The Keeper

You are housesitting for your boss and really enjoying her borderline-obese cat and her cable subscription. It’s been a year since you first encountered the Softboy, and you have since found the elusive Keeper. The one who is patient and kind and steady but still ignites the flames in your loins.

You’re watching Friends reruns on Nick @ Nite. This is your safe place. Tucked into bed with a feline and air conditioning you don’t have to pay for and a television bigger than your dad’s in Connecticut. You’re happy you moved to Los Angeles. You clap along with the Friends theme.

A K-Mart commercial comes on.

A generic brown haired guy in a red polo stands by a cash register. He seems familiar. He looks curiously at a jolly older gentleman with rosy cheeks and a long white beard.

“Are you…?” He asks, tilting his head.

“Are you…?” You think, tilting your head.

The jolly old man laughs and shakes his head.

The camera pans back to the quizzical cashier with the curly brown hair.

He looks familiar because you slept with him. So many times.

That’s that softboy who ghosted you and apologized two months later.

The Christmas K-mart spot plays during every commercial break.

You come close to turning off the TV, but then you think about the Keeper. He replaced the batteries in your smoke detector last month. When you got too drunk at a bar over the weekend, he gave you the rest of his quesadilla. As you took each bite, he brought you the tiny bowls of sour cream, pico de gallo, and guacamole, bringing them up to meet your quesadilla. The next morning he left you alone to sleep until eleven. He placed pain medicine and water next to the bed and was already making you a cup of tea when you slumped out of his room in his pajamas. He told you every inch of you is beautiful.

You clap along during the next episode of Friends.