|verified| - Living With Vicky

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. Not the gentle kind that patters on rooftops and feels poetic. This was the angry, sideways kind that turned gutters into rivers and made the whole world smell like wet concrete and regret.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” she said one night. We were both sprawled on the living room floor, surrounded by takeout containers and the debris of a truly terrible movie we’d just watched. living with vicky

“I know,” I said.

The milkshake was cold and sweet and perfect. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel quite so alone. Living with Vicky is chaos. It’s finding her hairpins in every drawer. It’s her borrowing my sweaters without asking and then acting offended when I complain. It’s her watching reality TV at full volume at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday. It’s her burning popcorn and setting off the fire alarm and laughing so hard she can’t help me open the windows. The rain hadn’t stopped for three days

I was standing in my kitchen, staring at a leak under the sink that I’d been ignoring for a week, when the doorbell rang. “You know you can talk to me, right