they laughed easily.

The coffee mug Ben finished sipping from left a ring on Kate's refurbished wooden coffee table. She had sanded it herself and after two hours at Home Depot found the right color stain to match their Goodwill end table find.

"Come on, Ben," she said, exasperated.

Kate Sanders is sort of anal about using coasters. Ben obviously isn't. Ben, a just-a-friend friend, despite her roommate Tish's insistence that there was "something there," spent a lot of time at their house. He said it was because he could just chill without the continual buzz of gnats in his ear, apparently an ever present situation at his own apartment. Ben's roommate was a filthy guy he went to college with, but didn't know very well until they both ended up in Seattle three years after graduation from Denison University in Ohio.

His roommate's name is Arnold, but everyone calls him Arnie. It's not exactly a cool guy name, but Arnie was cool. That's the thing about a name, you sort of let it own you or you own it.

"I just am who I am," Arnie would say between flipping channels on his couch. Ben would look up from whatever it was he was doing, probably looking for a clean dish in the kitchen and say, "Yeah, but who are you talking to man?"

"You," Arnie responded from the couch, probably dusting off crumbs from the cookies his mom mailed for his birthday that afternoon.

These interactions were what Kate and Tish imagined when Ben wasn't at their apartment taking up space. It was a fun pastime for them, imaging the conversations between people they knew.

Kate met Ben a few months earlier at the coffee shop she inhabited on Saturdays. He'd noticed her when he was ordering, something about that curly blonde hair, kind of a  Shirley Temple look, he remembered thinking from time to time since they met. Kate had come up to the register three times asking if there were outlets, if she needed a key to the bathroom, what the Wifi password was, you name it. It didn't take Ben long to find her charming, and after her coming in about 10:30 in the morning three weeks in a row, ordering a hot chai tea, and holing up in an available corner at Espress Yourself, he introduced himself. It had taken Kate weeks to find a coffee shop she liked, and when she finally got over the name "Espress Yourself," she never went anywhere else. "It has the perfect blend of good drinks and available chairs."

"You know, they shoud really change the name of that place," Ben said to her from the couch. He was eating frozen grapes, not doing anything much.

"No," Kate responded, offering nothing else, going back to the book she had to read for her book club. The club had a dumb name, too: Literary Ladies. This name was harder for Kate to get over, but whatever. "What's in a name?" she eventually conceded.

"Oh, ok then, I'll just go on thinking something different then..." Ben saracastically responded, quietly drowning himself out, waiting for Kate to give him the response he believed his thought to have earned. Closing her book on page 134 with the wooden book mark she'd gotten on vacation in Thailand, and sitting up straight, she groaned and went into her logic.

"I thought the same thing for a while, but I think it keeps out pretentious douches who spend all day and order one thing."

"Like you?"

"Yes, essactly like me," Kate said, smiling. "Too many of us and it's not fun anymore."

They laughed. Kate could never understand what people meant when she'd hear or read the phrase "they laughed easily with one another" until she met Ben, this Ohio-born and bred guy. It was such a stupid idea to her. They laughed easily. Vomit. It was the sort of phrase you'd here at a eulogy or a wedding. But when she met Ben, it wasn't dumb. It was nice. To her, that phrase meant she didn't have to put up the facade of thinking something was funny or unfunny when she heard it. She could just react.

"Essactly," Ben said, chuckling. "That's funny, Kate."

"Thanks," Kate said, closing her book for good. "What are you doing for the rest of the day?"

"I don't know. I could work on this grant proposal that I should have finished at work Friday — or I could just sit here and watch you read while I think my thoughts or google babies eating lemons for the first time."

"Babies eating lemons?" shouted Tish from the kitchen. She was loading the dishwasher.

"Yeah," Ben shouted back. "It's the best."

"Well, whatever you do, do it well, sir," Kate said in her dad's military-man-voice. "But, I'm done with this for today. I can't concentrate when I have puns to think of."

"Hey guys," Tish said from the living room doorway, a bowl in her left hand, a towel in the other.

"Hey lady bit," Kate said turning around.

"What're you doing today?"

"Other than absolutely nothing?" said Ben.

"We're deciding whether or not productivity is worth it today," said Kate.

"It's not," said Ben. "But, we deal. It's Saturday."

Ben picked up his mug, stood over the coffee table and walked over to the kitchen doorway making Tish step into the living room. It was one of those swinging ones. Tish had it propped open with a door stop. The hinges weren't great because the owners of the house had painted over them so many times between different renters.

"Excuse me," Ben said to Tish.

"Well, I think I'm going to go ride bikes with some people, so if you want to come, you're welcome to." Tish was sitting on the end of the ottoman near the front door by all the shoes.

"That sounds fun," said Kate.

"I love kid things," said Ben from the sink.

"Ben does that sound fun? It sounds fun."

From the kitchen, "Yeah, that sounds fun. I just said that. I mean, does it sound as fun as babies eating lemons? No, but let's do it anyway."

The three then collected in the living room, each putting on their shoes: Ben, a pair of navy blue Vans, Tish, a pair of closed toed strappy sandals from Steve Madden, and Kate, a pair of orange Converse.

"Is it OK if I leave my backpack here?" asked Ben.

"Yeah. You'll probably want to come back here after anyway," said Tish, smiling at Kate.

Glaring at her and mouthing "Please," wondering why people always make things into stuff they aren't, Kate then opened the door, and grabbed her keys from the hook.

"Shall we?" Ben asked.

"We shall," Kate said.

"Indeed, sir," Tish grinned wryly.

And the three of them bowed and curtseyed to one another.

"We are so dumb," Kate said, giggling.

Then all three of them were laughing. Tish closed the house door, and then Kate locked it.