My apartment’s two bedrooms are similarly sized. One is mine, and I’ve designated the other as a guestroom by tossing a mattress on the floor. A sliding glass door leads to a tiny terrace. To fill the rest of the space, I bought furniture from Pottery Barn: a platform bed, a wooden farm table that seats eight, two picnic-style benches and several lamps. The bed is king-sized so it’s where I eat, sleep, study, and watch TV. That I choose this existence may have surprised my parents, but minimalism suits the new me. I’ve never lived outside New York or away from my family. I’ve never held down a job or had to fend for myself. (Of course, I’m neither holding down a job nor paying for this place, but one step at a time.) And yet, once I got over the initial terror, I felt lighter, like I was unshackled from chains I had no idea I was wearing. The downside of my newfound agency is loneliness, but it won’t kill me.

You know what would kill me? Going back to New York and returning to Marcus. One way or another, I would cease to exist.

* * *

A text appears; it’s from Haggerty.

You want to talk

No, I don’t

Yes, you do

I’d never talk to you

If not me who?

22

I LOVE BREAKFAST, WHICH I EAT EVERY DAY AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD Café. For the past two weeks, I’ve been ordering the same thing: black coffee and the Little Italy burrito. The Little Italy comes with two eggs, sausage, peppers, onions, and provolone cheese. Inside, there’s a hash brown patty. Sometimes I add hot cherry peppers. After I order, I find a table inside. When my food is ready, Eddie will bring it to me, and we’ll talk for a few minutes. He’s very friendly. While our roles are circumscribed—he’s a server, I’m a customer—we share a connection, like me and Anton.

“Little Italy and coffee,” Eddie says today. “Right?” He’s twenty-seven and from the Midwest. He’s got cowlicks in his hair, expressive brown eyes, and a lisp I find endearing. “I’ll bring it right out.”

I met Eddie last fall when I was working on my grad school application. I was very serious about the process, which I treated like a job. Along with studying for the GREs, I wrote letters to my former professors requesting recommendations, drafted and redrafted my personal statement, and then hired a doctoral student to proofread it. I showed up at the café every morning, after the rush, like it was my office. Soon, I was a familiar face and talking to Eddie became part of my routine.

Today, I read Middlemarch while I sit. After September, it will be academic journals, so I’m gorging on dense novels, ones I’ve loved since high school.