How you can tell it’s fall in L.A., according to a guy from Vermont
The temperature was 40 degrees in the shade in Burlington, Vt. on a warm, sunny day. Two college students sat in a parked car talking.
The student from Vermont was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a vest and cargo shorts so short they could be worn as underwear. The other had on a sweater that was well above the elbow.
Saskia Giannini, 24, felt comfortable enough talking in this way with a stranger about her love life. It was a way of interacting with a casual stranger, she explained, a person who wasn’t worried about being judged. To her, being casual meant having some form of trust with someone.
That could be problematic when you had an online relationship on a dating site.
But that weekend, she felt okay.
So she went to her boyfriend’s house to spend the weekend at the house he shares with his parents.
He was there too. They were sitting on the couch watching TV. She noticed the TV’s remote control had a green light next to it. It had been working, but it had turned green recently.
Giannini realized her boyfriend was sitting there, as far from the TV as he could have. The light had been on for longer than it had been off.
What is going on? she thought, as she felt the familiar flush creep up her body. When does this happen? He was sitting there. Why the light should have been on?
“I thought you were working,” she said as she got up from the couch to make her way to the bathroom.
“I’m not.”
“But there was a light on the remote.”
“So? What does the light on the remote have to do with my being here or not being here?”
Giannini looked back at her boyfriend. She was afraid to talk about it. She thought about the strange things she’d said.
But something was going on, and she didn’t want to wait to find out what it was.
She left the bathroom and walked into her bedroom. She had just put the TV on when she noticed the light was still on and she had
