It was 4 pm and Sean was slouching on his couch again staring at his laptop. He had worked about 5 hours so far, but that was probably enough. He didn’t have to log in his hours and his boss always told him that he was doing a great job. For the past two years he had been working as a remote computer programmer for a public health lab at Jons Hopkins University. He was the only person in the role and the other people in the lab didn’t know how to do his specific job, so as long as he produced results for them in a timely manner it didn’t actually matter how hard or long he worked for. Sean didn’t really know how he felt about this arrangement. On one hand he had a lot of free time and he was able to take long breaks and travel around the country, but on the other hand he didn’t really use his time wisely at all and was pretty complacent with his job and future career.
Sean’s younger sister, Ally was supposed to arrive tomorrow and his mom was due to arrive the day after, but until then Sean had the house to himself. The main reason they were getting together was to figure out what to do with all his dad’s old things and also to meet with a real estate agent to figure out how to sell the house. Sean had called agents and figured the house was worth around $300,000. Split 3 ways that would be a fair amount of money for each of them. Currently, Sean lived in Baltimore with his ex-girlfriend, Regan who had broke up with him 3 months prior. Sean didn’t really have anywhere to go, seeing as the few friends he had made in the area had already left and moved away. He thought about asking Regan’s sister, who he had been rather close with, if he could crash on her couch, but he decided against it. Regan gave him 3 months to move out and he hadn’t gotten around to looking for any place at all before he got home to Michigan a few weeks ago. He had completely forgot his childhood home existed before Ally had called him and arranged for the family to meet up for Thanksgiving. Seeing this as his escape he bought a ticket and had been lounging around his old house ever since.
Sean looked over at the Nels residence from his couch, he could see the setting sun shining on the rear windshield of Mr. Nels’s van, but Katie’s Tesla was no longer parked in the driveway. Sean took out his phone and sent Katie a text.
“Hey, you in town?”
Sean had known Katie basically since his family moved into this house when they were both 7 years old. They became fast friends and were close all the way up to college. They both chose to attend Michigan State University, but after a couple of years they started to drift apart and began hanging out with different crowds. Eventually Katie moved off to California and Sean headed to Baltimore after sticking around his college town for several years following graduation. Now they were both 30 and had separate lives, but they’d always made sure to hang out at least once a year when ever they were visiting their parents for the holidays. They used to text each other more often but as they aged the once daily texts, turned to weeks then months, and now they probably only ever texted each other on their birthdays. Sean looked through his past text messages with Katie. It looks like he forgot to wish her happy birthday this past September, she hadn’t forgot his however. Sean continued to scroll through the messages and remembered that they hadn’t actually seen each other for 1 and a half years. He vaguely remembered that day. It was the first time they had been drunk together since college and they spent the whole night walking and talking around their hometown and visiting the places they used to frequent as youths. Sean also remembered how they watched lost in translation back at his house on the couch and he remembered how Katie fell asleep leaning against his shoulder and how her long brown hair got caught in his mouth.
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