Trigger

Trey crawled out of his room somewhere around noon. This was the time for oatmeal. His roommate, Kris, was in the kitchen, making a turkey sandwich. "Rise and shine," he said. "How'd it go last night?"

Trey poured himself a mug of coffee. Looking at it, it didn't look black enough. "It went."

"Successful?"

"I liked talking to her and got her number, so in that sense, sure." Was it possible to make the coffee blacker? To compress it into itself? To thicken it in some way?

"Oh," said Kris. "Is there another sense?"

"I mean, that wasn't the goal."

"What was the goal?"

"To bring her back here, what kind of question is that?"

Kris took a bite of his sandwich. It was times like this where he didn't know exactly what to say, and what he wanted to say was better left not said, so he found ways to avoid talking, like eating turkey sandwiches. "You got her number though," he chewed, "so that's good."

"I guess." It tasted almost sweet. How was that even possible? Did Kris add sugar to the pot? "Did you add sugar to this?"

"Oh my god, how is it not good?"

"It's, like, sweet."

"The number."

"That wasn't the goal."

It was one of their famous early morning—when put in context—glare-offs, when whatever they didn't put down before bed mixed with any combination of empty stomachs, aching heads, and pent-up bodily fluids. They knew to mostly not take these moments too seriously.

Trey continued. "I wanted to come back here for a drink, hook up, and worry about whether or not I was going to call later. I don't even know if I want to put it more work than one night."

"Well," said Kris, "you just might have to." Trey was filling more of the awful coffee into his mug. It was better than nothing. Was it better than nothing?

"My problem is I don't pull the trigger soon enough. Had I asked her fifteen, twenty minutes before I bet she would've come over no question. But I wait and wait and I talk and talk, and by the time I eventually ask they realize that, oh, they don't want to hook up with me, they want to see me again and maybe date because I'm actually a nice guy. It's goddamn infuriating."

You're goddamn infuriating. Oh no! A cute girl wants to talk to you? She gives you her phone number? She likes you? Poor, poor, poor, poor you! It's your own fault, not pulling the trigger, you said it yourself. You don't want to end up with a bunch of date prospects? Learn how to muster up the balls to ask the girl over, get some fucking confidence. Complaining about some perceived problem while you're explaining the solution doesn't do anything but piss me off. Kris thought all this while he finished his sandwich.

"That must be some tasty turkey," said Trey, who was onto him.

"Mmhm," said Kris, who felt the suspicion.

Trey went into his room and found the phone number. He looked at each digit and thought about what they meant, all of them put together, in that order like that. It was possible that all he needed was one more date. And he did enjoy talking to her. She was interesting, and liked the books he liked, and didn't know what an O-Bomb was either. And the more he thought about it, the more the numbers made sense.