A Loose Thread

The apartment in which Jane resided was plain, and reflected her in the simplest of ways. It was comprised of bare white walls, bland textured carpets, and here and there she had touches of home incorporated. There was a rug in the living room, regardless of the fact that it was carpeted to begin with—it was mostly there to cover up a wine stain from the previous tenant. There was just a bean bag from her room back at home, though that room hardly felt like hers anymore ever since her parents moved the washer and dryer up from the basement to the spot where her bed once sat.

Her bed was also her living space. It was up against two walls, with a pillow cushioning one end so she could sit for hours pretending that the mattress and pillow were a couch. From this spot she had a perfect vantage point of her half-empty refrigerator. She couldn’t remember the last time the damn thing was full.

Jane was well aware of the consequences of becoming an adult too early in life. She could sacrifice a few meals to continue living here, away from her parents. They thought enough about her to move the washer and dryer up to Jane’s old room. She thought enough about them to keep their picture mounted on the front of her refrigerator. The photograph was from a trip her mom and dad took to Spain, when they were younger and less inclined to settle down.

It took approximately ten minutes before she realized that she’d been staring at the refrigerator long enough to start even thinking about her parents. Now that was a strange topic—one she hadn’t encountered in several days, even weeks. She couldn’t follow the thread that connected her previous thoughts to that of her parents, and the longer she thought about it, the more her head ached. She could see her computer screen highlighting the blanket thrown over her legs, which meant that it was getting dark outside. Eventually she would have to get up and turn on the lights.

She didn’t get up off her couch-bed until a knock sounded on her door. She checked her phone briefly and sighed. No messages. Which meant she knew exactly who was at the door, arriving unannounced.

Jane pushed her laptop aside and scooted off the bed. As soon as the blanket slid off her legs, a chill threatened to sweep her straight back under the warm embrace of her couch-bed. She fought the urge—but then again, her lights were off, the apartment was quiet, ergo, the visitor would have no reason to think that she was home.

She slipped back on to her bed and pulled her laptop back on to her lap. As soon as she started typing again, the second knock sounded. She kept at it until the third knock, and then the handle being tried.

Her heart momentarily stopped, realizing that the door was completely unlocked. She had no reason to be scared of the visitor; he was her neighbor, but it was still weird that he even tried opening the door.

It pushed open a crack, and he seemed put off by the fact that the apartment was pitched in darkness. He opened it a bit further, pushing it open and blocking his view of Jane sitting on the bed. When he finally peered around it, her wide eyes dropped into a glare.

“Milo, what the fuck?” she snapped at him. He recoiled against the door, but stepped aside anyways to close it.

“I knew you were home!”

“Don’t tell me how you knew that.”

“I never saw you leave this morning—which either meant you stayed over at someone else’s place, or you just didn’t work today,” Milo explained. “Clearly, you didn’t work today.”

“Fuck off, Milo—don’t you have a girlfriend to pester?”

“Yeah, but she’s reading and I figured she didn’t want to be bothered,” he sighed, and began wandering in the direction of Jane’s kitchen. On the way there, he flipped on the lights and struck Jane with the sensation of being blinded and betrayed. She rubbed her eyes, sweater slipping down to her elbows as she glared at where Milo was scavenging around her half-empty refrigerator.

“I should really take you grocery shopping because clearly you don’t know how to shop for food,” Milo commented, dipping out of Jane’s line of sight. The island countertop only managed to show his fluff of black curls where they rose approximately two inches from his head.

“You come into my house and criticize my shopping skills?” Jane complained. “Get out of my refrigerator, you utter dingbat.”

“You have interesting ways of insulting me,” he said, reemerging from below her eye level. When he popped back up, his goofy grin reminded Jane of all the reasons she despised letting him in her apartment. She should have locked the door.

“Why are you here? I’m kind of busy,” she complained, gesturing wildly at her computer.

“I’m just checking up on you,” he said. “You don’t get out much, and Quinn’s been worried about you.” Jane could hate Milo all she wanted, but his girlfriend was another matter. Quinn was a goddamn angel and Jane respected her for it. For one, she was apparently reading on a Friday night when she could be doing what Milo was doing just now.

She felt flattered to know that Quinn was thinking about her, until she realized that Milo could have just used Quinn as an excuse. He often did that ever since Jane told him off and kicked him in the shin when he as if she was “all right” a while back. Of course, the circumstances weren’t the greatest at that time.

She leant her head back against the wall, eyes closing. “I’m fine, Milo. You can go home now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am absolutely certain,” she answered. “Contrary to your belief, I am perfectly capable of understanding my own emotional wellbeing. Thank you, Milo, for treating me like I’m not.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but Jane raised her eyebrows right back at him. Instead, he floundered before pursing his lips and saying, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

The computer screen blinked at Jane, so she looked down at it with a muffled groan. “I’m sure you didn’t,” she mumbled, and proceeded to type until Milo got the message. He approached the door and grabbed the handle, but she could still feel his eyes on her. She rubbed her knitted sweater sleeve against her forehead and looked up at him expectantly, silently insisting that he get the fuck out of her apartment.

“Have a nice night,” he said, and she muttered the same as he opened the door, left, and shut it behind him.

Jane stared at the screen in front of her for some time before realizing that she had no idea what she was looking at, much less trying to comprehend. Spacing again, she mused in annoyance. She gingerly pulled down the sleeve that had fallen to her elbow before folding the ends up three times. She would never understand Milo. They were just neighbors. She could never understand people who thought they had a right to care about her situation. People should mind their own damn business. That’s what she always did.

It took her a moment to realize that it was the lights bothering her, and not the sleeves of her sweater. She never asked Milo to turn the lights on, but he did anyway out of his own convenience. She huffed as she scooted off the bed for the second time.

She got to the lights and flicked them off before finally looking at the time on the microwave in the kitchen. It was nearly eight at night, and she hadn’t eaten dinner at all. “Unbelievable,” she moaned, throwing her arms down. Why did she have to think about food? Up until then, she hadn’t thought about it, and therefore, didn’t feel hungry. Pizza Rolls sounded excellent now.

Jane’s feet, clad in fluffy striped socks, padded around the island counter as she made her way to the freezer. She was nearly there, reaching for the handle, when her sweater caught on the corner of the countertop. A thread snagged and puckered.

She cursed, twisting around and tugging at the sweater to see the damage. She could feel it where the loose thread and tightened knots touched her bare skin. Pizza Rolls forgotten, Jane pulled off her sweater and looked for the loosened stitch. It was too obvious to ignore.

She cursed aloud, folding her hands over the massacre and resting her forehead on them. She’d need crochet needles—her mom had crochet needles. There was no way she’d call her mom up for crochet needles.

Jane hated the fact that she thought about food, thought about eating Pizza Rolls—if only she just hadn’t gotten up to turn off the light. Perhaps then, by the time she realized what time it was and how hungry she was, there was the chance she never would have ruined a perfectly good sweater on the corner of her goddamn countertop.

She picked at it and tried to tug the loose thread back in. No matter how much she stretched and plucked at it, the loose thread never shrunk. It only seemed to get bigger. In a matter of minutes she began panicking over it. How could she not be able to fix this? She went over to a drawer and frantically rummaged around for a pair of scissors. If she couldn’t put the thread back in, the least she could do was diminish the size of the damage.

She snipped the loop in two and tied it in a knot. There was a lump somewhere in her chest that seemed to pulse as she pulled the sweater on and tried to convince herself that it was fine. This was fine. Look, she could hardly notice it now. In the bathroom she twisted and turned around in front of the mirror looking for the damage.

It was still there.

Damn Milo for entering her apartment. Had he not turned the light on, she never would have felt the urge to turn it off, look at the time, realize she was hungry, go to the damn freezer to get food—

Jane ripped off her sweater again, breathing hard, feeling as though her tank top was constricting her chest. This is unbelievable, she thought, and plucked at the knot until it came free and she pulled at the threads with her shaky fingers. She dropped onto her bed in the light of her laptop screen and pulled the thread through the other loops and knots and knitted patterns of the sweater until she had an arm-length thread, and an indent running across the middle of her sweater. She pulled and pulled at it until the arm-length thread became twice as long, and began pooling on the navy carpet of her apartment.

The next day, Jane didn’t leave her apartment. She didn’t realize it was daytime until she found herself blanking again, staring at the floor where her sweater was, letting the sunlight collect on the ball of fabric lying there. Now, it was one, continuous line of string—untangled, impeccable, perfect.

The bulge that once pulsed in her chest stopped aching, and she sighed in relief, looking up and blinking away the burning sensation in her eyes. How long had she been staring at it?

Eventually, some time during the middle of the day, Jane woke to the sound of someone knocking on her door. “Hey Jane! It’s Quinn and Milo,” a perky feminine voice said. “We have pizza!”

Jane sat up and slid down from her bed just far enough to hiding the remnants of her sweater before calling out, “Come in!”