They said it was a record-breaking storm. I wasn’t paying attention. I was trying to find a clean bowl and wondering if the radiator was supposed to make that noise. I didn’t think anyone would be out in it. Then Dave biked over like it was just cold rain and not the end of the world.

My apartment smelled like burnt toast and wet laundry, and the heat only worked in a performative way. My roommate boiled water constantly, said it made her feel like something was happening. Dave showed up soaked through, cheeks red, eyelashes iced. MTV was playing in the background for no reason. I liked that it didn’t ask anything of me. No one had touched the remote in days. He knocked once, then let himself in. "I made it," he said, like there had been a dare.

Dave was my boyfriend, I think. Or maybe I just said that to simplify things. He once called me funny in front of my roommate and I laughed too hard, like I’d been waiting to be described. I regretted it immediately. He dressed like someone who got kicked out of three different bands for having opinions on laundry. Always flannel. Always talking about dreams he didn’t remember. He played guitar loudly and badly and often. Once told me Bluetooth was a scam. Once fixed a lamp in my apartment without being asked and then pretended he hadn’t.

I gave him Cinnamon Toast Crunch in a chipped mug that said WORLD’S BEST BOSS. I don’t even like it. My roommate bought it and I’ve been finishing it out of spite. I don’t know where the mug came from. It had a hairline crack down the middle and I kept waiting for the day it would split in half in my hands. He said thank you, which was rare. We sat on the couch and watched the snow re-cover what had already been shoveled. He suggested we go to a coffee shop two towns over. I asked how. He shrugged and said, “Momentum.”

I still don’t know how we got there. I must’ve ridden on the handlebars. Or maybe we walked half the way and I forgot. It doesn’t matter. We arrived. The place was small, damp, and over-salted. Everyone inside looked like they’d been waiting for someone who never showed.

I ordered a cappuccino. The barista looked up at me and said, "Funny girl." He wore two watches, one on each wrist, and never looked at either. His name tag said ZANE, all caps, which I never believed was real. Then again, no one thinks my last name is real either.

He always said that. It wasn’t a compliment exactly. More like a classification. The way you might label something in a file: funny girl. He never smiled when he said it. Just slid the cup toward me like he’d already stamped something invisible on the lid. I hadn’t been called anything else in a long time. At least not in a way that stuck.

Dave ordered black coffee and dropped his gloves in it. He said it was a test and drank it anyway. I didn’t ask what kind of test. He looked proud of himself in a way that made me feel left out. Then he said the key to drinking anything hot was pretending your mouth belonged to someone else. I said I didn’t know. He said he hoped not, and that was that. He sat cross-legged on a couch meant for four and read a newspaper someone had left behind. I watched the foam on my drink collapse.

I asked the barista once, weeks before the storm, what made me funny. He was alphabetizing a stack of sugar packets at the time. He said, "You seem like someone who laughs during silence."

Dave didn’t like the barista. Said his voice sounded like it belonged to someone who never apologized. I said I didn’t think voices could do that. Dave said, "That’s what makes him dangerous."

Later, when we left, I tried calling Dave "funny boy." Just to see what it felt like. He didn’t react. Just held the door open like a doorman and said, "Careful, it’s slick."

That’s the last time he came over. Or maybe not. There’s a note in my phone that just says: Dave – bike, coffee, gloves, weird. The date updates every time I open it, which feels unfair. I don’t remember writing it, and I definitely didn’t update it. It just keeps changing. Like it wants to be remembered better than I do.

It doesn’t help. I kept ordering cappuccinos because I liked the sound of it. Like I was someone who knew what she was doing. Like I wasn’t hoping for anything. I didn’t want to be funny. I wanted to be magnetic, or unsettling, or the kind of girl people worried about quietly. I googled how to look unapproachable once. The answers were stupid but I tried them anyway.

I laughed once when he left. Or tried to. It came out wrong in the empty apartment. Later I found one of his socks in my fridge, rolled tightly like a secret, next to a jar of pickles I didn't remember buying.

That’s the only part I’m sure of.