"I've had dates cancelled for worse reasons."
That was Aaron's thought as he hung up. It had snowed pretty much all day and as he came home from work, it really started to pile up in a hurry. He did the polite thing and called his date and proposed that they cancel for safety reasons. His prospective date had readily agreed. Too readily perhaps. She had done her best to sound appropriately disappointed, but Aaron could hear that she wasn't much of an actress.
Aaron didn't hold that against her though. Honestly, he had not mustered much enthusiasm for the project himself. It was a blind date after all. Like some kind of throwback to pre-internet dating, one of his friends had fixed them up and they had both agreed out of friendly obligation. They did the usual faux cautiously-excited predate phone interview replete with the required number of "greats" and "awesome" and "I look forward to meeting yous". They each expressed the necessary enthusiastic cool so as not to lead too much expectation, but sufficient to cast doubt on any apparent reluctance. With their compulsories completed, they agreed to meet Friday at a local bar for a few socially non-committal drinks.
After their initial contact, Aaron did his requisite internet snooping under the assumption that she would investigate him as well. She seemed nice. She was cute, on the thin side, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a tattoo of some kind of bird on the inside of her left ankle. She posted a lot of family pictures, and she liked dogs and fried oysters. Her profile included a tasteful few bikini-beach pictures in the company of her girlfriends, complete with duck faces, peace signs, red solo cups and sorority squats captioned by song lyrics he didn't recognize. Honestly, the internet avatar she projected reminded him of his own, only instead of ankle tattoos and squats, his beach pictures had backwards baseball hats, tank tops and bro hugs. He had made a mental note to upgrade his profile game a bit.
Mercifully the snow had settled in as predicted. It was supposed to be two-day storm of near blizzard proportions, so they both seized the convenient excuse and begged off with the obligatory mutual promise to "try to get together some other time" coupled with the polite, unspoken agreement to forget to reschedule before they hung up. That was that and no one was worse for the wear and, as a bonus, his wallet was four drinks thicker.
So, Aaron wasn't too broken up about it as he plopped onto the sofa and took up his book. He had enjoyed this book so far, but he hadn't yet spent the time on it that it deserved. A snow-bound weekend looked like as good as a time as any to catch up on his reading. He snapped on the light, found his page, and settled in for a few chapters.
"No date tonight?" his roommate asked from the kitchen.
"Nope," he answered as he turned a page. "Looks like you're stuck with me."
Celeste shrugged and turned back to the refrigerator.
"Stay out of my Chinese food," Aaron warned.
"Awwww, man! Help a girl out, would you?"
"Not my fault you got the munchies last night." Aaron flipped another page. "Told you to make it last."
To protest, Celeste noisily rummaged through the crisper drawers in search of the Chinese food she had devoured last night in the throes of her midnight munchies.
"Have a sandwich."
"I don't want a sandwich."
"Soup."
"I don't want soup either."
"Let me guess. You want Chinese food, right?"
Celeste snapped the refrigerator shut with a dramatic huff.
"C'mon. I'll buy you more."
Aaron cocked a curious eye at her.
"Oh yeah? When?"
Celeste put her hands on her hips while she evaded the question. She had only recently graduated with her Master's degree and currently worked as a waitress to meet her portion of the rent and bills while she searched to start her career.
"You don't think I'm good for it?"
Aaron's eyes went back to his book, but he didn't say anything. With another dramatic sigh Celeste noisily worked her way through every cabinet in the kitchen as if Chinese food would materialize if she just opened enough doors. It was her version of Schrodinger's Cat; until she looked inside each cabinet Chinese food existed and didn't exist at the same time.
"I'm hungry," Celeste whined after the last cabinet failed to yield up any Chinese food.
"I would never have guessed," Aaron answered ironically.
Celeste huffed her way to the living area, swathed herself in her fluffy powder purple blanket and plopped on the other end of the sofa.
"Katie would have given me her Chinese food."
Aaron simply ignored that and didn't rise to the bait. Katie was their former roommate. Aaron had moved into the apartment when Katie and Celeste's previous roommate bailed just before COVID quarantine. Aaron needed a new place to hole up after his previous roommate's girlfriend moved in and, shortly thereafter, asked Aaron to get out. Aaron kind of knew Katie and they couldn't make their rent without a third, so serendipity dealt him in as their new roommate. Since then, Katie, Celeste and Aaron had since lived comfortably with a three-way split of the rent and bills.
Katie and Celeste were necessarily closer to each other as their friendship predated Aaron, but they had been welcoming enough. It didn't take very long for a tacit agreement to form where they didn't get too involved in each other's lives and nobody went naked outside of the privacy of their own room. It was as close to having sisters as Aaron had ever been, and so it remained until three months ago when Katie decided to head home to Kentucky to live with her grandmother. That left Aaron and Celeste with a half share of the rent and bills and the tacit agreement.
