"Welcome back to MSNBC, your –"

"– hy do we think the President's decisions are being taken like th –"

"– ireBoxInc. comes out of the quarter with a rise in profi –"

"– said she had never seen anything like it. 'Y'know, ah never' –"

"– ith all new episodes of 'The Real Housewives of' –"

Matthew moaned louder than before, buried underneath three blankets and his bed's comforter. "How is there still nothing oooon?" he moaned. Rolling himself up in a burrito of warmth and fluff, Matthew slugged off the couch, through the candy wrapper remains scattered on the floor, and towards the TV console. The fingers on his left arm tingled.

Liza, watching from the armchair, tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear and asked, "I'd rather watch you crawl like a slug than tell you things are going to be okay."

"Let me have my 'wallowing day' in peace."

"No, because you had your bullshit day yesterday, too."

Matthew grunted, freeing his arms from the cocoon and rifling through the DVD stack. "It's not my fault those people decided –"

"I didn't say that," she sighed for the fourth time. "Yes, it was supremely cowardly of them to cancel, while you were there waiting for them, but how long are you going to keep wallowing in your 'woe is me' bullshit?"

He didn't reply. Towards the back, he found season four of The Office, which he promptly put into the DVD player. A dull shooting pain ran through his left arm, which he shook away the same way a child flicks something off their hand. "Fuck, I think I slept on it weird or something."

"Matt," Liza began, "you can't ignore me like this. You owe me, like, two years worth of groceries."

Matthew tipped his head back and groaned. Looking at her, he hissed, "Yes?"

"Hi," she grinned.

Sighing, he flopped backward when the series theme started playing from the main menu. "How is it possible to have so much rejection in one's life like this? Like, what did I do to deserve this?"

"I mean, you're gay, for starters."

Matthew licked his lips. "That's about as funny as you and Toby's angry, sexually-frustrated banter."

Liza wrinkled her nose. "Ew."

"And if I have to explain to you one more time that I'm not gay, I'm actually going to kill you."

She glanced away for a moment before turning back to him. "Okay, but like –" She scoffed, head shaking, "Like, you dated Audrey. Congrats. You're gay now, right?"

"That's..." Matthew's eyes narrowed. "Wait, what?"

"Wh – have you ever dated a guy?"

"That's n – waitwaitwait, what the fuck are you talking about? After every bad date, are you turned off by all men?" Matthew sat up, gasping. "Are you secretly a lesbian? Have you ever dated a woman before?"

Liza shook her head, confused astonishment written all over her face. "That – what? No."

Matthew shook his head, staring. "You are an incurable moron."

"You're just asking for another four months-worth of groceries to be added to your debt," she spat. "Is that what you want?"

He laid back down, sighing. "Just forget it. Again."

Liza, sighing, left him to loudly type out an email at the counter. Returning, she asked tentatively, "... how's 'Desperate Dad'?"

Wiggling his arm out from the burrito, Matthew checked the website to see the ad still up, now specifying the gender. "It's still up, but it's been a couple weeks." Rolling onto his side, Matthew righted himself and leaned his left arm against the sofa, numbing the tingling in his fingers. "Should I reapply again?"

"No, because you're not a woman," Liza reminded him, "despite how emotional you are."

Matthew wanted to glare, but even that seemed like too much energy used. "I'm at that point, though, where I'm just desperate."

"Nice."

Taking in a slow breath, he asked, "At what point do I consider my education useless?"

"Around the time you send out McDonald's applications," Liza replied on cue.

Matthew sighed and leaned back. According to her, last Tuesday was the day his years of learning to be a teacher had become useless. It pretty much was, at this point. 'I should've cut my losses and taken a job with Mom and Dad.' The thought disgusted him to his core.

"What's the guy's name?" she asked, pulling out her phone and swiveling it open. "I want to stalk him."

He shrugged. "Yang. That's his last name."

"Thanks for helping narrow it down." She pulled out her phone and started searching. "I need more info. What's the dude's job? Oh, where's his house again?"

Matthew shrugged again. "I don't know. I wasn't really interviewing him, weirdly enough." Clicking his teeth, he added, "He, lives in a house from, like, the '50s. It's in the middle of, like, a forest preserve." The man's hard brown stare made him shudder.

Liza snapped her fingers and pointed to him. "Good job. That's necessary information. Do you know the name of it?"

"No, but I know it's in Barretsville."

Her fingers tapped and scanned for a minute before she asked, "Are you talking about the one on Willamette Street?"

He nodded. "Wh – I think it's by Willamette. The entrance's more on Cherry Street, I think. But yeah, why?"

“...the, 'Henry Howard Forest Preserve'?”

“Yeah, that's it.”

Liza threw her phone to the side, growling. "You little cocksucker."

Unwrapping himself, Matthew stood. "You really don't know when to stop, do you?"

"You interviewed with Jun Yang?"

"...is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"You interviewed with Jun Yang?"

Matthew blinked. "That doesn't mean anything to me."

"You interviewed for Jun Yang?"

"Is that a name I'm supposed to know?"

"No, but you interviewed with that bastard?"

He shrugged again. "I literally have no idea who you're talking about."

Liza slammed down her phone and stood up, retrieving her laptop from the kitchen counter. After a moment of even more ferocious typing, she turned the screen towards him. Mr. Yang's picture was among four others, grouped together under the title EXECUTIVE BOARD. "This fucking bastard's firm's been stealing clients from us for as long as I've worked."

The picture onscreen supplied the older man smirking, possibly amused, or hesitating, by something just out of frame. His hard brown eyes, still sunken, seemed softer somehow; his black hair combed perfectly over his head added to the ensemble of his put-togetherness. His face seemed rounder in the picture, at least to Matthew.

Matthew turned his eyes back to Liza. "So, why're you mad at me?"

Exhaling, she snapped her fingers again. "I'm mad at him, but I'm getting there with you. Keep, up, Matthew. This dude sucks."

"So...I can reapply?"

"Only if you want me to hate you forever."

His eyes narrowed. "Wait, you don't already?" The corners of his mouth twitched into a smirk.

She swatted him despite her matching smile. "The dude's an asshole."

Matthew stood and moved towards Toby's room. "Just because you can't handle someone who's probably as competitive as you doesn't mean I should skip out on reapplying." He grabbed his laptop off Toby's small desk and returned to his nest of blankets. "Besides, what do I have to lose?"

"Doesn't he want, like, an actual woman?"

Matthew pulled up the ad and studied it, reading the changed, gendered wording carefully. "The ad's been up for a while," he slowly noted. Something in his stomach egged him on to reapply, knowing he would, in all likelihood, be rejected again. "I mean, I've already applied, and he still has my resume, I think. I've met his kids, too, so maybe I can get the leg up on other applicants if I reapply." Even though he still wasn't a woman.

Liza crossed her legs and sat back into the armchair. "That's cute," she whispered.

He paused, taking in a slow breath. 'This isn't –' Matthew immediately silenced the thought. Even if he was rejected again, the curiosity of knowing how Lilly and Elliot were doing pushed him. And he wanted to see Elliot's little voodoo doll of him.

Ten minutes later, Matthew sent out the application. "There. Done."

"You didn't need to tell me, dude," she muttered, eyes never leaving her computer. "You want an award? Go ask Toby."

"I'll ask him to make me cake for reapplying," he replied, deadpan. He wouldn't. Matthew would end up being the one doing it despite his asking Toby, and, in all likelihood, burning it.

Liza shot up, gasping and grinning. Her laptop flopped against her legs, held in place by her hands. "Make him get those brownie cake mixes!"

“I'm not telling Toby to get me brownie cake mix because I reapplied to a job I got rejected from."

“Why not?" she yelled. "Make him buy something nice for us."

Matthew rolled his eyes. "It's my cake. Why do you get a piece of it?"

"Make him get those brownie cake mixes!"

His phone started buzzing. "Yeah, I'm sure that'll go over well with telling Toby all this."

"Hasn't stopped you before," Liza countered, staring. "Remember when we first moved in together?"

Matthew flipped open his phone. He didn't recognize the number. "No, but if I recall correctly, you were egging him on." He pressed the ACCEPT CALL button.