Dross Bachelor Boyfriend

"What's the matter, Vanessa? I've never seen you looking so upset. Is there anything I can do?"

"Heh. Is it that obvious?" she sniffled, her eyes still puffy from crying. "I was going to have to tell you sooner or later, I was just hoping I could do it in a slightly more dignified manner than getting caught throwing the last of his shit in the trash while crying about him like the stereotypical petty ex-girlfriend. But, in case you haven't it figured it out yet, Nick has moved out."

"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry! But maybe in the long run, it's for the best. It's none of my business, of course, but I'm sure it's not any secret that I've always felt as if you were too good for him."

"I know, Tim," she said, dropping the box into the freshly emptied dumpster with a briefly satisfying metallic thud. "And you're right, of course. It's been coming for a long time, you weren't the only one who tried to warn me. But it's just... well I guess it's just that this is the first time I'm not just losing a boyfriend but I'm also losing a roommate in the bargain. And he did offer at least *some* help with the bills, even if he never exactly pulled his own weight. I was *finally* starting to feel settled here. They're so crazy about me at my job they're basically holding a management position open for me until I finish my degree.

"I know how lucky we were to find this place, and I know you gave us a break to even rent to us, with Nick's credit history and me barely holding down a part time job, living together for the first time. I don't have the time or the energy to even look for a new place right now, let alone move. But I don't see how I'm going to be able afford to stay; it's not exactly easy to find a roommate compatible enough to share a one bedroom apartment, and between work and school and babysitting Nick, I never did get around to developing much of a social life here. I still barely know anyone in Denver. You're just about the closest thing I have here to a best friend. How sad is that?"

Vanessa's cheeks flushed as she fought back tears. When Tim opened his arms she fell into them and finally let them flow. He just held her as she sobbed.

"I'm sorry..."

"Not at all, Vee."

He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her.

"You've been a good tenant and I don't want you to have to move, either. Tell you what: you take ten or fifteen minutes to pull yourself together, I'll come up and make us a nice, relaxing pot of tea and we'll sit down and figure this thing out together."

Vanessa went back upstairs to her apartment, brushed her hair into a ponytail and blotted her face with a washcloth dipped in cold water, in her bathroom sink that was for once free of whiskers. She took her moisturizers and perfumes from the cabinet underneath the sink and used them to fill in the spaces in the medicine chest where Nick's shaving cream and hair gel and Axe body spray had been. She shut the mirrored door and regarded her reflection in it, trying to erase the expression of worry. But the two stubborn little furrows between her eyebrows were still there when Tim knocked at her door.

"Yogi Relax tea, anyone? I brought the pot just in case you didn't have one, but if you take lemon, milk or sugar, I hope you have some, 'cause I didn't bring any with me."

"Come on in, I'll put the kettle on."

"None of that hostess jazz, Vee. You're the one having a crisis here. You just get a pen and some paper, sit down, take a few deep, cleansing breaths and for heaven's sake, try to relax. Leave the rest to me."

It was curiously comforting to watch him working in her kitchen, warming the teapot with hot tap water, scooping up the tea leaves with a little spring loaded tea ball, slowly and carefully pouring the boiling water. Tim radiated the 'fatherly' vibe that Vanessa had always secretly found sexy, which was to say the polar opposite of everything she knew about her own father, who had walked out of her life when she was just five.

Vanessa knew from her baby pictures that he was short and swarthy, with a sparse mustache that belied his Mayan mestizo ancestry, a lean, wiry frame, and blotchy skin that made him look like a teenager everywhere except around his dark, deep-set eyes. Her mother tried her best never to speak of him at all, and measured her words as carefully as if she were being cross-examined in court when the subject could no longer be avoided. She had admitted that he was an alcoholic, that they married too young, that he was unreliable. She hinted that he had other substance abuse issues, had sometimes been violent. He had never attempted to contact Vanessa, nor had she tried to track him down. All she truly remembered of him was chaos.

Tim was tall, six feet two or thereabouts, with a slightly fluffy, 'dad bod' torso above a still trim waist and long, well sculpted legs she had admired from afar as he did his maintenance and yard work around the property, wearing shorts whenever the weather possibly permitted. Beneath slightly unruly eyebrows, his blue eyes were kind and careworn. His sandy blonde hair was tinged with silver at the temples. Without his full beard which was shot through with much more grey, she guessed he'd look quite a bit younger, but she found it kind of sexy and confident that he didn't seem to care. She could never imagine Nick aging so gracefully, he was far too vain. He'd be spray tanning and keto dieting and hair-dyeing and power-crunching and Botoxing and hair-plugging and lipo-suctioning his way to an increasingly vague approximation of his younger self, trying to re-capture the mojo that he'd never really had. It struck her that until now, Vanessa had never before thought of Nick and Tim in the same context.

"You take milk or sugar?"

"Nope."

"Good, neither do I."

Tim poured her tea, then his. He clicked the pen and angled the legal pad so both of them could see it.

"Okay, let's see what we've got here. Number one is rent, obviously. Now I don't want to upset you any more than you already are, but I'm afraid it's going up to sixteen hundred at the end of next month when your lease is up."

Vanessa took a deep breath, but the two tiny furrows between her eyebrows deepened.

"I know, believe me, and I don't like it any better than you do. It's happening everywhere. Blame the city, they've been re-assessing every property at close to double its previous estimated value, and the property taxes go up accordingly. And that sets off a whole chain reaction: all of a sudden the insurance company wants a bunch more money and a bunch of expensive improvements, especially to an older building like this. Even with the bump in rents I'm not making any money; the building just barely covers its note even when we're fully occupied, and assuming there isn't some unanticipated expense. We bought this place as our retirement plan thinking we would pay it off and live on the income, but now it looks like we'll be doing good if we have enough equity when we finally have to sell the place to afford a patio home or condo. You remember the row of big old silver maple trees in the hell strip?"

"Yes! I was so sad when you took them down! I miss their shade!"

"So do I. They were a hundred years old, as old as the building. I had a tree surgeon come out every spring to inspect and prune them. But you see how many mature trees have gone, up and down the block, and all over the neighborhood: the city forester has been very aggressive about condemning older trees that might be susceptible to the Emerald tree borer. No appeal, just 'have these trees removed and the stumps ground 36 inches below ground level in thirty days or the city will do it for you at a cost of five thousand dollars per tree.' And there are only so many tree companies in town equipped to take down a tree that's a hundred feet tall with limbs hanging over the street and grind a ten-foot diameter stump, so I was lucky to find a guy who could get it done inside the city's deadline for a grand less, per tree. Insurance wouldn't pay a dime, I just had to eat it."

"Ouch!"

"Awh, it's not your problem, Vee, which is, after all, what we're really here to try and solve. I just want you to understand, it's not like all the little guy landlords made some dastardly plan to jack up rents all over the city, it's out of our hands. Did you know almost all the new luxury high-rise apartment buildings you see going up all over town are around half vacant? And do you know why they're still building more of them as fast as they can anyway? Because they're being built on credit, by contractors who can flip them to real estate investment trusts for huge profits as soon as they pass the magic fifty percent occupancy mark. Ironically, every one of those giant new apartment buildings is only making our affordable housing situation worse. So... rent. Brace yourself and let's call it sixteen hundred."

He writes '1600' at the top of the page.

"That includes all your utilities except gas & electric. I know a one-bedroom in this place pays a hundred and thirty a month, give or take, averaged over a year."

He writes '130' on the next line down.

"What does your internet and cable package run?"

"A hundred and seventy a month. I know it's a little high, but I need high speed data to be able to work from home when I need to. I don't have any premium channels or anything."

Tim nods and writes '170' on the paper.

"Did you and Nick have any other shared expenses?"

"No. The note on the Camaro was all his. Well: I'm pretty sure it's in his mom's name. But nothing to do with me, anyway. My old beater is just a hand-me-down from my mom, like most of this furniture, but at least it's paid for."

Tim nods and quickly adds the numbers, circling the total: 1900.

"See? That's not so bad. We only have to find you another nine hundred and fifty bucks and you won't even miss Nick. Well: not for his *money,* anyway. And I suspect you weren't even getting that much out of him most months. Not in money, I mean."

"You suspect correctly," Vanessa shakes her head ruefully. "Half the rent if I was lucky. Utilities, cable; I even bought all the groceries. He bought all of the beer and all of the weed, but he consumed nearly all of it as well."

"Perfect. So all you need is a nine hundred and fifty dollar roommate who handles all the rest of their own expenses. Even a little bit less if you can economize in other ways. Rental housing is so tight now, you'd be surprised what people are paying these days, especially this close to campus."

"Oh sure. Easy. What do you propose: twin beds so we gals can pretend we're back in the dorms again? Or maybe she'll be content paying half the expenses for a fold-out futon sofa in the living room?"

"Yeah, I understand, it might take some looking to find someone who doesn't cramp your style."

"Or, you know, I could just hurry up and find a new boyfriend, preferably one who's currently homeless."

Tim stared down at the paper for a long moment.

"I... I might have an idea."

"Well, let's hear it. Brainstorming 101: 'there are no bad ideas'."

"I've heard that said before. Except I'm already pretty sure this *is* a bad idea. Just forget I brought it up."

"Now you've aroused my curiosity. Come on, spill it."

"Okay, but first, you have to promise that what I'm about to say never leaves this room."

"Oooh, cloak and dagger-y! Will the agency disavow any knowledge of my actions? Are you gonna self-destruct in five seconds?"

"I *knew* this was a mistake."

"Alright, I'll be serious, I promise. And I give you my word; I won't tell a soul. Now come on, give!"

"And if you agree with me that it's a bad idea, I want you to also agree not to hold it against me. We just strike it from the record and go on as though it had never been said. Deal?"

Vanessa stuck out her hand.

"Deal."

"Just one more condition. I need you to hear me out. This isn't easy for me, I need you to promise you'll give me a few minutes to explain myself, before you interrupt or make up your mind."

"Okay, I promise."

She grabbed Tim's hand.

"This conversation is just between us, never happened, cannot be held against you in a court of law, and I'll zip it until you're finished not saying what you never said. Fair enough? The suspense is killing me."

"Well," he began carefully, "When you listed your likely roommate scenarios, it got me thinking. And... I thought, 'why not something along the lines of option three?' Except... that I... am not homeless."

Vanessa dropped his hand just as quickly as she had taken it.

"Uh, no you are not, Tim. But you ARE married!"

He shot her a pained look.

"Sorry, sorry. I promised. Zipping it."

"Believe me, I know it. And I love her, and the life we've had together, our kids and grandkids. I wouldn't change it for anything. But you know, a man has... needs. And, uhm, well you've been very honest with me, so I'm going to pay you the same courtesy: while our relationship included lots of fulfilling sex at the beginning, it kind of gradually tapered off over the years, and it hasn't included any sex at all for... well, for more than a decade.

"I would never be so bold as to suggest such a thing if I didn't have a pretty good idea that you were at least a little bit attracted to me in the same way as I am attracted to you. I have seen you checking me out whacking the weeds, just as I know you've caught me checking you out laying by the pool. When we chat you don't just make small talk, we *really* talk, I mean, do you know how rare that is anymore? I flirt a little with you as I suppose I do with most women and you don't just brush it off or humor me, you flirt back. I mean, maybe I'm misreading this and I might just be kidding myself, but I've given it some thought, and I really don't think that I am.

"Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't do anything with the knowledge that we share a mutual physical attraction except maybe fantasize about you more frequently when I masturbate. But these are not normal circumstances. You hardly need remind me that, in addition to being married, I'm also way too fucking old for you. I make a point of avoiding the pool area when you're there because, even though we're friends, it's embarrassing to be 'macked on' by a dirty old man in public where someone else might see, not least for the dirty old man. But that's not to say I don't notice; I'm probably as familiar with your swimwear collection as you are! You don't want to move, and I want you to stay. And we aren't at the pool. We're sitting in your apartment. Nobody here but us dirty old perverts and girls who, maybe, 'like' like them. So, you know, it would be understood going in that this would be a strictly part-time, short-term, as available uh, mutually beneficial arrangement."

"What are you saying, Tim?"

Tim pressed his fingertips to the table and slowly brought his gaze up to meet hers.

"What I am saying, my dear young friend Vanessa, is that I would pay the nine hundred and fifty dollars a month necessary to be your roommate, and not otherwise encumber or complicate your life in any way... so long as you would agree to extend to me all the courtesies and privileges of being your boyfriend, only when and so long as it shall be convenient and agreeable to us both. I do hope I am making myself clear."

"Yes. I follow you. Go on."

"You have no idea how relieved and delighted I am to hear you say that, Vanessa. So, since you haven't thrown me out yet, obviously there would be ground rules. I don't want to cramp your style, or have you cramping mine. But let us assume for the sake of argument that you would make yourself available here for, say, between one and three romantic interludes per week. In fact, I might suggest making it a weekly agreement rather than a monthly one, so either party can call it off without prior notice for any reason, and neither of us feels any obligation to continue. Done is done."

"No obligation, cancel at any time. Just like a regular boyfriend/girlfriend arrangement. Or an info-mercial for subscription zit cream."

"Well admittedly, I only need a girlfriend for one thing. I already have a primary relationship. I can't be a boyfriend for any of the other things. I can't be the boyfriend who makes you chicken soup when you're sick or the boyfriend who rubs your feet and watches bad Lifetime movies with you when you've had a rough day or the boyfriend who goes out bowling with you and your 'couples' friends. I can only be that secret booty call backdoor friend with benefits boyfriend. A stunt dick, if you will. You might think of the two fifty a week as kind of by way of compensatory damages."

"And these 'romantic interludes' are to consist of what, exactly?"

"Well again, we're just spit-balling hypotheticals here, I don't want to get too bogged down with specifics, but obviously there would be certain ground rules. Mine are absolute discretion, what happens in your apartment stays in your apartment, no strings, no expectations, no falling in love, and no unprotected intercourse. I am negotiable on just about everything else, and I promise to respect your limits and always accept 'No' as your final answer. Let's just agree that I'm paying only for your time, and whatever happens between consenting adults in the privacy of their own home is nobody's business but their own. And I would prefer to pay you in cash and you can pay all the bills the way you normally do, just the full amount. That's probably safest for us both."

"Okay."

"My wife works, she takes trips with her girlfriends, she house-sits. She's pet-sitting right now, which is why I'm a dross bachelor tonight, and through the weekend. I don't know what your plans are, but if you're free, we could start with dinner. You pick the place."

Vanessa began to laugh nervously, but quickly threw her hand over her mouth.

"You're serious."

"Yes. As pathetic as it sounds, yes. I am serious. You think *you* have no social life or sexual prospects, try babysitting grandkids, keeping a hundred year old building going with hand tools and holding down a job. I never went to singles bars even when I was your age. I know just enough about online dating to know what 'catfishing' and 'ghosting' mean. And I know even less about prostitution; I wouldn't have the vaguest idea where to even look for a call girl or an escort or whatever you call it."

"Sex worker," Vanessa offered.

"Even if you had a friend who was a sex worker you could set me up with, who definitely didn't have any diseases, who always practiced safe sex, and who was absolutely one hundred percent not a cop, I've had more than enough insincere, going-through-the-motions, mechanical sex to last me a lifetime already. I'd rather masturbate. What I seek in a girlfriend is all about passion, not pussy. What I need is a girl who smiles at me the way you do. A girl who looks at me and sees a man, not just a grandpa, or a landlord, or a trick. I want a girl who wants me back, at least a little bit. I want *you*, Vanessa. I want you, and I think you want me back, at least a little bit. You could satisfy me even if you were a virgin who shut me down every time I tried to make it to second base.

"Listen, I'm well aware that even suggesting it paints me in the worst possible light, okay? Like I'm some opportunistic sleazebag swooping in on you while you're on the rebound. Or even worse, the pervy old landlord who accepts rent payments in the form of cash, check, money order or co-ed poontang. But none of that is me. Despite appearances. Holy cow. I think I was right the first time; this really is a terrible idea. I vote we strike it from the record."

"Tres Lenguas."

"Huh? I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish."

"No, dummy! That's the name of the restaurant. 'Tres Lenguas.' Pick me up at seven. And don't be late."