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He taps against his phone, thinking. “What are the bathroom arrangements?”
“I only have one bathroom.”
“Any rules?” he asks, pausing over the phone. “I’m a night showerer, so let me know if that’s going to be…”
I hold up my hands. “I can’t believe this is real. Are you really thinking you can move in with me? Just like that?” I ask, snapping my fingers.
He shrugs and puts his phone down. “Hey, it’s fine if you’re not into this whole cuffing season thing. When I’m in, I’m in. I won’t bring other girls around or cause you any problems. I thought we were on the same page, but it’s cool. We can go our separate ways after tonight, and we can...”
“Stop!” I interrupt, my mind spinning. I can’t let him call this off. I need that money, and I need my mother to stand down from my dating life. “I didn’t say that I don’t want to do this. It’s just that, well, it’s a little shocking.”
“I can admit that it’s different.”
“You could be an axe murderer, for fuck’s sake.”
He picks up his phone again and taps at it. “What are you doing?” I ask.
He flips his phone around, and I see the familiar sex offender registry for our state. It’s familiar because I check it, religiously keeping tabs on the offenders in my area. “Not on it. Also, not on any arrest records,” he says, scrolling to a screen that shows criminal records for the state. I see nothing under his name except some speeding tickets and a violation for an expired license plate a couple years ago.
“I can add something to the contract that you get to lock your bedroom door, and I don’t get a key to the apartment in case you get mad at me and want me to leave immediately.”
I cannot believe I’m even entertaining this. “I want two forms of ID so I know your name is real, and I want you to cover your own groceries.”
“Done,” he says, reaching into his wallet. He plops his driver’s license in front of me and searches for another form of ID. “I have credit cards, gym card, and a library card with my name on it, but I don’t have any work IDs or anything with a picture. Will those do?”
“I thought you said you don’t like books. Why do you have a library card? What else are you lying to me about?” I ask, squinting.
He laughs and swallows a piece of eggroll. “You should know libraries are more than books. I can watch documentaries and stuff on the movie app.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, putting my head in my hands and glancing at the driver’s license from between my fingers. It’s him. He looks exactly the same as the guy sitting in front of me and casually chewing like none of this is a big deal. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
He taps a few more things on his phone. Every once in a while, he stops chewing, looks off into the distance, and adds more things. Eventually, he sets his phone back on the table, and my phone dings in my purse again.
“Is that you?” I ask.
“Yep. Check it out. I think it’s fair, but I can add something if you need it.”
I reach into my purse and look at the text message with a link to a Google document. Christ, the contract is long, almost five pages of something that looks like a trained lawyer drew it up. I take a few bites of food and chew while I read the first part. “It says here that this contract ends on February fifteenth.”
“It’s the day after Valentine’s Day. We dissolve our contract then. I move out, your mom’s off your back, and I go to Gus’s for a couple of weeks until the weather warms up enough to camp again.”
I read down the list of helpful bullet points about arrangements. It says that he provides his own food and toiletries unless we’re having a date night. Then, food will be negotiated. He even agreed to pay the water and gas bills. Sure, those are usually small for my apartment, coming to about a hundred bucks in the winter, but it’s still a hundred bucks I don’t have to pay that can go into savings.
He’s thought of everything. He does his own dishes and laundry, and he even agrees to vacuum once a week for the duration of cuffing season. He’s included a blurb on replacing the toilet paper roll in an over and down position and agrees to use the fan and air freshener. There’s even a section on birth control that says if we have relations, and he actually uses that term, he’ll use condoms. He agrees to take turns picking what’s on TV.
“I’m very well-behaved. I put the seat back down after I pee, I shower once a day, and I’ll work. Don’t think I’ll be on the couch the whole time. I do smoke, but I won’t in the apartment, and I’ll brush my teeth after. I drink, but we can discuss that as needed. I wasn’t sure how much you drink.”
“Something tells me I’ll be drinking a lot more,” I mumble, cradling my head which suddenly hurts.
“I’d still like to go out with Gus. You should also know that if we’re not going to have a sexual relationship or you don’t want a real relationship, I may not come home every so often, if you get my meaning. That’s in the contract.”
The waiter brings our check, setting it down in the middle of the table, obviously used to identifying couples on early dates. Wilder swipes it toward him before I can get my hand on it. “I’m paying. I sprung this on you.”
He gets a wad of cash out of his wallet, and I mentally scroll back to when he said he does odd jobs in the summer. People have obviously paid him under the table. Does this guy even do taxes?
I shake my head, jolting myself out of tax questions. I need to focus on the issue at hand. Can I agree to live with a man I’ve only known for twenty-four hours?
He doesn’t have a criminal record. He seems clean enough and showers every night. He does dishes and vacuums. He even sets the toilet paper roll in the proper position. I could fall in love with a man after months of dating and not get that type of deal. Melissa’s horror stories of men she’s lived with not moving from the couch and constantly asking for sandwiches comes to mind.
