The Tesco on Brixton Road had approximately fourteen thousand different types of washing up liquid, which seemed like overkill for a substance whose primary job was making bubbles. I'd been standing in the cleaning aisle for what felt like geological ages, holding two bottles like some sort of demented product comparison algorithm, while Sade waited with the sort of patience usually reserved for toddlers having existential crises.
"It's just dish soap, Colin."
Right. Obviously. Except it wasn't just dish soap, was it? It was a choice. A preference. The forums were very clear about preferences being a luxury of people who hadn't been systematically emasculated by modern society. Real men, proper men, didn't agonise over whether to buy the green one with the duck on it or the blue one that promised to cut through grease like some sort of domestic superhero.
"I know that," I said, which was technically true. I did know it was dish soap. The knowing wasn't the problem. The choosing was the problem.
Sade shifted the basket to her other arm. She'd been doing the heavy lifting, literally, since we'd walked in. Not because I'd offered, but because she'd just started putting things in it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Bread, milk, those little yoghurt pots that cost more per gram than cocaine. A bag of apples that she'd actually squeezed to test for ripeness, like a proper adult who knew things.
"The green one's fine," she said.
"But what if you prefer the blue one?"
She looked at me properly then, head tilted. "I don't care about dish soap brands, Colin. Neither should you."
The forums would have had thoughts about this. About women who claimed not to care about things while simultaneously manipulating every domestic decision. But Sade wasn't manipulating anything. She was just bored by my inability to choose between functionally identical cleaning products.
I put the blue one in the basket. Spite, mostly.
We'd been living together for three weeks, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain my previous worldview. Not impossible. The evening forum sessions were still there, still validating. But during the day, when Sade was clattering around making coffee that didn't taste like punishment, or when she'd nod approvingly at something I'd said about the optimal organisation of bathroom counter space, the forum voices seemed very far away.
"We need toilet paper," she said, consulting a list she'd written on the back of an envelope. Her handwriting was the sort of practical scrawl you'd expect from someone who wrote patient notes all day. "And bin bags. Oh, and something for dinner."
Dinner. Another choice. Another opportunity to reveal myself as fundamentally inadequate at the basic business of being human.
"What do you usually have?"
"Whatever needs eating before it goes off." She stopped in front of the meat section, studying the reduced price stickers like they contained vital intelligence. "Fancy a curry? I've got rice at home."
I did fancy a curry, as it happened. I'd been living on increasingly creative variations of toast since moving in, partly because cooking for one person felt pointless, partly because I'd forgotten that food could be something you looked forward to rather than just fuel.
"Yeah. Sounds good."
She selected a pack of chicken thighs with the confidence of someone who'd never doubted a poultry purchase in her life. "You can do the vegetables if you want. I'll sort the sauce."
The vegetables. Right. I could do vegetables. Probably. How hard could vegetables be?
As it turned out, moderately hard. Not the buying part, that was straightforward enough, but the chopping part, which I attempted later that evening while Sade did something mysterious with spices that made the flat smell like an actual restaurant. I was making a hash of an onion, literally and figuratively, when she appeared at my elbow.
"You're holding the knife wrong."
I was holding the knife like I held every knife, with the sort of grip that suggested I was planning to stab something rather than slice it. "This is how I hold knives."
"This is how you hold knives badly." She moved behind me, not quite touching but close enough that I could smell her shampoo. Coconut, which seemed optimistically tropical for someone living in South London. "Pinch the blade with your thumb and forefinger, like this. Let the knife do the work."
Her hand covered mine for approximately three seconds, just long enough to adjust my grip.
"Better?"
I tried another slice. The onion didn't immediately disintegrate into chaos. "Better."
"Good man." She went back to her spice alchemy, leaving me to practice my newfound knife skills on what remained of the vegetables.
The curry, when we finally sat down to eat it, was the sort of meal that made you remember why people bothered with cooking. Proper spices, actual flavour. I'd been eating like someone who'd given up, I realised. Pot Noodles and despair. Toast with increasingly questionable toppings. Microwave meals that tasted like the packaging.
"This is really good."
"Don't sound so surprised." But she was pleased, I could tell. "It's just chicken curry. Hardly Michelin star material."
We ate in comfortable silence for a while, the sort of quiet that felt companionable rather than awkward. The telly was on, some property programme where people with unrealistic budgets looked at houses they couldn't afford while experts told them their dreams were slightly out of reach. It was aggressively boring television, which made it perfect background noise.
"Christ, look at that bathroom," Sade said, gesturing at the screen with her fork. "Who needs a bath that size? It's like a small swimming pool."
"Compensating for something, probably."
She snorted, actually snorted, with laughter. "Definitely. Big bath, small personality."
And then we were both laughing at this absolutely terrible joke, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed with someone rather than at something. The forums were full of laughter, obviously, but it was the sort that came at other people's expense. This was different. Warmer. Less satisfying in some ways, more in others.
My phone buzzed against my leg. Forum notification. Probably someone responding to my post about the manipulative nature of domestic arrangements. I'd written it last night, after Sade had asked me to contribute to the electricity bill. Fifty fifty split, she'd said, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
The notification could wait.
"More rice?" Sade asked.
"Please."
She served me another spoonful, and I noticed she'd given me the bigger portion without making a production of it. Not because she thought I was fragile, I didn't think, but just because she'd cooked and wanted to make sure there was enough.
"I should probably mention," she said, settling back in her chair, "I've got some mates coming round Saturday. Nothing mad, just a few drinks and probably terrible music. You're welcome to join, obviously, but if you'd rather make yourself scarce, that's fine too."
The old me, the forum me, would have immediately retreated to my room at the first mention of social gathering. People meant performance, meant the exhausting business of pretending to be normal while constantly analyzing every interaction. But the new me, the me that had successfully chopped vegetables and made someone laugh at a ridiculous joke about bathtubs, was curious.
"What kind of terrible music?"
"The kind that was popular when we were teenagers and makes us feel old now." She grinned. "Fair warning, my friend Leah gets very emotional about early 2000s R&B when she's had a few drinks. And Pete thinks he can DJ, which is optimistic."
"Sounds like a proper disaster."
"The best kind." She started collecting the plates, stacking them with automatic efficiency. "Think about it, anyway. No pressure."
I found myself nodding, which was strange because I couldn't remember making a conscious decision to nod. "I will."
Later, after we'd washed up, I did the washing and she did the drying, I sat on my bed with my laptop open, staring at the forum thread I'd started about manipulative domestic arrangements. Seventeen replies, all agreeing that women used household responsibilities as a form of control, that sharing bills equally was just another way to establish dominance.
But sitting there, still tasting properly seasoned food, the whole thread felt like something from another person's life.
I closed the laptop without responding to any of the messages.
Instead, I lay back on the narrow single bed that came with the room and listened to Sade moving around the flat, running water, opening and closing cupboards. The small sounds of someone settling in for the evening.
My phone buzzed again. Another forum notification.
I turned it face down and stared at the ceiling. There was a water stain up there, shaped vaguely like Australia. I wondered how long it had been there. Whether Sade had noticed it. Whether she'd reported it to anyone.
My stomach was making sounds. Good sounds. Satisfied sounds.
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