Dave sat at the edge of your bed, legs crossed as he watched you work at your desk, rushing to finish up an essay for school. He messed with a loose string of the blanket on your bed, the small stuffed bear you had on your bed now resting in his lap, courtesy of you. But he wouldn’t argue or dare move it. Not with that stupid grin that formed on your lips when you placed it there.

Words tumbled from your lips as you wrote, your speech broken and uneven with your split focus between your work and your rant. He listened patiently. It’s why he was here. You called, he came.

When you got to ranting about your boyfriend, he tensed. To put it childishly, he thought your boyfriend was a complete and total waste of space, but his hate for him was deeper than that. How could someone like you end up with a shit-show like him? And why couldn’t you have picked him instead?

When you brought up how shitty your boyfriend had been treating you and how he could even manage to say ‘I love you’ to you anymore, Dave seethed. How could you put up with this shit?

“I would,” he mumbled, hardly audible over the rapid typing of the keys on your computer.