He buys oat milk and never contributes to wifi
I did not advertise for a third flatmate with a hoodie and opinions about the remote.
That is the whole plot, really. Nobody sat us down and said we were getting a lodger. There was no house meeting. No “shall we add him to the bills” chat over a cuppa. He just started staying, and then staying looked like living, and now I know his shower schedule better than I know my own rota.
I keep telling myself I am being chill. I am not chill. I am doing that thing where I laugh in the kitchen and then write it in my notes app on the night bus like I am building a court case.
It did not start as a problem
It never does. First it was Friday. Then Friday and Saturday. Then he was still here on Sunday in yesterday’s t-shirt, eating toast like the tenancy had his name on it.
I like her. That is the annoying part. We have been in this flat long enough to know who steals whose conditioner and who never buys bin bags. She is one of my people. So when she said “he is just staying over,” I did the loyal thing and nodded.
Staying over is a toothbrush in a mug. Living here is a shelf in the fridge and a charger that never leaves the socket by the sofa.
Guess which one we have.
The oat milk was the tell
He bought oat milk. Once. I remember because I thought, oh look, a contribution. Very grown. Very “I am part of the household.”
He has been drinking it ever since. Ours, his, whoever’s. Same carton. Same little performance of being helpful. Meanwhile the actual bill for the wifi that he works off in our living room is still coming out of the same three names it has always come out of. Two of those names live here. One of them has a key. He has a hoodie and a lot of feelings about what we watch.
Last week he paused something I had on and put his show over it. Did not ask. Just did that little “you were not really watching that” face men do when they have decided the remote is community property.
Mate. I pay for this sofa. You are a guest with better access than the postman.
What “just here a lot” actually looks like
He showers here. Morning and night sometimes, like we have a hotel water tank. He does laundry. He leaves wet socks on the radiator like a warning. He knows the food shop cycle. He has opinions about the air fryer. He answers the door.
That last one got me. I came in from a late, knackered, makeup half gone, and a man who is not on the tenancy opened my front door with a mug in his hand.
“Alright?” he said, like I was visiting.
I stood on the step for a second longer than I needed to. Not because I am dramatic. Because my brain had to catch up with the fact I had just knocked on my own life.
People online go on about this exact thing and I used to think they were fussy. Then you live it and you get it. It is not the sex. I do not care that they are at it. Thin walls are a separate row. This is the slow takeover. The way a person becomes furniture without paying for the room the furniture is in.
Wifi, water, and the myth of the free stay
Everyone wants to argue about rent. Fine. Rent is the loud number. But the quiet numbers add up and they are the ones that make you feel insane.
Hot water. Electric. The broadband he is on for hours. Toilet roll. Coffee. The milk. The fact the food shop disappeared faster the month he “did not live here.” You can call it petty. I call it maths. I did a degree in it. I can watch a bill climb and still be told I am imagining it.
He has a job. I am not saying he is skint and tragic. I am saying he has somewhere else he could be using and he is not using it, because our flat is nicer, closer, or just easier. Easier for him. Not easier for the two of us who signed the thing and get the letters when something is late.
If you are here four nights out of seven, you are not a guest. You are a discount tenant with better lighting in the story.
The conversation nobody wants
I tried to do it nicely. That was my first mistake. Nice is how these things stay foggy.
I said, “He is here a lot lately, shall we sort bills?”
She went stiff. You know the face. The one that says you have made her boyfriend a problem instead of making the situation a problem.
“He does not live here,” she said.
Right. And I do not eat crisps in bed. We can all tell ourselves things.
Then came the greatest hits. I was being controlling. I was being weird about her relationship. Was I jealous because I am single this month. That one almost made me laugh in her face. I can get company. I cannot get a third rent payment out of a man who thinks oat milk is rent.
I did not say that. I should have. Instead I did the English thing and made tea and let the row sit in the room like a wet towel.
Next morning he was in the kitchen again. Barefoot. Scrolling. Our wifi. My mood.
I am not innocent either
I have had people stay. I am not going to pretend I am a nun with a clipboard. There have been mornings I have done the walk to the bathroom in last night’s mascara and one of them has had to hear it. House rules get messy when you actually have a life.
Difference is, mine leave. They do not acquire a shelf. They do not start referring to “our” remote. They do not open the door to me after a twelve hour shift like I am the guest and they are the bloke who sorted the recycling.
If I ever did that to this flat, I would expect someone to say it. I would hate it. I would still need to hear it. That is the deal when you share a place with friends. You do not get to import a whole extra adult and call it love.
What I actually want
I do not want him banished. I am not the wicked flatmate in a group chat screenshot. I want the situation to match the facts.
If he is here most nights, he pays a third of the bills or she covers his third. I do not care which. I care that I stop subsidising their relationship with my wages.
If he cannot pay, he stays less. His place exists. Use it. Date like people who have two addresses, not like people who found a loophole in someone else’s tenancy.
And the remote. I am not joking. Ask before you pause my thing. It is a small ask and it is doing a lot of work as a metaphor.
Some people will say put it in writing. House rules. Guest nights. A number. Three nights a week, then it is extra. I used to think that sounded clinical. Now I think it sounds like the only way three adults do not end up lying to each other in a hallway.
The bit that actually stings
It is not even him, not fully. It is the feeling of becoming background in a home I pay for. Clocking in at the warehouse all day, coming back, and finding the living room already claimed by a man who did not interview for the flat.
Friends to lovers is a cute trope. Friends to three-person household with no extra standing order is just a bad deal dressed up as romance.
I will say it once, properly, without the tea and the softening. He does not live here on paper. He lives here in the ways that cost money. Until that matches, I am not the difficult one. I am the one who noticed.
Buy your own oat milk, mate. And put something towards the wifi while you are at it. The hoodie does not cover broadband.
