This is How We Change the World Ch. 01

"Thank you," Maddy whispered, and when she pulled back she immediately started dabbing at her eyes. "Ah. Shit."

'They're okay," Lyric said, immediately. "They didn't run. You're okay."

Maddy grabbed her head at the temples, tilted it forward slightly, and kissed Lyric's forehead. "'I'll pay you back."

"No you won't," she said, actively spiting that selfish part of her that wanted money. Then she panicked a little, and added, "Not because you can't. I just mean... Anyway, don't worry about the bed. I had an idea about that, actually, but I'll need your help. I didn't do it before because it was just for a couple nights and not worth the trouble, but now it makes more sense."

"It was four nights," Maddy said.

"Four schmour." The bell at the counter rang. Maddy started moving first, but Lyric stopped her. "I'll get this one. You just... catch your breath."

Maddy was giving her the strangest look when she went back out front.

***

Lyric had already pushed the kitchen table she never used out into the living room where it would work just as well in its primary purpose, having a bunch of things piled on it. She already had the makeshift bed made up in the corner for herself. It looked comfy.

"Can you hold this?" Lyric said, brandishing a lengthy curtain rod.

Maddy put down her suitcase and took the rod, bewildered, as Lyric danced over to the table and picked up the cordless drill. "Do you know how to use that?" Maddy asked.

Lyric frowned and shrugged, and then, a few seconds later, said, "Yeah," quite reluctantly.

"Okay, good. Because I can't."

The little brunette just blinked, and said, "Oh." Then her smile was back, and she pointed. "Up there."

Maddy hefted the rod and came up short. "I need something to stand on."

Lyric grabbed two chairs, and set one up for her in the middle of the space between the outer wall of the apartment and the cabinets that came down from the ceiling in the kitchen area.

"Yeah," Lyric said, moving the other chair over to the side so she could reach too. "Nice and high."

"How did you find one that fits this exact distance?" Maddy said, grunting a little. Lifting things up over her head for an extended period of time was harder than it should have been.

"It... twists..." Lyric said, as she lined up a screw with the hole on one end.

Three screws on one end, and three on the other. When they were done, they realized that it was a little slanted, but Lyric just waved a hand and called it, "Close enough." They put up another one that went from the cabinets to the wall between the kitchen and bedroom, and she had a couple of heavier cloth curtains that looked good. Just like that, they had sectioned off the corner of the kitchen.

"Found these at a thrift store," Lyric said, brushing her hand across the dark red fabric. "Was saving them in case my next apartment had windows in the bedroom." Then she gasped and turned. "Oh, and I wasn't using this for anything, so I took some clothes out of my closet."

It looked like an old steamer trunk, but when Lyric lifted the lid there were some compartments inside.

"You can use that closet space... where all this was. You know, so you're not living out of a suitcase for... however long."

Maddy nodded slowly. She couldn't leave without saying anything, so she said, "It's getting late, so..."

"Of course!" Lyric responded, pulling the curtain aside. "I changed the sheets you were using, but I only have three sets. You're using one, and I'm using one, and one's dirty, so... It'll be fine. I'll take care of it with the laundry. But... if you could... wait for me?"

Maddy had made it to the bedroom, and turned around just in time to see Lyric packing up the drill into its little plastic case, and heading for the door. "Did you borrow that?"

She nodded sheepishly and, as she reached for the door, said, "I gotta return it. It'll only be a minute."

It took a little longer than a minute, and when Lyric returned she looked less peppy.

"Thanks for staying up until I got in," Maddy said, and then gasped, saying, "Oh my god, it's after three," when she realized it was after three in the morning.

"Merry Christmas!" This seemed to bring back some of Lyric's good mood, and she nodded. "I almost went back just to walk you home."

"Oh God," she said, "I'm glad you didn't. I knew the way."

Lyric nodded slowly, and then gestured toward her 'room'. "I'm beat, so... I'm gonna turn in."

"Right! Okay!"

"If you need to come out for any reason," she said, pointing, "use the little light over the oven, and not the kitchen light from the switch. That'll be real bright in there for me."

Maddy nodded, eyes tracking the long fluorescent light in the kitchen that extended right up to, and just past, the curtain rod they'd hung. "Got it. Don't worry. I might read for a bit, but I'll bring what I need in."

"Okay," Lyric said, looking around. "Okay."

She looked tired but, Maddy noted, she looked more at ease. A kind of casual, behind-the-scenes Lyric she'd only glimpsed in her days of catching up on sleep, and whom she'd only theorized before last week. She was still the same sweet girl, but she wasn't quite as made up. Not as... on.

This, Maddy could appreciate, and she smiled as she headed into the bedroom.

Lyric's bed was either a full or queen sized mattress. The red sheets that had been there only that morning were gone, replaced with a dark purple affair that more properly fit the rest of the decor. Maddy got out of her uniform, breathing happily once her bra was off. Everything was better once her bra was off.

Some time later, when Maddy had been reading for a while, she heard Lyric in the kitchen. Running the sink. Except then, a minute later, she heard the water running. It sounded distinctly different, and her eyebrows rose. Her first instinct was to throw something on, march right out into the kitchen, and make sure Lyric knew that it was okay for her to use her own bathroom. Maddy was annoyed with herself for not having already realized that the bathroom was only accessible from the bedroom.

But then, Maddy realized that she was naked. And she slept naked, which Lyric knew and was probably trying to be respectful of. Maddy was a little bit jealous that the other girl could more easily pee in a sink, but was resolute when she stood up and marched across the bedroom.

"Hey," she said, as she turned on the light over the stove. "Lyric? Do you have a minute?"

"Sorry," Lyric said, as she emerged from the curtains after a moment. "I was trying not to..." Her eyes went wide for a second, staring directly at Maddy's bare chest. Then she was making frantic eye contact with Maddy, and then looking at the ceiling. "Oh."

"They're just tits," Maddy said, tapping the undersides of them with her extended fingertips. "Just like yours."

"Well, not just like mine," Lyric mumbled, cheeks coloring, "but I get your point."

"You can use your bathroom. I can sleep through anything, once I get there. It won't bother me."

Lyric was still not looking directly at her. "Are you just gonna keep standing there naked until I say okay?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Maddy nodded triumphantly, turned on her heel, and marched back to bed.

***

Things settled into a routine after a few days. Christmas was a big nothingburger, which was fine. Lyric worked the afternoon shift, and Maddy worked evenings. Lyric always stayed awake and waited for her to get home, which Maddy was a little irked by at first, because she didn't need anyone to take care of her, but increasingly came to see it as endearing and thoughtful. Lyric was always so...

...genuine.

Lyric also always had leftovers for her, which Maddy ate ravenously. Neither Maddy nor Lyric was big on breakfast, but Maddy usually whipped something together for lunch for the two of them.

It was nice. After the first night, it wasn't common for Lyric to come in at night to use the bathroom, but when it happened it was fine. By the end of the week, Maddy wouldn't look up from her book, and Lyric wouldn't look up from her phone. It became easy.

***

31 Dec 2023

New Year's Eve was not usually a holiday Lyric cared about. It was, along with Christmas, one of only two days when Downtown Grind was closed, and in years past she'd done what she usually did with her days off, but Maddy had interrupted that. She'd gone out earlier in the day, without fanfare, and returned later with two bottles of white wine.

"You know," Lyric said, as she swirled her plastic cup and pretended she could see the way the wine was moving inside of it, "I like this better than the other one."

Maddy nodded, sagely. "Dry wines can be a bit of an acquired taste. I mean, they're both rieslings so the flavor is similar, but that one is a lot wetter."

"I don't understand how a fluid can be dry." Lyric's face pinched in a disbelieving humor. "It doesn't make any sense."

"And yet," Maddy said, "your tongue is telling you exactly that. Or... mine is. Yours is fruitier."

Lyric laughed. "Guilty."

"How are we doing on time?" Maddy picked up her phone, flipped it over, and peered at it blearily. "Oh. Wow. Okay. Ten minutes."

"I was afraid I wasn't gonna make it this year," Lyric said, laughing. "This is making me sleepy."

"Megan is the same way. Wine makes her sleepy." She cleared her throat and sat up. "Fireworks! I want to see fireworks."

Together they positioned themselves in front of the living room window. The view wasn't very good, mostly they saw the buildings on the opposite side of the street, but there were some colors sparkling on the sky here and there. Lyric thought the roof would have been a better spot, but she didn't know if it was possible to go up on the roof. She'd never had a reason to check, and now she felt a pang of remorse she couldn't offer that to Maddy.

"New Year," Maddy said dreamily and leaned on the side of the window. "2023."

"What do you usually do on New Year's?"

Maddy shrugged. "We usually have a big party. Occasionally we attend someone else's party, but often it's at our place. Amy likes New Year's. It's her Christmas."

"Oh, look!"

Bigger-than-previous fireworks were going off, and they both craned their necks to see. Maddy glanced at the clock. "Almost! Nine, eight, seven..."

Then, to Lyric's dismay, Maddy cupped the back of Lyric's head and smacked a kiss on her cheeks, first one and then the other. And then she laughed. Lyric blinked, confused, and Maddy said, "You're supposed to kiss someone at New Year's! It's good luck!"

Lyric smiled feebly. "Oh! Right."

Maddy looked at her inquisitively. "You really don't usually celebrate, do you?"

"No." Then, to have the conversation not be about her, Lyric asked, "So what else do you usually do?"

"Resolutions," Maddy said. "Frank is big on resolutions. I'll hit the gym! I'll start meditating every day! That sort of thing. He's very pompous. Of course, that usually fizzles out before the end of January." She smiled fondly and emptied her cup, then looked at Lyric. "So, any resolutions? What's next for Lyric?"

"I don't really do resolutions."

"Oh come on," Maddy said, at least halfway toward annoyed. "That's a cop out."

Lyric rolled her eyes and frowned. "I just don't...think that far ahead."

Maddy narrowed her eyes. "You live in the moment."

"Yeah," Lyric croaked. "Mindfulness and all that."

For a minute it looked like Maddy was going to call her on her bullshit, and bullshit it was, but the redhead walked back to the sofa with her cup, and instead of pouring herself more she just grabbed the bottle by the neck and raised the whole thing to her lips. When she lowered the bottle, she touched the back of her hand to her lips and caught her breath. "That's noble."

Lyric walked back to the sofa too, and busied herself with pouring more wine. The truth was that Lyric felt like her future was perpetually in short supply. That, on any given night, on any given street, she might just run into someone who was intolerably offended by her existence. A metaphorical nail in the road, with her name etched along the side. She wouldn't see it coming, and that would be it. This was her reality, and she tried not to kid herself about it.

There was a kind of peace in her acceptance. She owned her actions. She made the most of her days. Thinking about this reminded her that she still needed to turn in the signatures she'd gotten from her petition drive. The clipboard was in a bag by the door. She could find time in the next couple days, if she remembered.

She shook herself out of her thoughts and looked at Maddy, who was leaning back on the sofa and looking at her with a serious look that Lyric couldn't interpret.

"How about you? What are your resolutions?" she asked, to have the focus not be on her lack of future.

"Oh, well," Maddy said, slumping a little and averting her eyes from Lyric's. "To be honest, I don't usually make resolutions. I have this whole... it's like a joke. I get... others to go first and... come up with something close. You want to travel? I want to travel too. Wow."

"And they never catch on?"

Maddy made a sound in her throat, like an internal sigh. "It's hard to draw lines between... when I really did want the same things as other people... and when I was hoping we'd want the same things... and when it was a joke. But I think it's mostly that... resolutions are about something changing, and I don't really... every year is just like the previous one, right? I don't believe in changes. Not really."

The last few words were delivered with crippling severity. Maddy poured out the rest of the bottle into her cup, and curled up on the edge of the couch. Legs drawn in tight. Lyric bounced up to grab them both some blankets, and Maddy seemed grateful when she handed her one. It had gotten colder as the night went on, but she was finally feeling it herself.

Maddy reached for the remote. "Do you mind if I put something on?"

Time slowed, just for a moment. Maddy with her arm extended, remote aimed at her television. The redhead was looking for a distraction, but one they could do together. She could just as easily have gone to read in bed, alone, but offered something they could do together first. For her part, Lyric didn't really want to be alone just then, so she huddled up under her blanket and said, "Maybe something funny?"

Maddy nodded sagely and started to flip through channels.

***

04 Jan 2023

Maddy sighed and tossed her phone on the couch. "They're treating me like a child."

Lyric peeked in from the kitchen and made a sympathetic and noncommittal sound.

"I mean, okay, they pay the rent, but... I'm still an adult and I live there! I shouldn't be excluded!"

"Excluded from what?"

Lyric sat down at the other end of the sofa. She had an apron on, and she was wiping her hands on the hem. Maddy rolled her shoulders, breathing deep, then sighed.

"Amy just called. She said that they had talked with the landlord, and agreed that since half the bathroom has to be demolished for drying anyway, they would go ahead and renovate it properly. And that means it will take even longer, since the builders the landlord does business with can't start right after the drying supposedly ends. So she just, she just informed me that they were picking up the tiles today, and she didn't even ask me if I wanted to go!"

Lyric nodded, staring right ahead. Maddy glanced at her.

"She did also say that the insurance will pay for my hotel, if necessary, so if I've overstayed my welcome, just, like—"

"Oh, no, no," Lyric said and glanced at her briefly. "I really kind of like the company."

"Yeah, but I feel really uncomfortable for how much I'm inconveniencing you. You've been more than accommodating, but I don't feel right for just marching in here and taking up your bed, and... and..." Maddy paused, aghast when the thought hit her. "Oh my god, I am behaving like a child!"

Lyric frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Ahh, I'm so stupid," Maddy said. She was so agitated she got up and walked around the sofa, something that was barely doable in Lyric's tiny apartment, and then sank back to her spot. "I haven't paid you any rent!"

"No, I didn't—"

"You shouldn't have to ask me! It's something I should do on my own, out of sheer courtesy, you know, like actual adults do! Gah."

Lyric looked alarmed, her shoulders rising toward her ears defensively. Maddy sighed.

"Look, okay. Maybe I need to just... can I just tell you about my relationship? I mean, it's okay if you don't want to hear."

"Sure I do," Lyric said and her shoulders lowered fractionally.

"Okay. Okay, okay. So. So I'm currently in this throuple with Amy and François. We've been together for... six years? And living together for... four and a half, I think. We were together, me and Amy, long before that, and shared the rent, but since Amy has an actual career opposed to, you know, what I do, it had already been so that she paid more because every time there was a raise in the rent she'd cover that. And when Frank moved in, they just split the rent between them, and I stopped paying altogether. Because they earn so much more than I do. I didn't... I never felt like it was unfair, but..."

Maddy paused and chewed on her lip. She glanced at Lyric, whose shoulders were relaxed again, and continued, talking to her hand and trying to resist the urge of picking at her cuticles.

"It didn't use to be like this. When we first met we were equal, me and Amy. We shared everything, including partners, and we just... clicked. She's always been more stubborn, but we didn't really... it just worked. But then, in '09... how old are you now, by the way?"

She looked at Lyric, who smiled nervously and said, "Twenty-five."

"Okay, so a little younger than you. Anyway, yeah, when I was twenty-three, my parents died in an accident. I was living on my own by then, and they didn't support me financially or anything, they weren't that well off and... but that wasn't the point. The point is, that it was still a big blow, and I got depressed. I was struggling, and Amy stepped up and took care of me, and... and now that I think about it, I don't think she ever stopped. She's always been more... opinionated than me, so I had been following her lead even before that, but... I think that's where we went wrong."

She sighed again and slumped lower on the couch. "I was blaming Frank at first, but it isn't really his fault. We were already set in our ways when he came into the picture. He's also very... how should I put it... passionate, maybe? And so between Amy's decisiveness and his impulsivity, I just... I guess I've stopped mattering. I'm an afterthought."

Maddy stared at the empty, sullen screen of the tv for a moment, biting her lip.

"But that was not the point either!" she said and sat up so fast that Lyric flinched. "The point is that I've been living with them, rent free, and so I didn't really... I mean I did think about paying you for staying here, but I guess I forgot. I'm so sorry. How much should I pay you? How much is your rent? I feel like I should pay more than half, when I get the bed."

"My new bed is okay," Lyric said defensively. "And you're not obliged to—"

"Of course I am," Maddy said impatiently. "And that bed you built is amazing. It's so cute. But my point is, I can't take advantage of you like this. So, how much do I owe you for... how long have I been here now? Almost two weeks, altogether? And are you okay with me staying longer, or should I go to the hotel?"

Lyric looked oddly embarrassed when she muttered, "Okay, okay. My rent is nineteen hundred. So... if you want to pay half... but it's really not necessary, I mean, only if you want to, and whatever you want to contribute is fine."