Free It's Okay to Laugh by Nora McInerny Purmort

painted a big white square on the side of a neighboring building, and his rooftop became a movie theater just for us. But while I had to wake up every morning at seven and go to an office and climb the corporate ladder, he had a more relaxed lifestyle and work ethic. Like, maybe he’d work. Or maybe he wouldn’t.
    To be perfectly fair about my relationship with Graham, I was a really good girlfriend to him. I was moody and wanted him to read my mind. I loved getting too drunk and causing scenes in the hope that, like the plot of many music videos I watched in middle school, the drama would just help him realize how special I was. It would bring us closer to get in a fight in front of a taxi driver, you know? I was doing it for us. I demanded his absolute loyalty and unfailing adoration, while simultaneously seeking the approval and attention of any handsome, somewhat single male I came in contact with.
    That apartment I was so proud of came with a very handsome neighbor. “Handsome” doesn’t even really describe him because he was so good-looking he actually terrified me. I would see him in the hallways and suddenly find myself a mute with a plastered-on smile. Mike made sunglasses and boats in his little one-bedroom apartment, which I only knew because he once invited me in to try on some frames.
    â€œWho’s that guy I see with you sometimes?” he asked while I looked around his apartment and imagined knocking out the wallbetween us so we’d have room to raise our kids. I answered as honestly as I could.
    â€œHe’s just a friend of mine. He’s gay, actually.”
    I didn’t break up with Graham for Mike—that would be insane, he had only ever said, like, three sentences to me. It’s just that I knew there would be other Mikes out there, and that I needed to be with someone like him: someone with drive and ambition and a face that made me nervous to look at.
    New York was making me crazy. Or crazier than normal. I started listening to The Secret on audiobook, and walking miles to far-off subway stations to stretch out my commute. I drank too much. I was attempting to be a vegan. At night, I would find myself with “Pop Goes the Weasel” stuck in my head for hours, thanks to the ice cream truck that parked itself outside my apartment playing a tinny instrumental version of the song on repeat, beckoning the nonexistent children in my neighborhood to come and get some frozen treats. I was always uncomfortable: In the winter, I’d freeze on my walk to the subway, only to peel off the sweaty layers on the crowded train. In the summer, my hair would stay damp even after I blow-dried it, just from humidity and sweat. My apartment was filled with $5 bodega umbrellas, because I was never prepared when it started raining. But I loved it, right?
    We were in the middle of a massive heat wave, so Graham and I broke up in his bedroom, the only private space with air-conditioning that we had access to. “I’m leaving New York,” I said, and I was surprised as he was to hear that.
    The next day, he showed up at my door, contrite, holding his air conditioner in his arms.
    â€œYou deserve to be comfortable,” he said. And even though I didn’t deserve it, I let him install his breakup air conditioner inmy bedroom so I could enjoy seven nights of Freon-fueled dreams before heading back to the Midwest.
    Graham stopped by while I was packing up all my Forever 21 outfits in air-conditioned comfort. He was there to convince me to stay. He promised to be the kind of guy I deserved, which basically meant he wouldn’t smoke pot all the time and instead just smoke pot some of the time and also have a goal or two that involved an adult future with marriage and children sometime before I was, like, forty-nine.
    But it was too late for tempting promises like that. I was going back home, where for the price of my rent in Greenpoint I could afford to rent two