I am 23 years old, and getting up at 6:30 am for a car inspection where I am required to meet my father. My usually stock-white room is now colored in the pre-dawn grey. I look with passive disbelief at my cheap Target clock, remove what would be multicolored blankets in a different light, and tread to the bathroom with the slowness of an adult now often inconvenienced in the early hours by forces above themselves. My friend is on a couch somewhere in the living room, visiting from out of town.

The house, like me, is in a transition period. Before I moved in, it used to be something I particularly enjoyed (a red-brick house with different colored walls, wood and more wood, rocks in the garden and ornate chandeliers, a home fit for magical fairies or eclectic parents) and now is struggling under its new identity (black painted doors, white walls, cheap gold handles and some light fixture called ‘the Sputnik,’ a house better suited, in my opinion, for a JC Penny mannequin). While there is active construction happening in the basement, the rest of the house is suffering growing pains with the new design. The wooden floor creaks in protest as I walk to the bathroom. I shiver as I brush my teeth, moving a discarded towel over the tile with my bare feet. I would discover later that the heating has cut out, and would remain so for several days. I think about the friend from out of town that’s staying on my couch, with just the one blanket.

If being young is being fiery, being a young adult is being submissive, which is something I am learning piece by piece. I have watched my landlord (my roommate’s mother, actually) slowly turn what I would consider my dream house into my worst nightmare for the sake of “modernizing.” At first, when the mosaic tile was ripped away to make room for chalky black granite, I had to bite my tongue. When there was discussion over the stained-glass windows, I imagined chaining myself in front of them for days in protest. You just can’t mess with something like that. It’s immoral. But now, as I listen to the construction workers destroying the retro wooden walls of the basement, I think nothing. I spit out my toothpaste. I have, by 23, learned the most valuable lesson in life; that change is always going to happen, and it’s done by the hands of those with the most dough.

Maybe once, I would have been outraged by having to disrupt my schedule by my father’s ridiculous standards for car inspections (the reason it’s so early is because he “knows a guy” who’s getting me in before hours), but today I do not complain. I get dressed and walk through the dining room (thank God the table’s still wooden: the landlord’s son threatened to paint it black) and to the door. He is the one who has paid for my car, after all, and I am the subservient adult child. This might be less dramatically described as picking and choosing your battles, but to me, it feels like laying my head obediently before the axe.

In the dim light, I look with urgency to the couch in the living room. The friend, who is not really a friend but an ex I can never truly part from (you know how queer people are), is missing. Their luggage is still here, their phone…

Last night we had stayed up late talking on the couch, laughing, and musing over what our future might look like. We, because of the rule of three, are also in a transition period. In an inconsistent timeline of breakups and odd friendships, we are in a phase best described as friends who love each other but, because of “life circumstances,” cannot commit to a relationship. We show affection in passing: testing the waters more gingerly than Narcissus, a supportive word when it feels appropriate, or in the case of last night, a head on a lap, just for a second, with a sigh of relief.

I laugh to myself, looking at the couch. I realize the ex/best friend is just so curled under the blanket I couldn’t tell they were there. I shiver, putting on my coat, cursing the landlord but not the house. I send them a text from the car: “If it’s too cold, just go to my bedroom.” As I drive the twenty-five minutes to the county I grew up in, the ex/best friend leaps with astounding energy for 7am to my hardly warmer bed. We live by no label, being in this liminal space, but this feels appropriate enough an offer given the cold.

Like my bedroom, my hometown is grey, and it’s not because of the time of day or the time of year. It’s a suburban area in the county, and it is dominated by roads. It’s primary function, at least to me, is to lead you somewhere else, somewhere more interesting. My adolescence, and up until recently, my young-adulthood, can best be described as a long-term dissociation while driving over never-ending stretches of road pavement. It’s something I’m trying very hard to forget, and have tried even harder to leave.

My father, the Americanized son of Italian immigrants, has me get out of the car so he can drive it into the shop. Clearly something I’m unable to do on my own. I wait in a little room, cluttered with ads and license plates. I have a glimpse into the shop and analyze the bold, red font of the banners hanging on the walls.

My father walks in and tells me about a job opportunity he’s heard about through his work. I am shocked, but not surprised. I currently have three jobs (another learned piece: parents won’t believe you have a real job unless its one where you sit at a desk). I tell him this and he remarks he has no idea what jobs I have, and I pretend not to be hurt.

My father and I are not in a transition period; we are in the midst of an indefinite duel, in which neither of us can draw our guns. Needless to say, we suddenly have a hard time speaking to each other. I am embarrassed and confused after a long-time war with my mother (I came out last year) in which he held silence about for over a year. I had my one impulse of speaking to him about something intimate and now I don’t know how to carry myself. It’s like I betrayed my masculinity to him (I am a woman). He is hurt by my silence over the last couple months (I was dying at home, and besides, had an opposite work schedule in which we never saw each other) and my “sudden” leaving (I spoke about moving for eight months. He didn’t see why I wanted to). I expect he feels abandoned, but was never given the words to articulate that to me. Like him, I don’t know how to apologize and assure him that I love him. Stunned by our genetic stubbornness, I ask him about car maintenance to prove I’m invested in what is happening today.

He answers everything I say with a scowl. I’m about to tell him about this movie I am writing, but the mechanic comes in and I don’t finish my statement. I hug him, and he calls me to make sure I know the correct turn to make out of the parking lot.

It just starts to rain as I walk into the house. I jump into bed with Kate. I am so happy. The rain is pattering on the window, but only for that second.

Hope’s in the random. The sporadic. It comes in the night.

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Sophia Indelicato is a filmmaker and writer based in Los Angeles, CA. When she isn’t making stories, she’s looking for salamanders in the woods. Her work appears in A Moment Zine.