All That and Then Some

MAEVE

OMG, MY PARENTS ARE too disgusting. As IF they were just having sex right out in the open! Is that what they do when Tim and I aren't around? I swear I will never be able to erase what I've just seen.

And I'm never going to sit on that couch again, either.

Ever.

Whatever, actually. I may never leave my room again now that I'm back in it. I like it in here. I feel like my real self again. This was a good decision. Impulsive, but correct.

... Then again, I'm also finding it anxious-making, being here when I should be somewhere else. There'll be an empty seat in the lecture hall tomorrow that should have me in it. Not that the professors will notice. It's not like high school. They don't take attendance. I feel a bit like a ghost when I'm there.

I push the anxiety down and try to feel comforted by my childhood things.

I've inspected everything carefully, and it seems they've left it just as it was — except that Mum's taken over my desk with all her paperwork which, I can see at a glance (and a bit of snooping), is a hot, disorganized mess. She's good at the people side of things, but I don't know how she manages to keep a business afloat without an ounce of cost-consciousness. I page through something that looks like an attempt to track expenses — I've never seen such a badly documented ledger. She spends HOW MUCH on oat milk?

The mind boggles. Truly it does. It doesn't take an economics major to see that the business is doomed if she can't A) bring more money in or B) put less money out.

I get the sense that she isn't, but she should be glad I posted that hilarious video of her to TikTok earlier. I'm not sure it'll drive business, but it'll get people talking, at least. The video is already getting likes and shares all over the place. #AliMac #RetroBarista #BigButtsChallenge I mean, come on. A middle-aged woman dropping it like it's hot, splashing milk everywhere = unfreakingbelievably watchable. I've watched it at least five hundred times myself. And that song! I can't even. I mean, I've heard it before, obviously. I wasn't born under a rock. But it's SO wrong. This guy thinks it's okay to judge women based on their physical attributes and gets rich by making a song out of it? Dude, that would never fly now.

Or maybe it would. JK Rowling got 'cancelled,' and it only increased her sales. 

I waste some time shuffling the mountains of paperwork into some semblance of order — at least separate the incoming from outgoing — and promise myself not to snoop too hard into the accounts. Not my business, literally. But when the desk is orderly, I find I have nothing left to keep my mind off the obvious.

The reason I'm here.

The thing I'm hiding from.

I've been avoiding it all day, but I can feel my fingers twitching to check it. Fine! I tell myself. Go ahead and check if you want to get your heart broken all over again!

I throw myself down on my childhood bed and, with a slight tremor, open Insta.

And there it is. Exactly what I feared: nothing.

Zero DMs from my roommate Jules. Correction: former roommate as of this morning. She probably hasn't even realized that I'm gone.

Tears well up in my eyes. I can't help but wonder if I was ever really there. Or if I'm even really here.

I think I might be having my first existential crisis.