I swear, her heels were higher than her skirt was long.” I pick up my bottle from the floor and take another gulp of the beer. “But enough about that. I’m so over Mark. Can we just talk about something else? This is our last night here. It’s the end of an era.”

“Yeah, who cares about Mark? This is our night. Fuck that guy,” Carly says passionately, adopting my anger as if it’s her own. She pauses to think. “Wait. No. Do the opposite of that. Don’t fuck that guy.”

We both laugh. Our apartment may be mostly empty now, but it still feels like home, now that we’re chatting and laughing like we usually do.

The living room looks smaller than it normally does, which is weird because there’s actually less stuff now.

Brown cardboard boxes of different sizes are scattered all over the green carpeted floor. Instead of buying moving boxes, we went with the free option. We went to the grocery store and begged a staff member for free, used boxes from the warehouse.

Other than the boxes, there’s not much left in the apartment.

A pizza box that contains our dinner. Three bottles of beer, one of which is already empty. Our bags. And us. Oh, and McClaw, my orange tabby, who’s chilling on my lap right now. He was a total nuisance while we were packing, jumping into boxes and tearing them apart with his sharp teeth and claws.

All the big pieces of furniture have been sold on Craigslist or moved to my new studio apartment.

I’m glad George, Carly’s boyfriend, has nicer furniture than we do. That’s why Carly’s leaving behind almost all the big items to me, although she was the one who originally bought most of them. So I got them for free.

God, I love free stuff.

Like this pizza. It tastes better because it’s free. Carly bought it for us both, knowing how broke I am. She’s an amazing friend.

I take another slice of the pizza, the one with a bunch of meat chunks and pepperoni on it. I’ve been subsisting mostly on ramen and day-old grocery-store bread. I probably don’t get enough protein.

“You know, I never liked Mark,” Carly says as she takes another sip of the beer.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, my mouth full of cheesy, meaty goodness.

“Well, you seemed to like the guy. As far as I could tell, he treated you nice enough. I thought I was just jealous.” She grins. “I know it’s weird, but I used to have you all to myself.”

“Aww…” I lean over and pull Carly into a hug with my clean hand, holding the pizza with my other one. “It’s not weird. To be honest, I’m feeling kind of jealous too, now that George gets to be your new roommate.”

“I’m so going to miss you, Piper,” Carly says, pulling me closer with both hands, resting the beer bottle she’s holding on my back. The bottle is cold, the wetness seeping through the back of my shirt.

“Oh, you’ll be fine.” I break the hug. “You’ve stayed over at George’s a bunch of times, right? I’m sure you guys will do fine.”

“I know, but it won’t be the same without you.” She sighs.

“I’m the one who’s going to miss you more. I’ll be living on my own.”

“That’s not true. You have McClaw with you.” Carly reaches out one drunk, heavy hand and pets the cat, making him swish his tail from side to side with displeasure.

“Yeah, he’s not a very good conversationalist, though.” I move Carly’s hand away before McClaw shows her how he got his name in the first place. “Plus, he made it really hard for me to find a new place. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve been able to find new roommates and just move into a room. Instead, I have to get a tiny, unfurnished studio.”

“Eh, you may be better off living on your own anyway. At least McClaw will be the only asshole you’ll live with.”

“Yeah.” I pause. “Can you imagine if I ended up moving in with Mark I I’d planned and then found out he’d been cheating on me?”

“When things are bad, it’s good to remind yourself that it could be worse.” Carly lifts her beer bottle up for a toast.

“Word.” I pick up my bottle and clink it against hers. “I had no idea how hard it is to find an apartment, though. I was completely unprepared.”

“Really? It was pretty easy for me to get this one.”

“Yeah, it was easy for you because you have money.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, money is great. You should get yourself some of that good stuff.”

I laugh wryly and scratch the soft fur between McClaw’s ears.

It’s only Carly’s name on the lease for this two-bedroom apartment. She fell in love with the place and rented it on her own. In the first week of the semester, she put up flyers all over the campus, looking for a roommate. I was the lucky person who happened to click with her and became the chosen one.

Unlike me, Carly gets money transferred into her account from her parents every month. She doesn’t have the same money problems that I do, although we’re both college students.

To be honest, maybe those landlords have a good reason to not let me move into their properties. The studio I’m going to move into is the cheapest one I could find. Yet I’m not sure I’ll be able to pay the rent on time every month. I guess we’ll see.

Carly offers to help, of course. But I can’t keep relying on her forever.

My dad is broke, too, so I can’t ask him for any money. And he lives too far from San Francisco, where my college is, for me to move back in with him.

My whole life, the man has spent all his money at the liquor store. He did stop for a while, when we had to scrounge up every penny for Mom’s hospital bills. But now that she’s gone, his alcohol habit has only gotten worse.

“Did you manage to find any work?” Carly asks.

“Yeah. I got a retail job at the mall, but they’re not giving me many shifts. I may have to get another job, on top of that one.”

Carly goes quiet before finally saying, “You know you can always come to me for help, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, Carly,” I say, smiling.

I don’t like asking for help from other people; I think that’s a show of weakness. But Carly is my roommate, and she knows I haven’t always managed to pay my rent on time. She has been generous with me and never even said anything about my late payments. A real landlord wouldn’t be as nice.

While she's trading up to a more luxurious apartment, I’m definitely trading down.

Maybe it's my own fault.

Sure, luck has something to do with it, too. I grew up wearing hand-me-downs from my older cousins, while Carly used to get thousands of dollars at the beginning of every school year to update her entire wardrobe.

But I have a part to play in this, too. While Carly’s getting a sensible finance degree, I’m working toward a music degree.

Through her dad’s connections, she gets an awesome paid internship position at some investment bank. On the other hand, I go through audition after audition to play “for exposure”—which is just a nicer way to say I’m basically free labor.

I do get some paid gigs. Still, I bet the bartenders at the joints where my jazz band plays make way more in tips alone than we do in total.

I also offer guitar and piano lessons, and I make decent money from them.

When I don’t have anything better to do with my time, sometimes I take my guitar downtown, put my open guitar case on the sidewalk, and just start playing, hoping to collect a few bills, along with the mountain of coins I usually get. This doesn’t earn me much, but it’s a good way to spend a nice, sunny day.

Maybe it’s this mentality that’s screwing me over. Maybe I should be more mercenary about making a living, instead of holding on to an unrealistic dream. I mean, how many musicians actually make it?

I don’t know. I’m only twenty-one, so I guess at least I have time to figure things out.

That’s a long-term problem, though, and I don’t have the luxury to think about that.

Right now, I should be focusing on bringing in money immediately so I don’t end up on the streets—or worse, back in my family home with Dad.

Okay, maybe he’s not quite that bad, but that’s not an option either.

I take another sip of my beer. Carly’s already passed out on the carpet, resting her head on her own arm. Ah, to be loaded and worry-free…

I pet McClaw, running my fingers from his forehead to his tail. He starts to purr, his orange belly rising up and down with his deep, contented breathing.

I may be broke, but at least I have good company. Things could be worse.