Read No Such Thing as Perfect for Free Online

roommate.”
    “Oh. I didn’t know there were singles here.”
    He stops and looks at his door, then down at his shoes. “It’s... a long story. Anyway, coffee?” When he looks up, there’s a distinct change in his expression. It’s pain wrapped in fear of acknowledging it; I know the look well.
    In the lounge, he makes coffee, but the machine is old and the water is from the fountain in the hall, so the coffee just tastes like heat. There is no flavor or pleasure in drinking it, except it’s warm and it’s quiet in the lounge. Jack is picking the Styrofoam cup apart as he drains it. I don’t know why it feels like normal. I thought I knew normal, but suddenly this feels like what it should have been all along.
    “So you’re not a freshman?” I ask.
    “Junior.”
    “Your major?”
    “Game Design. And you’re English.”
    “How’d you know?”
    He’s finished turning the cup into pieces and he swaps the pile between his palms, looking at me the entire time. His eyes have danced through every human emotion in the few short interactions we’ve had. I didn’t know anyone had the kind of depth I see in them.
    “Lucky guess. Plus you’ve read Sense and Sensibility several times, which seems like an English major thing to do,” he says.
    “Yet you know the character names,” I point out.
    “Yeah, but I’m not...” He shakes his head. I don’t know what the sentence was supposed to end with, but he’s not continuing. “Besides, you came out of Joliet Hall, which is Humanities. I suppose you could just be taking a lit class, but it seemed a decent guess.”
    “Well, you’re right. I’m predictable,” I say.
    “I don’t doubt that, Elinor,” he replies, but it’s not judgmental. There’s sadness in the way he says it. Regret. Regret? Stop putting your own issues on him , I tell myself. “So what brings you here?”
    “To Bristol?”
    Jack stands and throws out the Styrofoam. Each piece falls into the trash can like a heartbroken snowflake, slowly at first and then finally accepting its fate and taking the last few inches as inevitable. I watch them fall from his hands, his fingers outstretched and shaking. The ink on his arms is striking against the paleness of his skin.
    “To sitting in a lounge with me in the middle of the night,” he says. “You’re predictable, as you said yourself.” He turns back towards me. “So what’s out of place?”
    “Who said anything was?” I ask.
    “I think I’ve misunderstood,” he says. “I didn’t mean to assume. I just thought there was something familiar in the way you were pacing.”
    “How so?”
    He shrugs. “I’ve spent many nights pacing, too. And a lot more feeling like it was never going to make sense. I shouldn’t have guessed that something was missing, just because it usually is for me.”
    My own Styrofoam cup, now empty, pays the price. How can he see so directly into the weakest parts of me? How does he know that the pieces don’t fit? I picture my mother standing here, whispering in my ear that I’m slipping, that I’m pathetic, that I need to straighten out. I see my life and all my plans ahead of me and I feel them becoming faint outlines and I have to crush the cup to hold onto something solid.
    “Thanks for the coffee,” I tell him. “But I need to get back. I’m...”
    I’m about to apologize, but he nods and walks away, leaving me alone. I stand up and throw what’s left of my cup into the trash, where its mangled corpse hides the damage he did to his.

10.
    “I was thinking of trying out for the school play,” I told my parents at dinner. Jon looked at me and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.
    “That sounds great, honey,” my dad said, but my mom’s face grew tight. I knew I had said something wrong, although I didn’t know what was wrong with school plays.
    “Is that okay, Mom?” I asked.
    She didn’t answer right away, her knife growing faster as she cut her chicken. I wanted her to