Page 4 of Not Catching Love

Derek

I close the lid on my formicarium, grinning at my newest addition to the group.

A queen ant.

Finally.

I’ve had a few ant farms over the years, but they all saw the familiar pattern of demise without a queen to keep the population replenished. It was one of those things where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to completely commit or if it was a fun thing to keep my mind active.

Keeping ants started as a hobby. A way for me to have a pet when my life was too busy for one that needed constant care, and now … well, now it’s turned into a custom-built, six-foot by six-foot formicarium in what I call my “bug room.”

Look, I’m a normal guy—I have a job as a nurse, I volunteer for dance classes at the nursing home up the street, and I have friends I catch up with a few times a week.

But I also really like bugs. They’re fascinating and underrated—ants most of all.

And while I’ll defend my love of bugs to the death, I’m also incredibly grateful this was a post-high school passion. I got to be the cool football player there, and the best part is that my teammates who never moved out of town? Yeah, they’re stuck with me. Bugs and all.

Speaking of. My phone lights up with an incoming call from the guy who’s been my best friend since middle school. “Derek, tell me you got her,” Manny says.

“I did. Now I have to make sure she stays alive.”

“Fucking A. And ehh, I’m not worried about that part. You have a way with those creepy things.”

I tilt my head as I watch a line of ants follow each other along the dirt. “Creepy? I think they’re cute.”

“Yeah, well, you would. You don’t exist in the same world as the rest of us.”

He can give me shit about this all he wants, but I know for a fact that on Saturday, he and his daughter have tea party dates, and he tries a different tea flavor each week.

If he likes tea, I can like—my gaze casts around the room at all the little bug cages I have in here—all this.

“How was the hot cross bun flavor?” I ask.

“Nowhere near as nice as I thought it would be.” He audibly shudders. “So … given any thought to moving yet?”

Not this again. I grew up north of the city where there’s lots of land and wildflowers and freedom. The plan was to stay there for the rest of my life, basically, but then I got this job at the immediate care office of the pharmacy, and it made sense to move closer to work. For … reasons. Recently, Manny’s been talking about subdividing the land he inherited from his parents to boost his daughter’s college fund, and I was offered first dibs.

It’s tempting. I could make my dream of keeping bees a reality.

When I say I’m a bug guy, I mean it. I don’t know that I want to go full-blown apiarist, especially with all the travel I want to do as a nurse, but bees are so vital and important that managing a hive feels like the ultimate privilege.

Leaving this tiny two-bedroom isn’t an option yet, though, because Ineedto be here. It’s why I moved in the first place. Sure, having to commute wouldn’t have been ideal, but it’s not uncommon in Seattle, and I would have dealt with that if circumstances were different. Most of my colleagues do.

None of them have to get here at a moment’s notice though.

The blue-haired, anxious ball of snark and sweet passes through my mind, but I push him right out again. I might stay to make sure I’m available for him, but I make it my mission to not think about him unless he’s right in front of me.

It’s why I keep so busy.

“I’ve told you,” I say to Manny, voice bordering on patience and frustration, “I have a lot going on here.”

“But imagine being neighbors,” he pushes. “We could turn the land between our houses into a football field. Teach the kids how to play.”

“The kids. All those kids that I currently have.Thosekids.”

He snorts. “You know I’m talking in the future.”

We’ll see. I’m thirty-five this weekend, and it’s starting to feel like a lot of things that were “future” goals should be now goals, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. I thought at this age I’d be traveling, maybe doing some kind of Nurses International thing, but those plans have been put on hold the last few years because of one person.

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