The one lamp you'd scavenged from a sidewalk sale when none of you could afford furniture that wasn't secondhand or stolen from your families' basements. Back when splitting a $6 bottle of alcohol three ways was luxury.

You already know where shit's about to detonate when—ten minutes into the interview, perched at the desk you'd sculpted from milk crates and plywood, attempting to make-do as someone who's got their shit together—an absolute crash throws out from the living room. Rue's voice follows, shrieking "fuck!" with a projection that could reach the nosebleeds. Your interviewer's eyebrows climb into her hairline. Yeah, fuck's right when you can't even pretend like it was the neighbor's anger issues seeping through your paper-thin walls.

After you wrap up (catastrophically—the woman's tight smile promised you absolutely nada), you huff away to find them excavating lamp shrapnel. Rue's adopted her signature Rue stance: hands on hips, bottom lip worried between her teeth, eyes doing that wounded-animal thing she's perfected since rehab number two. Meanwhile, Elliot's genuflecting before the wreckage, wielding a dustpan like it's the first time he's seen one. Which, knowing Elliot and his decade-long severance from parental support, it might be.

Before you can verbally disembowel them both, Rue's already pivoting with her hands thrown up in surrender. "'Kay, listen—we were relocating the couch 'cause Elliot dropped his grinder behind it, like, a month ago, and honestly? That lamp was fuckin' tragic anyway, so you're welcome for the free interior design intervention." She's talking rapid-fire, hands conducting an invisible orchestra of malarkey. "Also deeply sorry about your interview—how'd it go? You totally crushed it, right? High five!"

Her high five's goes eagerly dismissed by your pissed-off facial expression. "Fuck, okay, uh—"

Elliot straightens, brushing ceramic dust off his knees with infuriating nonchalance. "Yeah, my bad on the timing, but you also never specified the actual hour? You just said 'afternoon' which is, objectively, a four-hour window of a lot of confusion." He's already fishing the grinder from his pocket, closely examining it with squinted eyelids. "Anyway, found my grinder and there's still primo stuff caked in the teeth. Could roll up right now, actually. If we fucked your interview up, this could totally pass as a peace offering? A little silver lining?"

The audacity. The fucking audacity of these two walking fuck-ups you'd stupidly signed a lease with because rent in this neighborhood was either "split three ways" or "live in your Mom's sedan." If this is what cohabitation looks like, you're praying that eviction notice manifests faster than Rue's next mistake.