The Trader Joe's was technically outside of town, but the University was the most notable location within ten miles, so the store was decorated with signs referencing Middlewater street names and local lore. As hard as it was to escape the gravitational pull of New York City, Middlewater had a pull of its own. The sun and the moon, perhaps.

Nina took a shower right after they got home in the late afternoon, an uncharacteristic time for a shower. She'd been wearing the same clothes for too long. Her mom hadn't noticed, having been out of the house when Nina got dressed the day before, but her dad had asked her why she hadn't remembered to bring spare clothes if she was going to spend the night in the city.

"I wasn't planning to, it just kind of happened."

"Well, I'm glad you're doing something spontaneous for once," her dad said. "You hardly ever go out these days."

"Yeah, I think this weekend was enough to last me for a while," Nina replied. "I'm getting brunch with Cory tomorrow, by the way. At Lou's."

"Bring me back a blueberry muffin," her dad said.

"Ew, muffins," mom said. "Bring me a croissant."

"Remind me again before I leave the house tomorrow," Nina told them, and then went upstairs to shower and change.

As she showered, she thought about Goldie's body, how surprisingly perfect it had felt pressed against her own, and wondered what it would be like if Goldie could join her here. Wouldn't that be a cliche text to send.

Which reminded her that she'd forgotten to text Goldie after getting home. Nina toweled off and typed, fingers still dripping water on her cracked screen, "home, showered, rested. thank you for a lovely weekend 😘"

The emoji made her wince as soon as she added it. Too easy-breezy, she thought, backspacing furiously. She compromised with an exclamation point and added a question about the Met.

Goldie texted back minutes later with a paragraph. "Yayyyy glad you're safe! I didn't actually think you'd text me tbh but I'm glad you did 😊 the met was great the new special exhibition was actually really cool, you should come up and see it sometime!"

And then three more texts about the exhibition itself, with a sudden swerve into "so how was your shower 😏" and then another paragraph apologizing if that was a weird thing to send.

"lol chill" Nina sent. "It was nice. Wet"

Goldie: lol wet in a good way?

Nina: I'm surprised you remembered I said that

Goldie: It was a great line! Memorable 

Nina: showering is wet in a different good way than certain other activities

Goldie: any activities you'd like to do with me?

Nina: oh, lots

Nina had never sexted before. She sat on her bed in her towel, dark hair dripping down her bare shoulders, and put one hand between her legs, typing with the other.

Nina: I thought about you while I was showering you know

Goldie: 😳😳😳

Nina: what are you doing right now?

Goldie: .... I'm on the subway back home from the met lmao

Goldie: I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to take the subway normally again after this weekend

Nina: why not

Goldie: I sat down and wished you were sitting on top of me like last night

Nina: that was fun

Goldie: it was 😊

Goldie: what're you doing next weekend? 

Nina: working both days rip

Goldie: maybe I could come down and hang out for a bit after you're done with work?

Nina: there's not much to do around here after 6 besides some restaurants

Goldie: oh I'm sure we could think of something 😉

Nina: 😳

She still lived in her childhood bedroom. Her black and pink bedding hadn't changed since high school, her floral curtains since elementary. The contents of her bookcase had evolved over the years, kid's chapter books getting donated to the library and replaced with increasingly specific art books exhibition catalogs, but the case itself stayed the same. Multiplication tables with airbrushed fuzzy animals around them had been phased out for illustration prints from arts festivals starting around middle school. The photo collection on her desk gained a handful of snapshots from college, but in many ways, the room looked nearly identical to how it looked four years before.

In college, she lived in a dorm, then off campus with her friends from first year. The apartment only had three bedrooms for the four of them, so Nina got half of the living room sectioned off with screens and fifty bucks off her rent. Living with roommates didn't end up being her favorite thing— too hard to communicate and keep a cleaning schedule and all sorts of things just built up slowly until they ended college as not lifelong friends but barely acquaintances instead. Nina wasn't sure she was built to live with other people at all. At least at her parents' place she shared a whole house. Even though it wasn't a very large house, here she could isolate herself upstairs and feel alone in a way the thin walls and noise of her Chicago shared apartment never allowed.

She tried to imagine Goldie here, in the room she'd had tea parties with teddy bears decades earlier, and it felt like she was trying to cut and paste a collage out of two unrelated magazines. 

She'd forget about it by next week, Nina decided. She wouldn't bother coming all the way here. They barely knew each other, after all.

Cory, however, knew Nina extremely well.

They were waiting for her in the booth they usually picked when they went to Lou's together, the one they'd scratched CL + NX BFFL into the table leg back in high school. The wooden furniture and paneling at Lou's steadily accumulated graffiti and carvings, but over the years it'd become part of the decor. The restaurant tried to replace the booths a few years ago, but public outage forced them to back out of that. So the booths stayed, with decades of local history engraved into their bones. Cory and Nina had added their marks to the booth by tracing the initials with ballpoint pens, over and over until the metal nibs wore grooves into the soft, orangey wood. 

When Nina got to the diner, Cory had already ordered their usual drinks: a hot tea for Nina and coffee for themself. In the two weeks since Nina last saw then, they'd dyed their bangs red again. "I'm reviving the 2000s mall goth aesthetic," Cory explained as Nina sat down, gesturing to the hair. They were wearing a recent My Chemical Romance shirt and a stack of black spiked bracelets. Cory went through aesthetics the way some people went through boyfriends, or cars: trading in for newer, shinier, more interesting iterations the moment they felt slightly bored. "I contain multitudes," they always said. "My concept of presentation and appearance is infinite." They took gender studies classes while getting their computer science degree at Rutgers. Nina's art school didn't have gender studies classes. 

"I like your dress," Cory said, and then, affecting a snooty professorial tone, "what were you hoping to achieve with your look today?"

Nina spun around, floral sundress fanning out. She even borrowed a pearl necklace from her mom. Hanging out with Cory deserved dressing up, because Cory always had something to say about Nina's outfits if Nina put effort into them. "Stepford wife at brunch." 

"Fabulous. Serving. Giving. Etcetera." Cory flipped open the menu. "What're we getting today?"

Nina opted for chicken and waffles, Cory got pancakes. The waiter took their menus and Cory leaned forward.

"So. Your weekend."

"Ah." Nina sipped her drink. "Well..."

Cory listened, asking questions and reacting appropriately. When Nina was done they said, "So what's the problem? Do you want to stay in touch?"

"...I don't know. She's like, a hot rich New York girl, what's she doing with me, right?" Tears pricked at her eyes, which always happened when she was being self-deprecating. And yet she kept doing it. " I don't want to waste all my energy trying to keep her interested and then losing her to someone cooler in the city anyway."

"Have you considered focusing on the present instead of worrying about a potential future that may or may not arrive?" Cory asked, eyebrows raised.

Nina rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Captain Obvious."

"Why are you asking me for relationship advice anyway? You know I don't date."

"I don't really have any friends who do date," Nina said. "Besides my coworkers, and I don't really know them like that." Kate and Paul had been working together for a while when Nina got hired, and the two of them were much closer to each other than Nina was to either of them. She could hear them talking about their family lives in the stock room sometimes, voices low so the managers couldn't interrupt. Sometimes their openness made her feel pressured to share her own vulnerabilities so they could be on the same level, but her discomfort outweighed any desire to fit in she might have had. She didn't need to be friends with them, they could just work together. It was fine.