine years to the day since they'd met at a friend's chili cook-off, and Renata still couldn't decide what to do about it.

"We could go back to Marchetti's," Dev said from the kitchen doorway, holding a dish towel he'd apparently forgotten he was using. "The place with the bread."

"We went there for year seven. And year eight." She scrolled through her phone, frowning. "It feels like we should do something. Nine feels like it counts."

"Nine's a weird number to feel strongly about."

"Ten is the milestone, so nine is the last one before we're obligated to make a fuss. That's my logic."

Dev sat down across from her at the table, which wobbled, as it had for three years. "Okay. What if we finally fixed the table?"

Renata looked up. "As the celebration?"

"As part of it. Hear me out. We've been saying we'd shim the leg since the Obama administration—"

"That's not true, it's a 2019 table."

"—and it would take twenty minutes, and then we'd have a table that doesn't try to spill soup on us." He shrugged. "Then Marchetti's. Then that thing you like where we walk around the neighborhood and criticize everyone's landscaping."

She considered it. Outside, someone's sprinkler ticked in the heat. "I want to write down the year, too."

"Write it down where?"

"In the notebook. From the first apartment." She'd started it as a joke—a list of small facts about each year, mostly petty complaints and the names of stray cats. It had gotten sincere without her permission.

"Fine, but I get to dictate my own entry this time. Last year you wrote that I was 'largely reliable.'"

"You were largely reliable."

He got up to find the level and a piece of cardboard. Renata found a pen. The reservation could wait until four.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator in her work clothes, holding the door with her hip, and took inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, most of a block of cheddar.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

Marcus came into the kitchen still wearing his jacket. "Do we have any of that yellow rice? The packet kind?"

"I think so. Bottom shelf, behind the pasta."

He found it, checked the date out of habit even though rice didn't really expire, and set the pot on to boil while Dana pulled the chicken off the bone with her fingers, dropping the skin into a paper towel. They didn't talk much for a few minutes. The radio was on low, some station Marcus liked that played too many commercials.

"How was the thing with Priya?" she asked.

"Moved to Thursday." He was snapping the ends off the green beans, working fast, tossing the bad ones toward the trash and mostly missing. "Which is fine. Gives me time to actually read the file."

"You always say that and then you read it in the parking lot."

"That's true," he admitted.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a place where mail lived. Dana had put too much cheese on hers and regretted it about halfway through. Marcus ate quickly, the way he always did, then leaned back and let his plate sit on his knee.

"This was good," he said.

"It was fine."

"It was good enough."

She agreed with that. Afterward she rinsed while he loaded, because he had opinions about the loading, and by seven-thirty the kitchen was clean and they were both on the couch, deciding whether to start something new or rewatch something they already knew the ending of.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danny came in from the balcony with the last of the cilantro, roots and all, because he'd forgotten again that you were supposed to cut the stems.

"You pulled the whole plant," Marisol said.

"I pulled some of the whole plant."

She took it from him and rinsed it in the colander, picking out a small brown snail and setting it on the windowsill to deal with later. Behind her, Danny opened the fridge and stood there in the cold light.

"There's that chicken thigh thing," he said. "From Sunday."

"That's tomorrow's lunch."

"For who?"

"For whoever gets to it first." She turned. "There's black beans in the cabinet. Do the thing with the cumin."

He did the thing with the cumin, which meant a can of beans, half an onion diced badly, cumin, a squeeze of lime, and more salt than he'd admit to. Marisol fried two eggs in the other pan, the good one, the one they weren't supposed to put in the dishwasher. She broke the second yolk and swore.

"I'll take that one," Danny said.

"You always take that one."

"I like it better broken. It cooks all the way."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a stack of mail and a dead printer on it, a situation entering its third week. On the TV, a home renovation show played with the sound low. Marisol put hot sauce on everything and then more hot sauce.

"The printer," she said.

"Saturday."

"You said Saturday last Saturday."

"I said a Saturday." He scraped his bowl. "These are good beans."

"They're okay beans." She reached over and took a forkful of his rice, which was drier than hers, and closer.

Later he washed and she dried, and the snail was still on the windowsill.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at half a package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans going limp at the edges, and the lemon they'd bought on Sunday for a recipe neither of them had made.

"Chicken," she said when Marcus came in, and he said, "Okay," and set his keys in the bowl by the door.

He took the beans to the sink and started snapping the ends off while she preheated the oven and lined a sheet pan with foil, because she hated scrubbing pans and he never remembered to soak them.

"Do we have rice?" he asked.

"There's that couscous."

"That's not rice."

"It cooks in five minutes."

He conceded by getting the box down. She salted the chicken heavily, the way her mother did, and cracked pepper over it, and squeezed the lemon on top because otherwise it would sit in the drawer another week.

While the oven worked, they talked about small things. His coworker was leaving and there was a card going around. Her car had made a noise on the way home, a kind of ticking, and he said he'd listen tomorrow morning.

They ate at the table because Dana had started insisting on it in January and mostly it had stuck. The green beans were better than they'd looked. The chicken skin came out crisp on one side and pale on the other because the pan had been crowded.

"This is good," Marcus said.

"It's fine."

"It's good."

She ate the pale piece and gave him the crisp one without discussing it. Afterward he washed and she dried, and they left the sheet pan soaking, and by nine the kitchen was dark again.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon, most of a block of Parmesan.

"Chicken again," she called out when she heard the door.

"I don't care," Marcus said. He came into the kitchen unwinding his scarf, kissed the side of her head, and went straight for the sink to wash his hands. "I ate a granola bar at two and that's it. I'd eat cereal."

"You always say you'd eat cereal."

"Because I would."

She put him on green beans. He trimmed the ends with the paring knife instead of snapping them, which she'd told him was slower, and which he did anyway. She shredded the chicken with two forks, then decided against pasta and put a pot of rice on instead, because the rice took twelve minutes and she didn't want to wait for water to boil.

"Do we have soy sauce?"

"Door of the fridge. Behind the mustard."

The beans went in a pan with olive oil and too much garlic, which was how they both liked it. Marcus turned on the radio on top of the microwave, then turned it off when the news came on. He told her about a meeting that had gone twenty minutes long over a font. She told him her mother had called twice and left no message.

They ate at the small table by the window, plates on placemats they never used for anyone else. He salted his rice; she squeezed lemon over the beans and passed him the wedge without being asked.

"This is good," he said.

"It's leftovers."

"It's good leftovers."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they finished by seven-forty.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open fridge with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the oven preheating and the beans dumped on a sheet pan.

"Thighs again?" he said, not complaining, just noting. He set his keys in the bowl by the door and started unlacing his boots.

"They were what we had. You bought them."

"I did buy them." He came into the kitchen, kissed the side of her head, and looked at the sheet pan. "Those beans are done for."

"They're fine roasted. Everything's fine roasted."

He took over the beans anyway, because he was pickier about trimming ends, and she moved to the chicken, patting the thighs dry with a paper towel and salting them more heavily than he would have. They worked around each other without much talking. The kitchen was too narrow for two people, and they had long ago worked out an unspoken choreography: she took the stove side, he took the sink.

"Rice or bread?" he asked.

"Rice. There's that half bag of jasmine."

He measured it wrong on purpose, a little extra, because he liked leftover rice for lunch. She saw and said nothing.

They ate at the coffee table with the TV on mute and captions running, a habit from when their upstairs neighbor had a newborn. Marcus squeezed lemon over everything, including the rice. Dana picked the crispiest bean off his plate and he let her.

"This is good," he said.

"It's chicken."

"It's good chicken."

Afterward, he washed and she dried, and they argued mildly about whether the sheet pan needed to soak. It did. She left it in the sink and he didn't push it.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came in, still wearing her work badge on a lanyard. She dropped her keys in the ceramic dish by the door, the one with the chip in the rim they kept meaning to replace.

"There's chicken thighs thawed," Miles said from the stove. "But I didn't know what you wanted with them."

"Whatever's fastest." She toed off her shoes and came to look over his shoulder. The skillet was hot, oil shimmering. "Did you get soy sauce? We were out."

"I got the low sodium. It was the only kind left."

"That's fine." She opened the crisper drawer, moved a bag of carrots aside, and found half a head of broccoli that was still mostly good. "This needs to get used."

"Steam it?"

"I'll just throw it in the pan after." She rinsed it at the sink and started cutting the florets off, tossing the woody part of the stem in the compost bin under the counter, which needed emptying. She mentioned that. He said he'd do it.

The chicken hissed when he put it down. Neither of them talked for a minute. Dana got two plates from the cabinet and set them on the counter instead of the table, because they'd eat on the couch, which they'd agreed not to do on weeknights and did anyway.

"Too much garlic?" Miles asked, holding up three cloves.

"There's no such thing."

They ate with the TV on low, some show they'd both seen. The broccoli was undercooked in places and she ate it anyway. Miles finished first and sat with the plate on his knee.

"That was good," she said. "The low sodium's fine."

"I'll get the regular next time."

She took his plate when she got up, stacking it on hers, and he followed her into the kitchen to start the water running.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle came through the door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook that had been threatening to pull out of the drywall since March.

"I started rice," Marcus called from the kitchen. "But we don't have the sesame oil."

"We do. It's behind the vinegar."

He moved bottles around, doubtful, then held it up. "How long has this been in here?"

"Don't smell it, you'll talk yourself out of it." She took the bottle from him and set it on the counter, then opened the fridge and looked at the broccoli she'd bought Sunday. Still fine. A little rubbery at the stems, but fine.

They worked around each other without much negotiation. Marcus cut chicken thighs into strips on the plastic board, the one they used for meat, and Danielle broke the broccoli into florets with her hands because the knife was busy. She turned the burner on under the wok that wasn't really a wok, just a deep skillet Marcus's mother had given them.

"Do we want the peanuts?"

"Sure."

"There's like a quarter cup left."

"Then use them all."

The chicken hissed when it hit the oil. Marcus stepped back and let it sit without stirring, which Danielle had taught him, and which he still resisted, his hand hovering with the spatula.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had mail on it. Danielle put a towel down first. Marcus found a show they'd both half-watched before, something with detectives, and they let it run.

"This is better than last time," she said.

"I didn't do anything different."

"You cooked the broccoli less."

He thought about it. "I did do that."

Later she washed and he dried, and he asked whether she wanted to do this again Thursday, and she said yes, but with the tofu that needed using up.


The rice was already going when Nadia got home, which meant Theo had beaten her to the kitchen again.

"You bought the wrong sausage," she said, setting her bag on the chair by the door.

"I bought the sausage that was there." He was slicing an onion badly, in uneven half-moons. "The turkey kind was gone. There were like four employees restocking the frozen section and nobody at the meat counter."

She took the knife from him without ceremony and finished the onion in about forty seconds. He didn't argue. He'd learned three years ago that this was not worth arguing about, that she liked doing it and he liked watching her do it, and that the onion did not care.

"Peppers?" he asked, holding up the bag.

"Both. And there's half a zucchini from Sunday that's going to go bad."

He found it in the crisper drawer, gone slightly soft at the cut end. He trimmed that part off and dropped the rest on the cutting board. Behind him the sausage started to spit in the pan and Nadia turned the burner down, then reached past him for the soy sauce.

"That's not going in the rice, is it."

"It's going in the vegetables."

"Okay."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had a stack of mail on it and neither of them wanted to be the one to deal with it. The bowls were the good ones, the heavy ceramic set his sister had given them, and the rice had come out slightly gluey, which they both noticed and neither mentioned.

"I have that call at eight tomorrow," she said.

"I'll be quiet."

"You're never quiet in the morning."

"I'll be quieter."

She put her feet on his thigh. On the TV, someone was explaining how sourdough starter worked. Outside, a car alarm went off and then stopped, and Theo got up to get them each a glass of water.


Maya got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, most of a lemon.

By the time Devon came in, she had the oven preheating and was trimming the beans over the sink.

"It smells like nothing in here," he said, dropping his bag by the door.

"Because nothing's cooking yet. Wash your hands and do something about the rice."

He measured rice into the small saucepan, then held it up. "One cup or one and a half?"

"One and a half. You always eat more than you think."

He filled it at the tap and set it on the back burner. While the water came up, he pulled out the cutting board she'd already dirtied and started slicing the lemon into thin rounds. Maya laid the chicken in a sheet pan, salted it heavily, and shook oregano over it from a jar that had probably been in the cabinet since they moved in.

"Do we have any of that garlic paste?"

"You used it on the pasta thing."

"Right." She scattered the lemon slices and slid the pan into the oven.

They ate on the couch, plates on their knees, because the kitchen table had a stack of mail and a broken lamp on it that neither of them had dealt with for eleven days. Devon put on an episode of a cooking competition they'd already seen.

"The rice is a little wet," he said.

"It's fine."

"I'm just saying it, not complaining."

Maya pulled a lemon round off her chicken and ate it, rind and all, which she knew he hated to watch. He made a face. She smiled with her mouth full.

Afterward he washed, she dried, and they left the sheet pan to soak.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, considering the half-package of chicken thighs she'd meant to cook Sunday.

"Do these smell okay to you?" she asked when Marcus came in twenty minutes later, holding the package out toward him like an offering.

He leaned over, sniffed, shrugged. "Fine. Cook them hot."

"That's not really a food safety principle."

"It's my food safety principle." He set his keys in the bowl by the door and started unbuttoning his flannel. "You want me to do the rice?"

"There's no rice. I used it for the soup."

"There's the couscous."

"That's yours. I don't like it."

"You like it fine when I make it with the lemon."

She waved a hand, conceding. He filled the kettle while she got the cast iron heating, and for a while they moved around each other in the narrow kitchen with the particular choreography of people who've negotiated the same eight feet of linoleum for three years. He reached past her for the salt. She elbowed him gently out of the way of the drawer.

"Broccoli's going bad," he said, holding up a head with yellowing florets.

"Cut off the yellow parts."

"That's your food safety principle."

The chicken spat in the pan. Dana turned on the fan, which didn't help much. They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had bills on it that neither of them wanted to move, and watched half an episode of something they'd already seen.

"This is good," Marcus said, meaning the lemon in the couscous.

"It's okay." She took another forkful anyway.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and she told him about a coworker who'd cried in a meeting, and he said *huh*, and asked whether she wanted to walk to the store for ice cream. She said maybe tomorrow.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danny came in from the garage, still smelling faintly of solvent from the shop. He toed off his boots by the door, which Maren had asked him about twice, and which he still managed to do wrong, leaving them where the door would swing into them.

"There's chicken thighs thawed," she said. She was at the counter with a knife and half an onion, her laptop open behind her showing a spreadsheet she'd abandoned twenty minutes ago. "I couldn't decide between the peanut sauce thing or just soy and honey."

"Soy and honey." He washed his hands at the kitchen sink because the bathroom was on the other side of the apartment. "The peanut one takes forever."

"It takes nine minutes."

"It takes nine minutes plus you have to find the fish sauce."

She let that go and slid the onion into the pan he'd already set on the burner, oil going glossy. He got the honey out of the cabinet, the bear-shaped bottle crusted at the nozzle, and ran it under hot water. They worked around each other without much talking. She salted the chicken; he found the tongs in the drawer that stuck.

"Did you call about the water bill?" she asked.

"I called. It's an estimate, they said. It'll even out."

"That's what they said last time."

"I know."

He turned the thighs and the pan spat, and she stepped back from it, laughing a little, and put her hand flat against his back for balance while she reached past him for the paper towels.

They ate on the couch, plates on their knees, some show they were three episodes behind on. Danny picked the onions off. Maren took them without being asked. Afterward he washed and she dried, and the dish towel was already too damp to be useful, and neither of them got a new one.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle got home, which meant Theo had started dinner without her again. She dropped her bag by the shoe rack and found him at the stove, sleeves pushed up, poking at chicken thighs in the cast iron.

"You didn't wait," she said.

"You said seven-thirty. It's seven-forty."

"Traffic on Cermak." She washed her hands at the sink, bumping his hip to make room. "What's the plan here?"

"Chicken. Rice. There's that broccoli that's about to turn."

"It already turned."

"It's fine if you cut the yellow parts off."

She pulled the broccoli from the crisper drawer and held it up, a limp crown with a bruise of yellow spreading across half the florets. Theo squinted at it and conceded. "Okay. Frozen peas, then."

"Frozen peas," she agreed, and got the bag from the freezer, dumping half of it into a saucepan with a splash of water. She salted them without measuring, then added a knob of butter because it was Wednesday and nobody was watching.

He plated the chicken and she carried the pans to the table, which had yesterday's mail on one end and a phone charger snaking across the middle. They ate with the overhead light on because neither of them had gotten around to replacing the bulb in the floor lamp.

"This is good," she said. It was a little dry, and he knew it, and he took the compliment anyway.

"I put paprika on it."

"I can tell." She scraped rice onto the last of her chicken. "My mom called. She wants to know if we're coming at Thanksgiving."

"What'd you say?"

"I said I'd ask you."

"We're coming," he said. "I'm not driving, though."

"I never let you drive."

He got up to get water and brought back two glasses without being asked, and they finished eating while the peas went cold in the pan.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a heel of parmesan.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the beans in a colander and a pot filling at the sink.

"Pasta?" he said, dropping his bag by the door instead of hanging it up.

"Pasta. There's chicken to put in it."

He washed his hands and started pulling meat off the carcass, which was the job he always ended up with because Dana said the bones felt wrong to her. He worked over the cutting board, shredding with his fingers, eating a piece of skin.

"That's for dinner."

"There's plenty."

She put the beans in a skillet with olive oil and salt and let them go, shaking the pan every so often. The water came to a boil and she dumped in the last of a box of penne, then a second, smaller box of rotini because there wasn't enough penne. Marcus raised an eyebrow at the two shapes swimming together.

"Nobody's coming over," she said.

He grated the parmesan while she drained. They mixed everything in the pot — pasta, chicken, beans, cheese, more olive oil, pepper — and stood at the counter eating out of bowls because the kitchen table had a stack of mail and a broken lamp on it that had been there for eleven days.

"This is good," he said, surprised, like he was every time.

"It's fine."

They talked about his brother's new apartment, and whether the upstairs neighbor's dog barked all day or just when they were home. He rinsed the dishes. She wiped the counter and put the empty pasta boxes in the recycling, then took the trash out because it was Tuesday.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans going slightly limp, a lemon that had seen better days.

"Chicken and beans," she called when she heard the door.

"Rice?" Marcus asked, dropping his bag on the chair that had become a bag chair sometime last spring.

"If you make it."

He measured rice into the pot without a cup, the way he always did, and Dana always let him because it always came out fine. She trimmed the beans while he ran water over the rice, both of them working around each other at the sink in a choreography they'd never discussed.

"Do we have any of that mustard left?"

"The grainy one?"

"Yeah."

He found it behind the pickles. Dana whisked it with the lemon and some olive oil and salt while the chicken went into the cast iron, skin down, hissing.

"Don't move it," she said.

"I know."

"You always move it."

"I moved it one time."

They ate at the small table with the news on low in the other room, neither of them watching it. Marcus told her about a coworker who'd announced he was going to law school at forty-one, and they discussed for a while whether that was brave or a mistake, and decided it was probably both. Dana had a scrape of sauce left and ran a piece of chicken skin through it.

"That was good," Marcus said. "The mustard thing."

"That was just mustard and lemon."

"Still."

He washed, she dried, and it took eleven minutes. Then she went to answer an email she'd been avoiding and he lay on the couch with his phone, and around nine they somehow ended up in the same room again without either of them suggesting it.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle came in from the garage, still in her work fleece, smelling faintly of the parking garage's damp concrete.

"There's chicken thighs in the fridge," Marcus said. He was standing at the stove with a jar of curry paste, reading the label like it might have changed since Tuesday.

"How many?"

"Four. But two of them look kind of sad."

She peeled back the plastic wrap and sniffed. "They're fine. They're just from Sunday." She set them on the cutting board and got the good knife, the one they'd bought at the outlet mall in Kittery two summers ago, and started trimming the fat into a little heap she'd dump in the trash under the sink.

"I was going to do the coconut milk thing," he said.

"Do we have a lime?"

"We have that half a lime."

"That's been in there a week."

"It's a lime." He opened the fridge and held it up, dry and pale at the cut end. "Okay. No lime."

She slid the chicken into the pan and it seized up, hissing, and she stepped back from the spitting oil. Marcus reached past her for the fish sauce and she leaned to give him room without either of them saying anything about it. He shook in more than the recipe wanted. He always did.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had his laptop and a stack of unopened mail on it, and because the Celtics were on, muted, with captions running. Danielle picked out the bell peppers and left them in a ring around the edge of her bowl.

"You always say you like them cooked," Marcus said.

"I like them in theory."

He took them off her plate with his fork. The rice cooker beeped once, pointlessly, from the counter.

"That was good," she said, and got up to start the dishes while he found the remote.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide, and she decided on the pasta because there was half a box of penne in the cabinet and a jar of sauce behind the rice. She filled the pot too full, the way she always did, and set it on the back burner.

Marcus came in at six-twenty, dropped his bag by the door, and stood in the kitchen doorway with his coat still on.

"There's broccoli," Dana said. "In the crisper. Might be past it."

He checked. One head, a little yellow at the edges of the florets. "It's fine," he said. "Mostly fine."

"Cut off the yellow parts."

"I'm going to steam it."

"You can steam it after you cut off the yellow parts."

He hung his coat on the back of a chair instead of the hook and got the cutting board down. The water started to move. Dana leaned against the counter with her phone, reading something and not saying what.

"Do we have parmesan?"

"The green can."

"That's not parmesan."

"It's parmesan-adjacent," she said, and put in the pasta.

They ate at the table because they'd made a rule about it in January and were still, mostly, keeping it. Marcus had put too much sauce on his, which he did every time, and the broccoli sat in a bowl between them with the tongs from the drawer that didn't match anything.

"Rachel wants to do something Saturday," Dana said.

"Something what?"

"Unclear. Possibly bowling."

"I'm not against bowling."

"That's not the same as being for it."

He shrugged and took more broccoli. Outside somebody's car alarm went off briefly and stopped. Dana got up for water and brought back two glasses without asking, and he took one, and they finished eating without talking much, which was all right.


The rain had started around five, so Priya took the bus instead of biking, which meant she got home twenty minutes later than usual. Daniel was already in the kitchen, standing over the open refrigerator with the door propped against his hip.

"We have the chicken thighs from Sunday," he said. "Or eggs."

"Chicken. The eggs are for tomorrow." She hung her wet jacket over the back of a chair, where it would drip onto the linoleum and annoy them both later.

He set a skillet on the burner while she rinsed rice in a mesh strainer, tilting it back and forth under the tap until the water ran less cloudy. Neither of them measured anything. Daniel salted the thighs straight from the box and got them skin-side down in the pan, and the popping started immediately, loud enough that Priya reached over him to turn on the vent hood.

"Do we have that jar of green olives?"

"We finished those."

"With what?"

"With crackers. Last Thursday, during the thing with your sister."

He remembered. He found half a lemon in the crisper instead, wrapped in plastic and going a little translucent at the cut edge, and squeezed what he could over the chicken at the end.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a pile of unopened mail and a bicycle wheel on it. The rice was slightly underdone in the center; Priya said so, and Daniel said it was fine, and she agreed that it was fine, actually. On the television, a nature documentary neither of them had chosen played at low volume.

"I'll do the pan," she said, when the plates were empty.

"I'll do the pan. You did it Monday."

"I did it Monday because you cooked Monday."

He conceded the point by carrying both plates to the sink and turning on the hot water.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of spinach going soft at the edges, three eggs, a wedge of Parmesan with a hard rind.

"Pasta?" she called when she heard the door.

"Sure." Marcus dropped his backpack by the shoe rack and came into the kitchen, still unwinding his scarf. "Is there garlic?"

"There's garlic. There's always garlic."

He filled the pot and set it on the back burner while she pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, dropping shreds onto a cutting board. The radio was on, low, some local station doing traffic they didn't need to hear anymore.

"You want the spinach in it or on the side?"

"In it," he said. "It'll disappear."

"That's the idea."

He grated the Parmesan too coarsely, the way he always did, and she didn't say anything about it. When the water boiled he dumped the box in without measuring, and a few strands stuck up like a bad haircut until he pushed them under with a wooden spoon.

"Ruth called," Dana said. "She wants to know if we're coming for Easter."

"Is that a real question or a formality?"

"It's a real question in that she asked. It's a formality in that we're going."

Marcus laughed. "Tell her yes."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a stack of mail and a printer on it that neither of them had moved in nine days. The pasta was fine—a little bland, salvageable with pepper. Dana ate hers fast and then picked at his.

"There's ice cream," he said, "but only the mint."

"Only the mint is fine."

He got up to get it, and on the way back he took her plate too, without being asked, and she let him.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide, and she decided on pasta because there was half a box of penne and a jar of sauce that had been in the cupboard since her mother's last visit. She filled the pot too full, the way she always did, and set it on the back burner.

Marcus came in at ten after six, dropping his keys in the bowl by the door and shrugging off a jacket that smelled like rain and the parking garage.

"There's no bread," he said, looking into the fridge.

"I know. I forgot again."

"I'm not complaining. I'm reporting."

He found a bag of spinach that was maybe two days past its best and held it up. She nodded, so he dumped the whole thing into a pan with olive oil and too much garlic, which was the only way he cooked anything. The leaves collapsed almost immediately, the way spinach does, going from a mountain to a spoonful.

"Do we have parmesan?"

"The green can."

"That's not parmesan."

"It's parmesan-adjacent."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had bills and a laptop and a box from a return neither of them had driven to UPS yet. The TV was on with the sound low, some show they'd both seen. Dana ate with her feet tucked under her. Marcus put too much pepper on his and then drank most of his water in one go.

"Your sister called me," he said. "About the thing in April."

"You don't have to go."

"I know. I'll probably go."

She reached over with her fork and took a piece of spinach off his plate, and he let her, and they didn't say anything else for a while. When they were done he washed and she dried, and she put the pot in the wrong cabinet on purpose, which was an old joke, and he moved it without comment.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of spinach going soft at the edges, three eggs, a lemon.

"Pasta?" she called out when she heard the door.

"Sure." Miles came into the kitchen, set his keys in the bowl, and looked over her shoulder. "Is that chicken still good?"

"It's Wednesday."

"That's not an answer."

She sniffed it, shrugged, and handed him the container. "Smell it yourself."

He did, and made a face that meant it was fine. He filled a pot with water and set it on the wrong burner—the one that took forever—and Dana moved it without saying anything, which he noticed and didn't comment on.

They worked around each other. She pulled the chicken off the bone with her fingers while he chopped garlic, badly, in big uneven pieces she'd probably pick around later. The radio was on, some local station doing a traffic report neither of them needed.

"There's no parmesan," he said, holding up an empty wedge of rind.

"Use the rind. Throw it in the sauce."

"Does that work?"

"My mom did it."

He threw it in. The water boiled over a little and hissed on the burner. Dana wilted the spinach into the pan and squeezed the lemon over everything, then tasted it off the wooden spoon and added more salt than he would have.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had bills on it. Miles put his feet up. Dana twisted her fork against the bowl.

"It's good," he said. "The lemon."

"It needed acid."

"You always say that."

"It's usually true."

He got up for water and brought her a glass too, without asking, and she took it.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came in from the parking lot, keys still in her hand.

"I got the ground turkey," she said, setting the bag on the counter. "They were out of the ninety-three percent, so it's the eighty-five."

"That's fine. Better, honestly." Marcus was already pulling a skillet from the drying rack. He'd changed out of his work clothes into the sweatpants with the bleach stain on the thigh. "Do we still have that jar of chili crisp?"

Dana crouched to check the cabinet, moving a can of chickpeas out of the way. "Half a jar. There's also that sesame oil we bought for the thing we never made."

"Use it."

She peeled and grated a knob of ginger while he browned the turkey, breaking it apart with the edge of a wooden spoon. The exhaust fan rattled. Outside, someone's dog was barking at intervals, the same three barks over and over.

"Did you email the landlord about the closet door?" she asked.

"I texted him. He said Thursday." Marcus scraped the ginger in off the cutting board, then the garlic. "Which probably means next Thursday."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had become a place where mail lived. Dana sat on the floor with her back against the couch; Marcus sat on the couch, plate on his knee. The turkey was too salty from the soy sauce, and they both mentioned it, and neither of them stopped eating.

"This is good with the crisp on it," Dana said.

"I put too much soy in."

"I know. It's still good."

He turned on an episode of something they'd already seen. Halfway through, Dana got up and refilled both water glasses without being asked, and Marcus said thanks without looking up, and later, when the plates were rinsed and stacked, she leaned against him at the sink for a second before going to fold laundry.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator in her coat, doing the math: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, rice. Fine. That was dinner.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the rice in the pot and was snapping the ends off the beans over the sink.

"There's a puddle at the bottom of the stairs the size of a lake," he said. "Somebody's going to break a hip."

"Text the landlord again."

"I texted him Tuesday." He washed his hands, then took the beans from her without being asked and started slicing them into halves, which she found unnecessary but had stopped arguing about two years ago. "Chicken?"

"Chicken. It's got one more day in it."

He pulled the container out and pried the meat off the bones with his fingers while she got the pan hot. The apartment smelled like garlic and wet wool. Somewhere below them, a neighbor's dog started up.

"I told Priya we'd do Saturday," Dana said.

"Saturday's the thing with my brother."

She stopped. "That's Sunday."

"It got moved. He texted the group chat."

"I'm not in the group chat, Marcus."

"You are, you just muted it." He said it mildly, tipping the chicken into the pan, and she let it go because he was right.

They ate at the coffee table with the TV on low, plates on their knees, because the actual table had bills and a half-assembled bookshelf on it. The beans were a little squeaky. The rice was good.

"I'll text him about the stairs," she said.

"He likes you better."

"He's afraid of me."

Marcus nodded, chewing. Later he washed and she dried, and neither of them mentioned Saturday again.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

"Chicken again," Marcus said from the doorway, dropping his keys in the bowl.

"Chicken *differently*. I'm making that pasta thing."

"The one with the lemon?"

"That's the one."

He hung up her coat for her since she'd left it draped over the chair, then washed his hands and started snapping the ends off the green beans without being asked. It was the division they'd fallen into over three years — she cooked, he prepped and cleaned, and they both complained about the other's system for loading the dishwasher.

"There's no parmesan," he said, checking the drawer.

"There's the shaky kind."

"That's not the same."

"I'm aware." She was pulling chicken off the bone with her fingers, dropping the shreds onto a cutting board. "Do you want to run to Kroger?"

He considered it — the eight minutes there, the eight back, the parking lot. "No."

"Then it's the shaky kind."

The water took forever to boil, the way it always did in that thin-bottomed pot they kept meaning to replace. Marcus set the table, which meant two plates and two forks and the roll of paper towels because they'd run out of napkins in October. He poured himself a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc that had been open since Saturday and sniffed it warily before pouring one for her too.

They ate at the small table with the news muted on the TV behind them. The pasta was good. The green beans were slightly overdone.

"Your mom called me," Dana said.

Marcus stopped chewing. "About Thanksgiving?"

"About Thanksgiving."

"What'd you tell her?"

"That you'd call her back."

He nodded slowly, resigned, and reached for more.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Daniel came in from the garage, still in his work boots. Priya was at the counter with a colander of green beans, snapping the ends off with her thumbnail and dropping them into a bowl.

"There's not much left," she said. "Beans, an onion, that lemon that's going soft."

"Eggs?"

"Four."

He toed off his boots by the mat and washed his hands at the kitchen sink, bumping her hip to make room. "Fried rice, then. If you don't mind the onion."

"I don't mind the onion. I mind chopping it."

So he chopped it, badly, in uneven pieces, while she trimmed the beans and set a pot of water on to boil. The kitchen was narrow enough that they kept having to negotiate — she reached past his elbow for the salt, he stepped back so she could get to the stove, and they did the small shuffle they'd worked out over two years in the apartment without saying anything about it.

"Soy sauce is behind the vinegar," she said, before he asked.

The beans went into the boiling water for three minutes and then into ice water, which Priya insisted on and Daniel thought was unnecessary. The rice hissed in the pan. He scrambled the eggs directly into it, breaking them up with the side of the spatula, and she squeezed half the lemon over the beans and shook on flaky salt from the little ceramic dish her mother had sent.

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had bills on it. The TV was on but muted, some cooking competition neither of them was following.

"Too much onion," she said.

"You said you didn't mind."

"I don't mind. I'm reporting." She took another forkful. "It's good, though. Really."

He got up to get the hot sauce, and the water glasses, and sat back down.


Dana got home first, so she started the rice. The bag said forty minutes for brown, which meant they'd eat at eight, which meant she should have started it at seven, which she hadn't. She dumped it in the pot anyway and turned on the burner.

Marcus came in at 7:20 with his laptop bag still on his shoulder and the mail in his hand. "There's a thing from the dentist," he said. "I think it's just a reminder."

"Open it or don't, but don't leave it on the counter."

He put it on the counter, then moved it to the little basket by the door where things went to die. "What are we doing?"

"Rice. And whatever's in the drawer."

There was half a bag of broccoli, going a little yellow at the crowns, and two chicken thighs from Sunday that needed to be used. Marcus took the chicken. He liked doing chicken. He salted it more heavily than Dana would have and put it skin-down in the cast iron, and the noise it made was loud enough that they stopped talking for a minute.

Dana trimmed the broccoli, cutting off the parts she didn't trust, and tossed the florets in a bowl with oil and the garlic powder because neither of them wanted to peel garlic. She slid the pan into the oven under the broiler.

"Did you call about the car?" Marcus asked.

"I called. They said Thursday."

"Thursday I have the thing."

"Then I'll drive you."

They ate at the table because Dana had decided, sometime in the spring, that they were going to be people who ate at the table. The rice was a little firm. Marcus reached over with his fork and took some of her broccoli without asking, which he did every time, and she let him, which she also did every time.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and the whole thing took nine minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, two eggs, a heel of Parmesan.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Is there enough chicken?" Marcus dropped his bag by the couch, which she had asked him not to do, and came into the kitchen.

"There's enough if you don't eat it standing up."

He picked a piece off the carcass anyway, then washed his hands like that settled it. He measured rice into the pot the way his mother had taught him, two fingers of water above the grain, no cup involved. Dana had stopped arguing about this. It always came out fine.

She trimmed the green beans while he broke down the chicken, sliding the bones into a bag for the freezer. Neither of them ever actually made stock, but the bags accumulated.

"How was the thing with Priya?"

"Moved to Thursday." He shook the skillet. "She's got a dentist appointment. Her wisdom teeth."

"At thirty-four?"

"Late bloomer."

They ate at the table because Dana had made a rule about it in January and it had, improbably, stuck. The rice was slightly underdone in the center. Marcus noticed and didn't say anything; Dana noticed him noticing.

"It's fine," she said.

"It's fine."

She told him about the woman at work who kept microwaving fish. He told her his brother wanted to borrow the car in August. They agreed to think about it, meaning they would forget until August.

Afterward he washed, she dried, and the small radio on the windowsill played half a news story before Dana turned it off. There was a quarter of the beans left in the pan. He ate them with his fingers while she wiped the counter around him.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide, and she decided on the thing that required the least imagination: pasta.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, the water was almost boiling and she had a jar of tomato sauce open on the counter.

"There's that half onion in the fridge," he said, hanging the jacket on the back of a chair instead of the hook. "From Sunday."

"Then chop it."

He washed his hands and found the cutting board under a stack of mail. The onion had gone a little soft on one side, but the rest was fine. He diced it unevenly, the way he always did, and she didn't say anything about it, the way she always didn't.

"Is there sausage?" she asked.

"There's the turkey kind."

"That's fine."

He browned it in the skillet with the onion while she dumped a box of rigatoni into the pot and set a timer on her phone. The kitchen was too small for both of them at once; they kept doing that shuffle where one turns sideways and the other slides past with a hand on the small of the back.

"How was the thing with Priya?" he asked.

"Moved to Thursday." She pulled the colander from the dish rack, still damp. "Which is better for me anyway."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had a sewing machine on it and had for three weeks. Marcus grated Parmesan directly over his bowl and then, unasked, over hers. She'd found a bagged salad in the crisper and split it between them, no dressing, because they were out.

"This is good," he said.

"It's the same as always."

"It's still good."

She nudged his shin with her foot. Outside, the rain kept going, and neither of them got up to turn on a light until the room had gone almost dark.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle got home, and Marcus called out from the kitchen that she'd need to move her bike out of the hallway before his mother visited Saturday.

"She's not coming until eleven," Danielle said, dropping her bag on the couch. "I have hours."

"You have hours to forget."

She came into the kitchen and looked at the cutting board. He'd halved a red pepper and set it aside, and was working on an onion with the dull knife again, the one they kept meaning to replace.

"Use the good one."

"The good one's got tomato on it."

"So rinse it." She rinsed it, handed it over, and took the pepper for herself, slicing it into strips because she liked them long and he never argued about that anymore. Behind them the frozen chicken thighs sat in a bowl of cold water, still faintly stiff in the middle.

"Do we have soy sauce or did we finish it on the eggs?"

He checked. There was maybe two tablespoons left, dried dark around the cap. "Enough."

They worked around each other in a space too small for both of them, which they'd stopped noticing sometime in the second year. He cooked the chicken while she scrolled through her phone by the stove, reading him a text from her sister about a bridal shower in Sacramento.

"In March? We'd have to fly."

"I know."

"We could drive."

"Eight hours."

"Nine, with stops."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a stack of mail on it neither of them wanted to sort. The chicken was slightly bland; she added sriracha, then passed it over, and he added more. On the TV a rerun neither of them was watching played through a commercial break.

"That's good enough," he said, meaning the food.

She nodded, already thinking about the bike.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Daniel came in from the garage, still in his work polo, smelling faintly of the printer toner they could never get fixed at the shop.

"Did you get the eggs?" Priya asked. She had a knife in one hand and half a zucchini in the other.

"I got eggs. I got the wrong milk, though. They were out of the two percent so I got whole."

"That's fine. It's for cereal."

He set the bag on the counter and started putting things away without being asked, which she had noticed and appreciated for three years now and had mentioned exactly twice. He left the eggs on the counter because he knew she wanted two for the stir-fry.

"How hot do you want it," she said.

"Medium. Not last-time hot."

"Last time was an accident. That chili had a lot going on."

She cracked the eggs into the wok first and scrambled them fast, then scooped them into a bowl and did the zucchini and the frozen edamame and the leftover chicken from Sunday. Daniel got two bowls down and stood at the rice cooker fanning steam off his hand.

"Do we have that garlic sauce still?"

"Door of the fridge. Behind the pickles."

They ate on the couch because the table had bills and a shoebox of tax stuff on it from Sunday, and neither of them had wanted to move it. Daniel found a nature documentary they'd both half-seen and they let it run.

"This is good," he said. "The zucchini's not mushy."

"I cooked it last on purpose."

"I could tell."

She stole a piece of chicken off his side of the bowl. He let her. Later he washed the wok, and she wiped the counter, and they argued mildly about whether the trash could wait until morning. It could.


The rice was already going when Marcus got home, which meant Dana had beaten him again.

"There's like four hot dogs left," she said, holding the package up. "And that broccoli that's going soft."

"So hot dogs and rice." He hung his jacket on the back of a chair instead of the hook.

"And broccoli. I'm going to blister it in the pan so you don't complain about the texture."

He filled a glass at the tap and drank it standing there, watching her hack the broccoli into pieces on the cutting board that had a permanent orange stain from a beet incident in March. The kitchen was small enough that he had to step sideways to get past her to the fridge.

"Do we have that chili crisp?"

"Behind the pickles."

He found it. He also found a half jar of applesauce that had a skin on it and held it up questioningly, and she shook her head without looking, so he dumped it in the sink and ran the water.

She got the broccoli into the pan with oil and let it sit without touching it, which was the whole trick. Marcus sliced the hot dogs on a diagonal because that was how his mother had done it, and Dana laughed at him for it every single time, and did again.

They ate at the little table with the wobbly leg, phones face down, because that was a rule they'd made in February and mostly kept. The broccoli was good — charred in spots, still with some snap. Dana put chili crisp on hers and then on his without asking, a spoonful, which was correct.

"Adam wants to know if we're coming Saturday," she said.

"Are we?"

"I said probably."

Marcus considered this. "Then probably."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and the pan soaked, and she said they should really get more hot dogs.


Marisol got home first, which meant she picked. She stood in front of the open fridge with her coat still on, doing the arithmetic of what would go bad soonest: half a bag of spinach, three eggs, a heel of parmesan.

"Frittata?" she called out when she heard the door.

Devon came in unwinding his scarf. "Do we have potatoes?"

"Two. They're kind of soft."

"Soft is fine. Soft is good, actually." He washed his hands at the kitchen sink and started slicing the potatoes thin without being asked, which she appreciated more than she ever said out loud. The apartment was small enough that they had learned to move around each other, one at the stove, one at the counter, trading places at the drawer for the good spatula.

Marisol cracked the eggs into a bowl and whisked them with a fork because the whisk was in the dishwasher, which was clean but unemptied. Neither of them mentioned this.

"Is it three eggs for two people?" Devon asked.

"There's cheese."

He shrugged and salted the potatoes. The spinach wilted down to almost nothing, the way it always did, and Marisol said, the way she always did, "Where does it go?"

They ate at the coffee table because the actual table had a stack of mail on it and a lamp they hadn't hung yet. The frittata was slightly underdone in the middle. Devon ate around it. Marisol ate hers anyway and said it was fine.

"My mom asked about Thanksgiving," he said.

"Which one is that. The Ohio one or the other one?"

"Ohio."

"Okay." She pulled her feet up under her. "Let me look at the flights."

He nodded and reached for the hot sauce. Outside somebody's car alarm went off and then stopped. She turned the TV on, volume low, and they finished eating without saying much else.


The rice was already going when Daniel got home, which meant Priya had left work early again.

"Don't say anything," she said, hearing the door. "It was a slow day."

He set his backpack on the chair that had become the backpack chair sometime in March. "I wasn't going to say anything. I was going to ask if we have eggs."

"Four. Why?"

"Because I want to put an egg on it."

"On what? You don't even know what it is."

"Whatever it is, it'll be better with an egg."

She had a bag of frozen peas open on the counter and half an onion left from Sunday, and a container of chicken thighs she'd meant to use Tuesday. Daniel washed his hands, took the knife she wasn't using, and started on the onion without asking, the way he did, standing at her elbow in a kitchen too small for two people who both wanted to be in it.

"You're going to cry," she said.

"I never cry."

"You cried at the airport onion."

"That was allergies."

The chicken went in with cumin and a lot of black pepper because that was what they both liked, and the peas went in at the end so they'd stay green. Daniel fried two eggs in a separate pan, hovering, flicking oil over the yolks with a spoon.

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had a puzzle on it that neither of them would admit to being done with. The rice was a little wet. Priya said so first.

"It's fine," Daniel said, and then, "it is a little wet."

"I put too much water."

"I like it wet."

"You do not."

He shrugged and reached over with his fork and took a piece of her chicken, and she let him, and outside somebody's car alarm went off twice and stopped.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dani came in from the garage, still in her work fleece, smelling faintly of the print shop.

"There's chicken thighs thawed," Marcus said. He was standing at the counter with a knife, working through a bell pepper that had gone slightly soft on one side. "But I already started the stir-fry thing."

"The stir-fry thing is fine." She dropped her bag by the shoe rack and came over to look. "Is that the pepper from last week?"

"It's fine. See?" He turned the good half toward her.

She took his word for it and went to the fridge, pulling out a bag of green beans, half a bunch of scallions, the bottle of soy sauce that lived on the door shelf. "We have no garlic."

"There's garlic powder."

"That's not the same."

"It's not the same," he agreed, "but it's what we have."

She trimmed the green beans while he browned the chicken in the big skillet, the one with the loose handle they kept meaning to tighten. The kitchen got loud and steamy. Dani turned on the fan and it made everything louder.

"Too much soy sauce," she said, leaning over his shoulder.

"You always say that."

"Because you always do it."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a puzzle on it, half finished, that neither of them wanted to be the one to break up. Marcus put on the show about the bakers. Dani ate with the bowl in her lap and her feet tucked under her.

"It's good," she said. "Even with the garlic powder."

"Thank you."

"We should get garlic."

"I'll go tomorrow." He reached over with his chopsticks and took a piece of chicken from her bowl, and she let him, watching a man on television nervously pipe frosting onto a cake.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dani got home, still in her scrubs, smelling faintly of hand sanitizer.

"I started the rice," Marcus called from the kitchen. "But we're out of soy sauce."

"We're not out. There's a backup in the pantry, behind the vinegar."

He found it, a squat bottle they'd bought at the Asian market in September and forgotten. "Huh."

Dani washed her hands at the kitchen sink instead of the bathroom, which he'd asked her not to do about forty times, and he let it go because she'd worked a twelve. She pulled the chicken thighs out of the fridge and inspected the date. "These are fine, right? They smell fine."

"Let me." He sniffed. "Fine."

She cut them into strips on the plastic board while he chopped an onion and half a red pepper that had gone slightly soft on one side. He cut around the soft part. The pan was already too hot when she added oil, and it spat at her wrist.

"Ow. Turn that down."

"You turned it up."

"I turned it up ten minutes ago."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a jigsaw puzzle on it—1,000 pieces, a lighthouse, roughly a third finished and stalled out for eleven days. Dani had claimed the sky. Marcus had given up on the sky.

"This is good," she said. "The pepper was a good call."

"It was going to go bad."

She tucked her feet under his thigh on the couch. On the TV, a British man was appraising someone's grandmother's clock. Marcus scraped the last of the rice from the bottom of the bowl, then took both plates to the sink and ran water over them.

"Leave them," Dani said. "I'll do them."

"You worked twelve hours."

"I'll do them tomorrow, then."

He left them in the sink. Neither of them did them until Thursday.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open fridge with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon, some rice in the pantry.

"Chicken and rice okay?" she called when she heard the door.

Marcus came into the kitchen unwinding his scarf. "Is there enough chicken?"

"There's enough if we don't get greedy."

He looked over her shoulder into the fridge, the way he always did, as if she might have missed something. "We could do the beans with it."

"That's what I was thinking. They're on their way out."

He put the rice on while she pulled the chicken off the bone, working her thumbs under the skin. The kitchen was small enough that they had to negotiate around each other—he touched her hip to move her a few inches left so he could reach the drawer with the measuring cup.

"You want them roasted or just in the pan?"

"Pan's faster."

"Pan it is."

He trimmed the beans, tossing the ends into the compost bin under the sink that neither of them had emptied in five days. She squeezed the lemon over the chicken and added a little butter, more than she'd admit to. The rice took eighteen minutes, and they filled the time badly—he told her about a guy at work who kept microwaving fish, she told him her sister had called about Thanksgiving.

"Did you say yes?"

"I said I'd talk to you."

"So you said yes."

"I said I'd talk to you," she repeated, and handed him a plate.

They ate on the couch with the TV on low, plates on their knees. The beans were a little too soft. Neither of them mentioned it. Afterward he washed, she dried, and the compost bin stayed where it was.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open fridge with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, two eggs, most of a block of cheddar.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the beans in a colander and a pot heating up.

"There's rice," he said, dropping his keys in the bowl by the door. "The good stuff, in the back."

"I looked. It's like four tablespoons."

"That's rice."

"That's a garnish." She handed him the chicken. "Pull this apart. I'm doing beans and eggs."

He rolled up his sleeves and started shredding the meat onto a cutting board, eating a piece of skin before she could say anything, which she saw anyway.

"You always take the skin."

"It's the best part. You don't even like it."

"I like the option."

The beans went into the pan with too much butter and a lot of garlic, and while they blistered, Marcus cracked the eggs into a bowl and whisked them badly with a fork. He never let her do the eggs. He said she overcooked them, which was true.

They ate standing at the counter first, then decided that was depressing and moved to the couch. Marcus turned on a home renovation show neither of them liked. Dana pointed out that the couple on it had a shockingly big budget for a stay-at-home mom and a "consultant."

"Drug money," Marcus said.

"Absolutely drug money."

She put her feet in his lap. He balanced his plate on her shins for a second, then moved it when she complained.

Later, he washed and she dried, and they argued mildly about whether the pan needed to soak. It didn't. She won.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a heel of parmesan.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Did we eat that Monday?" Micah dropped his keys in the bowl by the door, then came into the kitchen and kissed the side of her head without really aiming.

"Monday was the frozen dumplings."

"Then yes. Chicken and rice."

He took the rice out of the cabinet and started measuring it into the pot, and she said, "Rinse it this time," and he said, "I always rinse it," and she said nothing, because he did not always rinse it. He rinsed it. She pulled the green beans out and started snapping the ends off over the trash can, tossing the good parts into a colander.

The kitchen was small enough that they had to negotiate. He needed the sink; she needed the burner. They'd worked out a system over two years without ever discussing it — a hand on a hip, a half-step back, a "behind you."

"There's a work thing Thursday," Micah said, shredding chicken with two forks. "I said we'd go."

"How long a thing?"

"Two hours. Maybe."

"Then I'm driving, so we can leave."

They ate on the couch because the table had mail on it, plates on their knees, the TV on something they'd both seen before. Dana had put too much parmesan on the beans and it clumped, and she ate around the clumps. Micah finished first and sat there holding his empty plate like he'd forgotten it was a thing he could put down.

"That was decent," he said.

"It was fine," she said, and reached over to take his plate.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open fridge with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp, three eggs, a heel of Parmesan.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"We had rice last night." Marcus dropped his bag by the shoe rack. "What about the beans? Are they still alive?"

"Barely."

He came into the kitchen and looked over her shoulder, close enough that she leaned back into him for a second before pulling out the beans. "Pasta," he said. "There's that shell-shaped stuff."

"Orecchiette."

"The ear ones."

She filled the pot and set it on the back burner, and he took the beans to the sink and started snapping the ends off, dropping them into a colander. He was slow about it. He always was. She pulled the chicken apart with her fingers while the water heated, saving the skin on the cutting board because he liked it and she didn't.

"Did you call the dentist?" she asked.

"I called. They put me on hold for eleven minutes and then I had a meeting."

"Marcus."

"I'll call tomorrow. Nine on the dot."

The water boiled over a little and hissed on the burner. She salted it, dumped the pasta in, set the timer on the microwave. He sautéed the beans in olive oil with too much garlic, which was the right amount of garlic, and she grated the Parmesan down to a nub she then ate.

They didn't set the table. They ate on the couch with bowls in their laps, the TV on but muted, talking about his sister's baby shower and whether they had to drive or could take the train. Marcus finished first and took her bowl when she was done, and she said she'd do the pans, and she did, eventually.


Rain had started around five, and by the time Devon got home the kitchen windows were fogged. Marisol was already there, standing in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on.

"There's the chicken from Sunday," she said. "And half a bag of spinach that's going bad."

"Pasta?"

"We had pasta Monday."

Devon hung his jacket on the back of a chair instead of the hook, which she noticed and let go. "Rice, then. There's that jar of curry paste your mom brought."

Marisol pulled out the chicken and sniffed it, made a face that meant it was fine. She set the rice cooker going while Devon chopped the onion, badly, in uneven half-moons. She didn't say anything about that either, but she reached past him for the knife when he was done and squared up the garlic herself.

"Do we have coconut milk?"

"Top shelf, behind the beans."

He had to stand on his toes. The can was dusty. While the onions softened he told her about the guy at work who kept microwaving fish, and she laughed in the wrong place, distracted, scraping the spinach into the pan where it collapsed to almost nothing.

"That's it? That was a whole bag."

"That's always what happens."

They ate at the table because Marisol had a rule about that, though she'd bent it twice already this month. The curry was too salty. Devon added a spoonful of plain yogurt to his and passed the container over, and she took it without looking up from her phone, then set the phone face-down.

"It's good," she said.

"It's salty."

"It's good and salty."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and there was an argument, brief and familiar, about whether the pan needed to soak. The rain kept going. She left the light on over the stove when they went to bed.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open fridge with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, a lemon.

"Chicken again," she called, when she heard the door.

"I like chicken again," Marcus said. He hung his keys on the nail they'd never gotten around to replacing with a proper hook. "Do we have that rice? The boxed kind?"

"We have rice that isn't from a box."

"That takes forty minutes."

"It takes eighteen."

He came into the kitchen and looked over her shoulder into the fridge, as if it might have changed. He smelled like the inside of his car. "Eighteen's fine."

She measured the rice while he trimmed the beans, snapping the ends off and dropping them into the sink, which she'd asked him not to do at least four times and had stopped asking about. He tossed them in a pan with olive oil and too much garlic. That was fine. Too much garlic was always fine.

"Bill from downstairs asked about the bike," he said.

"The bike in the hallway."

"He wants to know if it's staying there."

"Is it?"

"I told him probably." He shook the pan. "He seemed okay with probably."

They ate at the coffee table because the actual table had her laptop and two weeks of mail on it. The chicken was dry. The beans were good. Marcus squeezed lemon over everything, including the rice, which Dana thought was a waste of a lemon and didn't say.

"This is decent," he said.

"It's Wednesday food."

He nodded, agreeing that it was Wednesday food, and reached over to take the last of the beans off her plate, and she let him, because she was full and because he'd asked with his eyebrows first.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator in her coat, looking at half a rotisserie chicken, a bag of spinach going slimy at the edges, and three eggs.

"Pasta?" she called out when she heard the door.

Marcus came in shaking rain off his sleeves. "We had pasta Monday."

"We had pasta Monday with jar sauce. This would be pasta with chicken and spinach."

"That's still pasta." He hung his jacket on the back of a chair instead of the hook, which she had stopped mentioning around month eight. "What if I made those quesadillas?"

"Do we have tortillas?"

He checked. They did not. So it was pasta.

She filled the pot too full, the way she always did, and it took forever to boil. Marcus pulled the chicken apart with his fingers over the cutting board, eating a piece of skin, then another. She swatted at his hand without looking.

"The landlord texted about the water heater," he said. "Tuesday between eight and twelve."

"I have that thing at nine."

"I'll work from home."

The spinach wilted down to almost nothing in the pan, which always disappointed him. He salted it. She salted it again after, and he made a face, and she said, "You never put enough."

They ate on the couch because the kitchen table had his laptop and a stack of mail on it. Some cooking competition was on, muted, and Dana turned the sound up during the judging. Marcus finished first and held his bowl out for the last of hers, and she gave him half of what was left and kept the rest.

"That was good," he said.

"It was fine."

"It was good."

He rinsed the dishes and left the pot to soak, and she folded the laundry off the armchair while the credits ran. By nine the kitchen light was off.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open fridge with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, a lemon.

When Marcus came in twenty minutes later, she'd already put water on.

"Pasta?" he said, hanging his keys on the nail by the door.

"Pasta and beans. There's chicken if you want it."

He washed his hands and picked up the green beans, snapping the ends off over the trash can. "These are on their way out."

"That's why we're eating them tonight."

He found the good pan, the heavy one, and set it on the burner with too much heat, then turned it down when she looked at him. The olive oil went in, then three cloves of garlic he smashed with the flat of the knife because he hated mincing.

"Did you call the dentist?" she asked.

"Tomorrow. They close at four, I can't get out by four."

"You could call on your lunch."

"I know." He shook the pan. "I will."

She drained the pasta and dumped it into a bowl, then grated parmesan over it while it was still steaming, the way her mother did. Marcus scraped the beans in and squeezed half the lemon over the whole thing, and she said that was smart, and he said he knew it was smart.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had bills on it. He put on the second half of a documentary they'd started Sunday, then paused it forty minutes in when she started telling him about a coworker who had cried in the supply closet.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and when she asked if they'd shredded the chicken or not he said he'd deal with it, and did.


The rain had started around four, and by six-thirty the kitchen windows were fogged at the corners. Danny stood at the counter in his work socks, slicing a yellow onion badly, the pieces coming out in uneven crescents.

"You're supposed to cut it in half first," Priya said, dropping her bag on the chair by the door.

"I did cut it in half."

"Then the other way." She came over, took the knife from him without asking, and demonstrated, her thumb tucked behind her fingers. "See? Grid."

"It all ends up in the pan."

"It cooks evenly." She handed the knife back and went to wash her hands, shaking them dry over the sink because the towel was in the laundry.

They were making the thing they made — chicken sausage, whatever vegetables hadn't gone soft, some rice. Priya put the rice on and set the timer on her phone because the microwave clock ran four minutes fast and neither of them had figured out how to fix it. Danny turned the burner up too high and the onions went brown fast, sputtering, and he turned it back down.

"Zucchini or the peppers?"

"Both, they're both going to die."

She sliced the zucchini while he pushed things around with a wooden spoon that had a scorched handle. The window over the stove got white with steam. Somewhere in the building a door slammed.

They ate at the coffee table with the TV on, because the actual table had Priya's tax documents spread across it in a system she claimed to understand. Danny put too much hot sauce on his. Priya said the sausage was good, and he said it was the same sausage as always, and she said she knew, she was just saying.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they argued mildly about whether the pan needed to soak. It soaked.