I'm still standing

 Dan was listening to Valentina on speaker phone while he was in the kitchen cleaning out the fridge. There were still a couple of things Ivy left behind that he tossed in the trash.

Valentina was telling him about Jools who used to live at her house. He was a foreign exchange student who didn't go home. She sounded fond of him like family.

"But I don't think he's telling me, everything," she then said about his breakup with his boyfriend.

"Are you telling him everything?" Dan asked as he smelled some tuna still in a can that wasn't quite fresh anymore. He wondered why that was even in the fridge. He couldn't imagine Ivy ever touching tuna. He tossed it in the trash.

"I don't want to bore him," she said. "It just didn't seem right to talk about Matty."

"Maybe he thinks it would be boring to you," Dan was about to say, but finally decided to tell her that he might get a roommate. Maybe he didn't like being all alone, after all.

"He just broke up with his girlfriend, so I dunno how it might go," Dan said his friend Steve from high school told him about Jory's situation. "At least he has a good job." Dan tried to stay positive.

"Good," Valentina agreed. She said she wished he could meet Jools.

"Why?" Dan winced, what was she getting at? Wasn't having a roommate enough.

"Well, he is family, to me," Val told him his own family abandoned him when they found out he was gay. "I would hate to think how bad his life might be if he'd gone home."

"Oh." Dan nodded and went to wash his hands he was done with cleaning the fridge. "You are so right. He needs as much support as he can get." 

 A tap came to his door. He told her he had to go. The guy named Jory was here.

Steve came with him. Dan could see Steve was exactly the kind of support Valentina was talking about, even in these very strange times. They wore their mask and Dan went to make coffee. He said he'd vacuumed and sanitized the room.

"A girl used to live here," he then said, but the room was neutral and the closet was empty.

"A girl?" Jory looked at him wondering if she would be back.

"She's with the father of her baby now," Dan told him.

Jory removed his mask and looked at him surprised, as if what kind of guy was he?

"I'm really quiet. It was really weird for me, too," Dan cleared his throat. "But I'm glad I could be here for her, at least for a few months." 

Of course, he hadn't called. He felt it best to let Ivy alone with Jay. 

"So what do you think?" Dan asked.

"I like it," Jory nodded. "But I don't cook. I don't really know much about cooking." He said he was willing to pay more and he would do chores. "It's just sometimes, around the holidays and snow days, I don't get home until late."

Dan shrugged. He worked at the hospital and said he'd already gotten one dose of the COVID vaccine.

Steve asked if it hurt.

"Just a little," Dan said. 

He shook hands with Jory then. It looked like he was moving in.