You smeared the sweat out of your eye with the flat of your hand and shoved your fingers up through your hair. And for me, the way your thigh muscles curved out of the flare of fabric worked just fine. You didn’t mind being a decade out of style. Your shorts were too short but in an endearing way. There you were, stretching on the driveway. I changed into my running gear and went out through the garage. I pulled up a grant application to stare at. I wiped the tears away, climbed up onto my chair, and clicked my screen alive. The curtain stirred and your footsteps sounded on the stairs. I listened to the hum of my laptop fan, steady above me. When it faded, there I was crouched under my desk with my face in my hands, wet with tears. I leaned back on my heels, banging my head hard on the underside of my desk. Tell her what? But your voice fell, and the words dissolved into the echo of the vent. It was humiliating but I desperately needed to know. I dropped to my knees, then onto the floor, my ear on the hard grill of the HVAC. I still couldn’t make sense of the sound. I had put a pillow over the vent to block the noise, but I pushed it aside with my foot. The sound bounced against the sheet metal, growing louder, but no more coherent. I was clicking away on my laptop when I heard your voice rise. We sweated through one summer, and then another. I watered the cactus on my desk and took my laptop home to the laundry room. Then the nonprofit where I worked shut down overnight. Your law firm closed its office first, methodically issuing laptops and software updates, and you began working from your basement lair. We’d been there well over a year, since the pandemic started. As we worked, I could hear the rumble of your voice through the vent at my feet. My floor was your ceiling, your ceiling my floor. You were set up in the spare room downstairs, and I was in the laundry room with a curtain obscuring the machines behind me.

Truetell thermometer