a small brown eye peaks open. It's her eye. She owns the eye that is now looking at the person sleeping next to her. She can't decide yet if this person, this man that is now next to her with the scruff on his face and a little pool of drool on his pillow, is a stranger or not. She hypothesizes that he probably is, but not in an everyday stranger sort of way. She lets both her eyes peak open and she slowly props herself up on her elbows to lock closed eyes with the man she's been with for a year. She thumps her body back down, because even though she was pretending that she didn't want to wake him up, she does. She rolls over onto her side and lightly kicks his feet. This is her way of telling him that he should roll over in his sleep and put his arms around her, press his stomach into her back. This is a test. He fails it. The light is all over the room, it's eating more of the room than she has probably even lived in. She shimmies out of the end of the bed because it is pushed against the wall and she doesn't feel like being an acrobat this morning. She forgets that she only has her stranger's boxers on, so she opens what her mom sometimes calls a "chest of drawers" and takes out a shirt that she got in the seventh grade, when she was miserable. She hates that her mom calls her dresser a "chest of drawers" but still loves her anyway and doesn't tell her that it's really stupid that she calls it that.
The kitchen isn't as bright as her Stranger's bedroom. She thinks about making breakfast for the Stranger in his kitchen but decides she would want to eat it, and doesn't really think breakfast is a good idea. She sits on the Stranger's counter top and thinks about what she should do next. She wants to take a shower but she figures that the Stranger would be disappointed that she did that without him. She really wants to wake him up now, but has to fight the urge because she knows that he can't sleep. She wonders if it's because he is still doing drugs. She decides that that isn't the reason anymore, because she believes in everybody. Especially him. She considers this her biggest vice.
She looks out the window, the snow is melting in the Stranger's backyard and she hates the hole where his pool used to be. She gets really angry looking as this hole, and wants someone to fix it. She decides she'd like a cigarette, but remembers that she quit. She walks into the Stranger's bedroom and he is now cuddling his pillow. Her body, starting at the knees, fills with jealousy, resentment towards that stupid fraying pillow. She wonders why she couldn't be that pillow. She wonders if it's because she's not as small as the pillow, but she decides she should stop making excuses and realize the Stranger doesn't love her anymore. To get back at him for falling out of love with her, she takes four cigarettes out of his pants pocket and opens the window to the roof outside his room. She takes the blanket that was twisted at the bottom of the bed and wraps it around herself so she doesn't get wet or cold from the dew. She smokes every cigarette and looks at him with each drag because she wants him to know that she hates him. She knows she could never hate him, and this makes her hate him more.
As she is climbing back in the window the Stranger wakes up. He asks her how long she has been awake. She throws him a cigarette because she knows he'll want one. She decides not to answer him because she thinks "3 hours" is too long to talk about. The Stranger is sitting on the edge of his bed and she is standing in front of him. She keeps her mouth shut tight because it helps her keep her tears inside. He grabs her by the hips and pulls her closer to him. He kisses her bellybutton. She hates that more than anything. She resents the bellybutton kiss more than she resents the "chest of drawers."
He is still holding her hips but now he is looking up at her. She looks down and into his eyes. She remembers what he looked like before he started cutting his own hair and instantly feels superior to him. She is disgusted with herself and thinks that the Stranger probably knows that she is better than him, because that's what he tells her everyday. She wonders if this is part of the reason why he stopped loving her. She knows she isn't better than him, really. She knows how she treats him, but she doesn't want to think about it anymore.
She kisses his forehead and starts the shower. She only takes showers in water that could boil eggs. She feels better about him loving her after their shower, but only because of the way bodies react. She doesn't want to have sex after the shower because sex, with anybody, makes her feel unclean and used, like a dunkin donuts napkin or the seat of the desk in her 10th grade biology class, where she first wrote notes about the Stranger to a friend she doesn't really miss. But she lets the Stranger fuck her anyways. She hates herself for it.
The Stranger gets up and starts to get dressed. It is 2 PM. The stranger announces that he has to go to work. He says this with a look she has seen before. A look that says he is lying. She knows he is lying only because she reads a lot of body language books for the specific reason of detecting his lies. The Stranger gives her a kiss goodbye that she wish she didn't accept. After she hears the door to the garage close downstairs she climbs out the roof window with the pack of cigarettes that the Stranger doesn't know she took. She knows he will be frustrated because he will need more but won't have any money. She watches him go down the street from where she is sitting in the roof. He is driving the opposite way from work. She inhales from her cigarette and begins to leave him, but knows it is impossible.
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