I haven’t seen him since, but I heard him. Laughter here. Barefooted steps there. Creaking wood and the beep of the microwave. Our rooms are one and a half hallways away. I know he has a home office, but I’ve never been in there—a bit of a tacit Do-not-go-to-the-West-Wing, Beauty and the Beast situation. I’ve considered snooping around when he was gone, but what if he put live traps around? I picture him coming home, finding me wailing, my ankle tangled in a snare. He’d probably leave me there to starve.

Plus, he doesn’t go out much. There are those couple of friends of his who come over to do surprisingly nerdy stuff (which reminds me a bit too much of me, Sadie, and Hannah making brownies for a Parks and Rec marathon—which in turn is vaguely painful—so I pretend it doesn’t happen). His workdays seem to be sixteen hours long, even when I’m not being a petty gremlin about signing for his mail, but that’s about it. I wonder if he dates. I wonder if he sneaks a different girl into the house every night and tells her Shh, be quiet. My squatting ginger roommate will key my record player if we’re too loud. I wonder if I’m simply failing to notice the masked orgies he has in the kitchen every weekend while I’m tucked under my granny quilt, carefully composing my blog posts.

I wonder why I wonder.

When I pad downstairs for dinner, the house is dark and silent. And cold. Honestly, how is Liam not freezing? Is it the seventy pounds of muscles? Does he coat himself in baby-seal fat? I shake my head as I raise the thermostat and heat up more food than I need to eat (but, crucially: not more food than I can eat).

There are a few living/sitting/front/lounge/whatnot rooms on the first floor, but my favorite is the one connected to the kitchen. It has a large, comfortable couch that probably cost more than my graduate education, a soft area rug I like to stealthily caress when I’m home alone, and the pièce de résistance: a giant TV. I move my (many) food containers to the walnut coffee table and let myself plop down on the couch.

For reasons I don’t understand, Liam pays for cable television and for about fifteen different streaming services that I’ve never seen him use. I’m in no way above exploiting FGP Corp’s blood money, so I find a rerun of a season twelve episode of The Bachelorette. Not my favorite, for reasons I explained at length on my blog (don’t judge me), but decent. I settle in.

Ten minutes later, an idiot with an obvious tanning-bed addiction is fist-fighting an idiot who clearly snorts protein powder, all under a delighted girl’s eyes—i.e., the premise of the show. But I realize that not all noises are coming from the TV. When I mute it, I can hear another argument. From upstairs. In Liam’s voice.

It’s not loud enough to make out the gist of it, but I do manage to eavesdrop the occasional words. Wrong. Unethical. Opposed, maybe? Quite a few firm Nos, but that’s about it. After a brief moment, the sounds are muffled again. Another minute, and a door slams; feet quickly make their way down the steps.