Page 12 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

“The Thin Mints or the sugar-free JonnyPops?” His gruff voice carries down the hall.

I pluck out the green box. “The Thin Mints, obviously.”

“I don’t know how he has those. He never ate sugar, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a Girl Scout.”

“It was April.” But it sounds like “Erroll,” because my mouth is already full of cookies. “And he has them because I left them here.” I considered texting after our breakup to arrange a drop-off, but that seemed like Thin Mint–junkie behavior, and keeping a stash in my freezer from April to January is my hard line. “They’re best frozen. You want one?”

“I try to hold off on cookies until at least noon.” He sounds only vaguely disgusted by my sugar addiction.

“Your loss. They’re perfect with coffee. Speaking of coffee…” I stretch out the word, searching the crowded countertop.

“In the fridge.” His voice still echoes from the bathroom.

I grab a tall, slim can of cold coffee from the fridge, but when Adam speaks again, I don’t dare leave the kitchen island. Shouting across the house has facilitated my longest conversation with him yet. Plus, this position prevents me from noticing more of his physical attributes—an added bonus.

“I got a six-pack of some cold coffee from the market on the ground floor. There are beans in the cabinet, but Sam doesn’t have a coffeemaker.”

“He’s a member of the Cult of Pour-Over.” I crack open my can of cold brew and admire Sam’s shelf of mismatched mugs—souvenirs from vacations past and time abroad.

“We’re talking about him like he’s still here. He drinks pour-over coffee. He has cookies in the freezer. I keep doing that,” he says, his voice sounding sad and a little frustrated.

I walk back toward the bathroom and see Adam sitting on the side of the tub peeling at a shampoo label. He throws it in the trash before tying off the bag and removing it from the can in one movement.

“This needs to go out.”

He doesn’t say anything else before walking out the door.

It takes the rest of the day to empty the kitchen cabinets and wipe their interiors. Sam wasn’t much for deep cleaning, so I spend a fair amount of time scraping at mysterious, hard chunks.

I can best describe the rest of my interactions with Adam as stiff.

He doesn’t talk to me again other than the occasional inquiry into the location of tape measures, pens, and additional utility items. I’m not as familiar with Sam’s place as Adam thinks I am, and there are multiple drawers in contention for the One True Junk Drawer. I have to stall with anecdotes until I stumble upon his requests, which only further agitates him.

“You talk a lot,” he observes. His tone doesn’t impart judgment, but there is literally no way to take the words you talk a lot as anything other than a moderately less confrontational version of please don’t talk so much, as if I’m a precocious child or a particularly chatty parrot.

I don’t take the bait. Instead, we work in complete silence for about an hour, and I notice every second of it.

I open yet another drawer of bric-a-brac and find boxes of little cocktail umbrellas. Sam bought them for a party here in June, right when we started seeing each other.

I’d been envious of how effortless he was socially. He introduced me to a small group chatting about their indoor soccer league, and before I realized it, he had floated off to enamor a new group of people over a game of beer pong. I tried to find my groove in a group of strangers but had nothing to add to his friend’s complaints about her infrared sauna installation. Before long, I found myself leaning against the kitchen island, fiddling with the paper umbrellas and pretending to text.

I wander into the living room, twirling a paper umbrella between my fingers. “Did we meet at the Summer Kickoff?” I ask Adam.

He’s around the corner now, removing art from the walls and wrapping it in bubble wrap. Just out of sight, I can only imagine the perplexed look on his face when he asks, “Is that a parade?”

“No. It was what Sam called the party he threw this past June. I didn’t know anyone there, so I was wondering if we met without realizing it.” Though now that I’ve said it, I find it hard to believe. Adam would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb at that party. He probably would’ve been hiding near the food with me.

“I didn’t make it down this year,” he says, with no sign of forthcoming embellishment. I can hear my attempt at conversation flopping to the ground like a dead, wet fish.

Black marks on the living room wall catch my eye. I noisily pull back the end table by the couch to reveal three years of beer pong scores written on the wall in Sharpie and curse. “I forgot about the scoreboard.”

I remember seeing people keeping score on the wall at the party and thinking, I wish I could be like that—be the kind of person who doesn’t worry about his walls until he has to move out. Now he never has to.

“I didn’t know he was still doing that.” Adam’s voice breaks through my thoughts. Without warning, he’s in the living room only a few feet away from me. He stares at the scrawl with a pinched forehead. “I don’t think his family knows what rough shape this place is in. He was barely around to take care of it, and when he was, he treated it like a frat house. If I’m only coming down on weekends, this’ll take me the rest of the month.”

I offer him a bright smile. “I’m here to help.” My voice sounds desperate for approval.

He grunts and walks back to the hallway, returning to his task.

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