The floor is cold.
February in Morgantown means the landlord is controlling all of our thermostats. He's cheap. He keeps it cold enough that my toes could freeze.
My apartment is small.
A studio, technically, though the listing called it a one-bedroom because someone hung a curtain rod between the kitchen and the sleeping area.
Everything in it is mine. Paid for with tips, budgeting, and a stubbornness my mother tells me I inherited.
The bed gets made before the coffee brews. The dishes get washed before I walk out the door.
Every surface is clean, every corner accounted for, because if the apartment stays in order, I can pretend the rest of my life is too.
Coffee first. Black, because creamer costs four dollars, and I'd rather put four dollars toward the electric bill.
I drink it standing at the counter, looking out the window at the parking lot below.
A guy in the building across the way is scraping frost off his windshield.
A girl in a WVU hoodie is walking a dog so small it looks like a slipper with legs.
Normal morning. Normal people doing normal things in a normal town.
Shower. Get dressed. Jeans, boots, a flannel over a tank top because layering is the only honest response to West Virginia weather between September and April.
Hair up, no makeup except chapstick.
I don't spend time in front of mirrors. Never have. Mirrors ask you to look at yourself, and looking at yourself invites the question of what you see. What I see depends on the day and how generous I'm feeling toward the gene pool I crawled out of.
My phone buzzes on the counter. Mom.
I pick up before the second ring. "Morning."
Her voice is already warm, already caffeinated. "Morning, baby. You eat yet?"
I lean my hip against the counter. "I had coffee."
"Coffee is not food, Saylor." I can hear her moving around her kitchen, cabinet doors opening and closing.
"Coffee is a bean. Beans are food. Therefore, coffee is food."
She laughs. The sound is warm and unhurried, and hearing it loosens something between my shoulder blades I didn't realize was tight.
My mother's laugh is the safest sound in the world. It always has been.
Even during the trial, even during the worst of it, she'd find something to laugh about at the end of the day because she refused to let him take everything away from us.
"I'm making chili tonight." A pot clangs in the background. "Come over after your shift?"
I rinse my mug, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder. "Can't. I close at the bar."
"Then come over after you close."
"Mom, it'll be one in the morning."
"And?" The word comes out with a shrug I can hear through the phone. "I'll be up. Bring your laundry."
I smile into the empty mug. "Fine. But I'm not staying over. I have a class at eight in the morning."