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My hobbies include cleaning, watching The Golden Girls, reading, and crocheting. That’s what I write on my profile. It sounds safe, almost aggressively so, like a porch light left on to welcome someone home. I know it reads like a placeholder for a real person, like the kind of woman who blends neatly into the edges of your life without asking for more. On a regular dating site, it’s probably tragic—one more soft blur in a sea of sharper, shinier options. But on a sugar dating site? It feels like strategy.

It says: I’m simple. I’m boring. I won’t cause drama. I’m the girl you pick when you want the luxury of forgetting someone exists between arrangements. I imagine a man reading it, scrolling past profiles full of curated cleavage and sunlit vacations, landing on mine like a sigh of relief. No neon signs. No fireworks. Just someone who’ll hand him a sandwich and maybe crochet him a scarf before vanishing into the quiet corners of his life.

It’s not that I don’t have more to say. It’s not that I don’t have sharper edges. It’s that I know how to package myself in ways men find manageable. I’ve learned to press myself into neat, soft shapes,

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to smooth over the parts that snag or bite. I’m the woman who

remembers your mother’s birthday, who folds your shirts just the way you like, who leaves before the silence turns heavy.

When I picture Nathan reading my profile, I imagine his eyes skimming over the words with the same kind of ease he’d bring to ordering lunch. Something light, something familiar, something that won’t linger. I imagine him nodding slightly, satisfied. This one, he thinks. She won’t ask for too much.

Right now, I’m working on a sweater for the man who lives in the park. He says his name is Turtle. Turtle has a permanent tan, the kind you get from existing too long under the sun without permission. His hair hangs in dark brown matted ropes down his back, and he almost never wears a shirt. He’s thin but not fragile, with muscles that don’t come from gyms but from the kind of uncalculated labor that keeps you alive. When he plays hacky sack, he moves like gravity doesn’t stick to him the way it sticks to everyone else. I can’t tell if it’s grace or just indifference.

I haven’t seen him for weeks. I figure he’s moved on to another park, another city, the way people like him seem to move without leaving footprints. But today, there he is, right in the middle of the park. The sky is soft and overcast, the kind of weather that makes colors sharper, and he’s barefoot in the grass, tossing the hacky sack into the air like it’s a balloon, his silver arrowhead necklace that hangs off a piece of worn leather bouncing off his glistening muscled chest.

I sit on the park bench a few feet away, the unfinished sweater bunched in my lap, my hook working faster than usual. I am trying not to think of Nathan and what he’ll say to me when he responds— if he even does, so I distract myself with Turtle. I

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watch him kick the hacky sack into the air, his movements languid and swift, and I crochet faster. The sweater isn’t anything fancy—just a simple pullover in a shade of muted green that reminds me

of a Christmas tree. I have no idea if Turtle will even wear it. I can’t picture him in anything that doesn’t expose his ribs to the sun. But it’s something to do. Something to finish.

When the sweater is done, I slip it into a fancy black velvet drawstring bag and walk toward him. My legs feel stupid and mechanical. Turtle kicks the hacky sack with the side of his foot and catches it with his hand as I approach. His eyes are clearer than normal, the color of old pennies, and they scan me without judgment.

“Hey,”

I say, my voice too loud, the way it always gets when I’m nervous. “I made you something.”

He tilts his head, his hair swaying like vines. “For me?”

he asks, his voice slow, the words spread out like honey.

I nod and hand him the bag. He opens it, pulling the sweater out with long, dirty fingers, holding it up to the light.

“Whoa,”

he says, a grin breaking across his face. “This is... wow.”

“It’s nothing,”

I say quickly. “Just, you know, in case it gets cold.”

He holds it up to his chest, the green fabric looking almost luminous against his tanned skin. “This is dope,”

he says, his voice warm. “I haven’t worn a sweater in years. I didn’t think I’d need one, but... yeah, this is cool. Thanks.”

I shrug, trying to look like it isn’t a big deal, but something about his gratitude feels bigger than the moment. He slips the sweater over his head, and it fits almost perfectly, the sleeves just a little too long, the way I like them. He stretches his arms out, letting the fabric settle.

“Fits like a dream,”

he says, spinning in a slow circle. “You should sell these or something. Make a fortune.”

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I laugh. “Yeah, I don’t think the world’s ready.”

Turtle grins, his teeth beige and uneven. “The world’s never ready for anything good,”

he says, kicking the hacky sack back into the air. I turn around to head back to my apartment.

Before Turtle disappeared, I would bring him sandwiches, ham and cheese or peanut butter and jelly wrapped in plastic, little baggies of chips, sometimes cans of Coke. I’d slip them out of my tote, trying not to look like I cared too much, and hand them over like it was nothing. Turtle always smiles, always says thanks, his voice loud and booming like sunshine. He sits cross-legged in the grass, pulling the sandwich out and taking slow, deliberate bites, like he’s stretching the moment, savoring it. “What’s your name, girl?”

he asks, crumbs clinging to his lips.

I tell him, and every time, he nods like it’s the first time he’s heard it even though I’ve told him several times. “Gia. Cool name,”

he says, and I laugh. My name sounds different when he holds it in his mouth. Like something exotic; like art.

He doesn’t care about names, not in the way most people do. Names don’t mean anything to Turtle; it’s the presence that matters, the body in front of him, the food in his hands, the hacky sack bouncing in the air.

Turtle talks like a man who’s seen the end of the world and decided it wasn’t worth reporting. He stretches out his words, rolls them around like he’s savoring the weight of them before he lets them go. His sentences twist in ways that don’t always make sense, but I follow them anyway, like a dog chasing a scent it doesn’t recognize.

Sometimes I’ll say something ordinary—The weather’s been weird lately—and he’ll look at me like I’ve just handed him a riddle. “Weird is good,”

he says, kicking his hacky sack into the air, his bare foot arcing up like it’s part of some slow, sacred dance. “Weird

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means the world hasn’t gotten too comfortable. Comfortable is dangerous. Comfortable keeps you asleep when the house is on fire.”

I never know how to respond to him. He speaks in riddles, and I don’t always have the patience to solve them. But his voice is warm,

laced with something quiet and knowing, like he’s peeling back a layer of the universe and letting me see inside.

“Why do you keep bringing me food?”

he asks one day, tilting his head as I hand him a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

“I figured you could use it,”

I say, shrugging.

He nods, his dreads swaying like a curtain, and takes a bite. “You’re feeding the wrong part of me,”

he says, his words muffled by peanut butter and jelly.

“What does that even mean?”

I ask, laughing despite myself.

He points to his head, then his chest. “This part’s starving,”

he says, tapping his temple. “And this part’s drowning.”

His hand lingers over his heart for a moment, his eyes clouding with something dark and distant.

I want to ask him what he means, but the moment slips away before I can grab it. He’s back to his hacky sack, his body moving like the laws of physics bend for him, and I know he won’t answer me if I push.

“Why do you call yourself turtle?”

“Cause everything I need I got on me. Everything I need is here.”

He pats his worn army green backpack next to him, and then points to his heart.

Turtle doesn’t believe in small talk. Every question he asks is a thread, and he tugs until he unravels something raw. Why do you read so much? Why don’t you have kids? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

Sometimes I try to flip the questions back on him, but he dodges them effortlessly, like he’s been running from himself for years. I’ll

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ask him about his family, and he’ll respond with something like, “Do you think trees feel lonely in winter, when all their leaves abandon them?”

He makes me laugh more than I expect him to. Not because he’s funny, but because he’s so thoroughly himself that it borders on absurdity. One time, he asked if I’d ever cried over a tomato. “The

heirloom kind,”

he explained, holding an imaginary fruit in his hands. “The kind that looks like it fought its way out of the dirt. It’s beautiful because it’s bruised, you know?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but later that night, I thought about it while I crocheted. About the way Turtle talks like he’s trying to explain the world in a language only he understands. About how his eyes get glassy when he stares at the sky, like he’s looking for something he lost up there.

He’s smart, sharper than his appearance suggests. There’s a darkness to him, though, something frayed and restless at the edges. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens when he thinks no one’s watching, in the way his laughter sometimes catches, breaking apart before it fully lands.

“You ever feel like you’re too heavy for your own life?”

he asked me once, lying back in the grass, his hacky sack forgotten.

“Yeah,” I said.

He nodded, closing his eyes against the sun. “Sometimes I think I’m carrying someone else’s weight,”

he murmured. “Like I stole it by accident, and now I can’t give it back.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. We sat in silence, the wind brushing through the trees, and for once, it didn’t feel uncomfortable. It felt like something we were sharing, something fragile and unspoken, like a secret the world wasn’t ready to hear.

I watch him for a while longer, the sweater billowing slightly as he moves. Though Turtle wasn’t attractive—not in any

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conventional way—there was something about him that pulled me in. Maybe it was the way his long, chunky dreads hung down like roots seeking ground, or the sharp gaps in his teeth that made his smile feel lived-in, like it had survived something. Sometimes, late at night, I’d find myself thinking about him in ways that unsettled me. What would he be like in bed? The thought repulsed me,

twisted my stomach into knots, but it also lit something low and smoldering, something I didn’t know how to name.

Turtle could be a project, I told myself. Someone I could make better. I could clean him up, straighten his teeth, pull his life out of the dirt and make it bloom. But, secretly, I think it was the other way around. Turtle, with his effortless grin and his sun-worn skin, his easy way of breathing through a world that hadn’t been kind to him—he could make me better. He carried nothing but a backpack and the hacky sack in his pocket, and he radiated light. Turtle didn’t need a home because he was home, in that loose, easy way I envied.

Maybe, I thought in my lonelier moments, I could be his home. The thought was ridiculous and fleeting, but it was mine. A selfish little fantasy I’d let run wild, just to feel its edges.

“Hey!”

I freeze, turning back around. His voice always had a way of stopping me in my tracks.

“Do you think this’ll be acceptable to wear in California?”

he asks, grinning, holding out his arms like he’s modeling for a catalog. “I think I’m gonna make my way there tomorrow. Warmer outside, you know? Better for sleeping at night.”

The words land heavy, like stones in my chest. My smile drops, but I force it back into place, flimsy and hollow. “I’m sure you can wear it there,”

I say, my voice thin, barely mine.

His honey-colored eyes glint in the sun, bright and warm, like the idea of leaving didn’t faze him at all. “Sweet. Thanks again, lady,”

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he says, giving me a quick thumbs-up before tossing the hacky sack back into the air.

I stand there, my heart tangled in something I don’t understand, something I don’t want to name. The tears press hot behind my eyes, sudden and sharp, threatening to spill. “Yeah. You’re welcome,”

I say, the words trembling as I back away, my feet

dragging, the space between us stretching like a thread about to snap.

Turtle turns back to his game, his body moving with that effortless grace, his dreads catching the light, the sweater I made for him hugging his skinny frame like it belonged there. I stand frozen, watching him, memorizing the way he exists, the way he fills the space around him without even trying.

I knew that it would be the last time I would ever see Turtle, and the fantasy of us quickly falls away.

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An hour later, his message comes through, the vibration rattling the coffee table like a pulse pulling me out of myself. My hand moves faster than my mind, snatching up the phone with a kind of reflexive hunger, the kind I’d stopped admitting but I still felt. The screen glows, and there it is:

Great! How far are you from downtown? We can meet for coffee there.

I read it twice, three times, as though it’s more profound than what it is. I tap his profile again, his main picture coming into focus: a placeholder white man with neatly cropped hair and a smile engineered to communicate effortlessness. The kind of man you pass in a park or a grocery store and immediately forget.

Except now, I don’t forget. I notice the slight sag of his eyelids, the tension in his jaw, the tightness of his smile. The way his face looks like it’s been worked on, chipped away at, sculpted into something just palatable enough to not scare away women. It’s nothing extraordinary, but I let myself linger anyway, replaying the vague softness of his words in my head.

I type quickly, clumsily: I’m not far at all... just an hour. I guess that’s kind of far for most people, but I like driving.

The lie comes out smooth, natural. I hate driving. I hate the way the road demands so much of you. I hate the lights, the traffic, the inevitability of being lost somewhere unfamiliar if you take a wrong turn. But I’m not about to say that. I hit send and watch the message dissolve into the thread.

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Immediately, my stomach tightens. I refresh the chat, compulsive and frantic, as though my eagerness might force his response into being. Nothing. I refresh again. Still nothing. The silence stretches, unbearable and personal, until my brain conjures the worst: that I’ve said something wrong, that my eagerness has slipped through and left him cold.

And then, finally, the phone lights up again. His reply is short, almost dismissive:

Haha ok then. Well, how about two o’clock at O’Malley’s?

I don’t know O’Malley’s. I’ve never been. But admitting that feels like a small failure, so I type back with urgency, my fingers moving too quickly: I’ll see you there at two!

When the message sends, I toss the phone onto the couch like it’s scorched, my chest fluttering with a dissonant mix of relief and panic. The room feels too small, too still. My body itches for release. I drop to the floor and start doing crunches, fast and hard, each movement biting into the muscles of my stomach. My skin feels tight, my breaths shallow, but I keep going until the ache becomes a steady rhythm.

When I stop, I’m shaking. My shirt clings to my back, damp with sweat. I peel it off and step into the bathroom, the steam rising before I even turn the water on. I crank the heat up as far as it will go, the first scalding spray hitting my shoulders and making me gasp. The sensation burns, sharp and grounding.

I close my eyes and let the water batter my skin. But it doesn’t wash him away. Nathan lingers—his face, his words, the careful restraint in his messages. I try to remind myself of the rules, the lines I’ve drawn in my head. This isn’t about him. It’s about money. About rent. About survival.

If he doesn’t offer anything substantial, I will walk away.

I say it to myself like a mantra. I’ll walk away.

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But then, the questions creep in, unbidden. What will it feel like to sit across from him, to watch him move in real time, to hear his voice? Will he be like the image I’ve built in my head, or something different? I have only known of his existence for one day and I already feel a strange obsession creeping in, settling deep in my bones.

I have a problem with men. I am either obsessed with them, or I want nothing to do with them at all, depending on the state of my life at the moment. Nathan goes into the obsessed pile.

Not so long ago it was Thomas. Thomas from work, Thomas with the long eyelashes and the clear baby-smooth skin, with the tiny Jewish fro that sat on his head like a crown. He reminded me of Michael Cera, or that other less famous guy that looks like Michael Cera. He wore messenger bags slung across his chest and sweater vests over collared shirts. He had brown eyes that looked too soft for someone in accounting and a voice that cracked sometimes when he got nervous.

We worked together for five and a half years, exchanging polite hellos and little else. He was the kind of guy who never said anything unless he was asked directly, and even then, his answers were short, just enough to keep the spotlight moving past him.

The text message came out of nowhere, it startled me because I hadn’t given him my number. Then I remembered—the employee group chat where all of our numbers were listed, laid bare for everyone to see whether we liked it or not.

Hey, this is Thomas. I’m sorry you got fired. I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you in a few days. Are you okay?

I stared at the message for a long time. Thomas had never shown any interest in me before. We’d exchanged maybe five sentences in all the time we worked together, and now, suddenly, he cared about my well-being? It felt suspicious, but also nice.

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Oh. Hi. Yes, I’m fine. I sent it, then immediately regretted how stiff it sounded, like I was brushing him off, when in reality, I was curious—about him, about why he was texting me, about what kind of person Thomas was when he wasn’t hunched over his desk like a turtle in a sweater vest.

The reply came faster than I expected.

Good. Care to meet for a drink sometime?

It felt like a trap, but a kind one, wrapped in soft words and good intentions. I wondered if Thomas had always been into me, if he’d spent those years sitting in his corner of the office, watching me and waiting for his moment. Or maybe my sudden disappearance had triggered something in him. Humans are like that. Always craving someone when they’re no longer accessible to us.

The thought of seeing Thomas at a bar made me laugh hard so I agreed to meet him for a drink a few nights later. He was waiting for me outside, looking nervous, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his slacks like he didn’t know what else to do with them. He smiled when he saw me, a hesitant, lopsided thing that made my chest ache in a way I didn’t want to examine too closely.

“I’m glad you came,”

he said, holding the door open for me. His voice cracked, just a little, and I thought about how much courage it must have taken for him to text me. I liked how it made me feel. I carried that feeling with me the entire night.

Thomas was endearing. That’s the word I kept coming back to. When I thought about it, I had always found him endearing. He reminded me of Sunday mornings, of lemonade stands, of a doe running in a field of flowers. He was small and innocent. Like he’s never had a real bad thing happen to him ever.

He pulled out my chair and asked me questions about my life like he really wanted to know the answers. I liked the way he laughed at my jokes, even the bad ones, his shoulders shaking with a quiet kind of joy that felt private, like it was meant just for me.

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We only dated for a few months, but I still liked him the best out of everyone. He sat with me in my storm, quiet and steady, like he believed it would pass if we waited long enough. But I was afraid he’d eventually see through me, past whatever charm or wit I was holding up like a shield, and find out that underneath it all, I was empty. I didn’t want him to see that. So I left before he could.

In the end, I didn’t know what to do with someone like Thomas. Someone who wasn’t trying to take from me, who wasn’t angling for control or dominance or whatever it is most men want when they talk to a woman. He was just Thomas, soft and awkward and sweet in a way that felt dangerous because it made me want to trust him. The reality of it was that he was too perfect, and I was afraid. Thomas had this earnestness, this unrelenting goodness that made me feel like I was being held up to some kind of light, one I didn’t want to be seen in. I was too morose, too nihilistic for someone like Thomas. Even though he never said it, I knew deep down he wanted to motivate me, to pull me out of the pit of despair I was digging myself deeper into.

How many jobs have you applied for today?

A few.

You’ll get one, Gia. I know it.

But I didn’t want that. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to ruminate. I wanted to sink. And I couldn’t stand the idea of him watching me do it.

Sometimes I think about where my life would be in the future if I had not ghosted Thomas. Married, probably. We’d have a quiet ceremony, no more than thirty people since both of us don’t like too much attention. He’d cry at the altar, and I’d laugh, wiping my tears with a tiny, delicate handkerchief. Two very well-behaved children would follow, kids with his soft eyes and my Type A personality. The kind of family you see in Hallmark commercials, staged but serene, everything in its right place.

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I used to think about him in the middle of the night. I’d imagine reaching out to him. A message, a call, something to tell him that I’m sorry, that he didn’t deserve to be ghosted by me and that I was treacherous for doing such a thing, and that I’ve thought about him more than I want to admit.

But I let it go. Again and again, I let it go.

I don’t have a type. Before Thomas, there was Joshua, a handsome Black gentleman I met on Tinder. I hate apps. I want to meet people the old-fashioned way, the way the good lord intended before we started outsourcing our chemistry to algorithms—in coffee shops, bookstores, catching someone’s eye across a crowded room and feeling that rush, that pull. But that night, I felt restless, frisky, like I’d been locked in a room with no windows for too long.

Joshua was a banker and liked old cars and old music, constantly raving about Prince and Jimi Hendrix and Tom Petty.

He was kind but casual, the kind of man who didn’t prod. He didn’t ask a million questions, didn’t make me perform my pain or dress it up like it was interesting. But in bed, he softened, opened up, as though touching another person gave him permission to touch something inside himself. I liked that about him—how there was a version of himself he only let out during intimacy.

It lasted exactly three months. All my relationships are short. Bright and burning, and then nothing.

I wasn’t keeping track, I never do, but I know we lasted exactly three months because it was during the summer, and I remember the feeling of him fucking me while it was bright and hot outside, how wrong it felt, having sex with the sun still out. I remember how much he sweat on me and how much I liked it. It felt illicit, hot. I remember it lasted exactly from June twentieth to September twentieth and I thought oh how perfect that is how it took me exactly

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three months to find out that he had a kid. He didn’t tell me; he let me find out when I searched his name and found his Facebook.

There were at least a dozen of pictures of him with food, holding up giant sandwiches the size of his head, hovering over enormous plates of barbecue and sitting at hibachi style restaurants, always grinning wildly, always ready to dig in. He was one of those men who thought liking food was a personality trait. I scrolled past those photos with my eyes closed. They weren’t attractive, and I didn’t want to lose my lady boner for him. There were more photos of him at family outings, snapshots of him on a boat with his boys, all shirtless and gleaming. I watched a video of him doing a backflip off the boat and into the water four times. Suddenly my lady boner for him was stronger than ever.

And then...a picture of him with a young girl, no more than six or seven. Their heads lovingly smushed together, both bright and beaming.

I wasn’t mad about the kid itself—I didn’t care. I wasn’t trying to meet it, wasn’t angling to be its stepmother. It was the hiding.

That stupid, unnecessary lie. I thought back to and recalled a few times the subject of children came up, and he had never once mentioned he had one.

It was like finding a scratch on something you thought was smooth, and you can’t stop running your finger over it, feeling the jagged edge.

I felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy when I stopped seeing Joshua. He was the only man who liked watching The Golden Girls with me.

These old broads are funny, he’d say as we settled in for a nightly marathon followed by raucous sex. And he was very good at it—better than most, to be honest.

Before Joshua, there was Matt. Matt was a bad boy with a neck tattoo who worked at the grocery store down the street. He sold weed and talked about golden showers like it was religion, like if he could just get me to pee on him, he’d ascend or something. He was reckless in that way that makes you feel alive and stupid at the

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same time, like jumping off a roof into a pool without knowing how deep it is.

We didn’t last long—maybe three weeks—but for a moment, Matt made me feel like I could be reckless, too. Like I could take things without consequence. He let me steal from his grocery store. He’d scan everything, but the packaged sushi would always slide under his hand and into my bag. That was the only thing I missed about him. Just the free grocery store sushi.

Sometimes I think that’s what all my relationships boil down to—the small, stupid things I miss when it’s over. Free sushi. A good lay. Someone who doesn’t make me feel embarrassed for liking a show about four old ladies cracking jokes. The rest of it is just noise.

I turn off the water and step out, the steam curling around me as I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My skin is red from the heat, my hair slicked back, my face stripped bare. I feel raw, unformed, like a thing still waiting to be made whole. And for a moment, I let myself wonder if Nathan will see that, too.