Roomies (11 page)

I hate it when you click Send before you’ve really thought it through.

(But I was too wimpy to call. I get phone-phobic.)

I don’t want to get all tangled up in something right now. I’ve never really had a boyfriend… not the kind you have. There’ve been guys I’ve hung out with in a semi-not-platonic way for a few weeks at a time but I can’t imagine dating someone for 6 months. On the other hand I like Keyon. I just don’t know if I like him like him.

Sorry to dump this on you! Zoe isn’t the ideal person to tell because she’ll probably put something on Twitter that she thinks is cleverly cryptic and everyone will figure it out in 3 seconds. Not that I would care that much if people knew but I need time to THINK about what happened and SORT through it. Something about the way Zoe is makes it hard for me to THINK and SORT. Writing it to you feels helpful. Maybe that’s a little use-y, though, if you’re not in the mood. But feel free to use me back if you are. I mean I guess what I’m saying is that if you WANT to bore me with all the gory details anytime, instead of waiting for August, be my guest. Or not. I’m easy breezy, like Covergirl.

Lauren

It’s too much. I know. But what the hell. I hit Send and go to my room, where I collapse into bed, too tired to conjure up pleasant need-meeting thoughts of Keyon or anything else.

SATURDAY, JULY 20

NEW JERSEY

I bolt up in bed at the sound of my mother’s voice. There is a man’s voice mingling with hers and for a second I think I’ve woken up mid–home invasion but then there’s some laughing and the sound of ice cubes, low music, my mother shushing her companion with a shush that is louder than anything she’s supposedly shushing. I reach for my phone and check the time—2 AM—and then open my bedroom door, listen more closely, and recognize the man’s voice.

Mark’s dad is spending the night here in Philadelphia.

With my phone in my hand, I see I’ve got an e-mail from Lauren—sent last night after I was already asleep; the time difference is sometimes a plus, sometimes not—but there’s no text, no nothing, from Mark. Not that I was expecting one. Not exactly. He’d be crazy to bother any more with a nutcase like me, but still…

It turns out that Lauren’s e-mail is really long—I scroll down to see how long before actually reading—so I decide to read it on my laptop because I messed up my phone last night. The screen has a weird dark digital slash across it from when I dropped it when Alex
and I were breaking up, and I’m pissed because I really don’t want to have to spend money on a new one. Even though I did the dropping I can’t help but feel like it was all Alex’s fault.

I grab my laptop, crawl back into bed, and try to block out the ice cubes and talking and fake-naughty laughter. If this is what my mother’s life is like now, I can’t even imagine what it will be like when I don’t live here anymore. I get up again to find some headphones, then plug them into my laptop, put on my “Most Frequently Played” songs, and turn up the volume.

Finally, I read Lauren’s e-mail and wonder what it means that she and Keyon were never in the same worlds at school. If her school is anything like mine, my guess is that it means she’s white and he’s black. I confess that I’m a little disappointed by this theory. I’ve never had a friend of a different race and I guess I think it’d be cool. And I sort of feel like unless I’m pushed together with someone really different from me, it’ll never happen. But maybe that’s just small-town Jersey thinking?

Black or white, I think maybe Lauren and I will get along okay after all. I also can’t help but think that Keyon’s dad sounds like a good dad. A
really good
dad. Because isn’t that what parents are supposed to do? Teach you the hard bits? The rules? The morals? The
way to be
?

Keyon’s dad would never be having drinks at this hour with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Keyon’s dad wouldn’t bring a stranger into his home when his son was sleeping.

Keyon’s dad wouldn’t stand for any of it.

And I shouldn’t have to, either.

I close the computer and walk downstairs and stand at the entrance to the living room, rubbing my eyes—to make it clear that
they have woken me up. “Hi,” I say, but not to my mom, to Mark’s dad.

My mother was laughing a second ago but now she’s not. She comes over to me and pulls me into a hug and says, “Oh, did we wake you? I’m sorry, sweetie.” She presents me to him, holding me awkwardly by the shoulders. “This is Elizabeth.”

I look right into his eyes and try to decipher if he recognizes me or not. But I don’t even care. I only have one goal and it is to make it clear that I know who he is and where he lives and that he is not welcome here. That he is not, and never will be, the sort of man that Keyon’s dad is. I don’t care that I don’t even
know
Keyon’s dad—or Keyon. Or Lauren. They suddenly seem like better people than everyone in this room—I make no exception for myself—and so I say, “I did some work on your garden.”

He looks a little bit shocked, and maybe he has a vague memory of seeing me that day, judging by the expression on his face. He looks at my mom, then back at me, and says, “You must be thinking of someone else.”

And for a second I think maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Like maybe Mark’s dad has a twin brother or something, and this is just going to be a crazy misunderstanding that Mark and I will laugh and laugh and laugh about—but no. I am sure. So I say, “The house on Honeysuckle Drive. Your son is my age.”

Then his eyebrows arch up and he reaches for his keys, which are on the table near the couch, and he says, “I should really head out.”

“Ohhhh,” my mother whines. “Don’t.” She turns to me and says, “EB was just going back up to bed, weren’t you, EB?”

But he has already decided to leave and so he does. Mission accomplished.

When the door closes behind him my mother turns and leans against it and I can’t believe she still looks dreamy. I feel the fists forming at the ends of my arms when I say, “He has a house. And a wife. And two sons. Tim and I redid their whole yard.”

She doesn’t look dreamy anymore, that’s for sure. She looks old and weary and sad but also a little bit mad. So I say, “You can do better, Mom,” even though that’s not how I feel. What I want to say is that she should
be
better.

“Yes, Elizabeth,” she says as she pushes off the door and heads for the stairs. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

Another person who is not like Keyon’s dad: Alex.

It turns out he wanted to “talk” so that he could make this earnest, last-ditch plea for me to sleep with him in order to “deepen” and “solidify” our relationship. No puns intended! When I was able to combat my stunned silence and say, “It’s never going to happen,” he actually asked me if I was into girls. Can you believe the nerve? Asking
me
that?

So I guess I didn’t drop my phone; I threw it at him. Then he started to walk away and I said, “This is us breaking up. This is me breaking up with you.”

He said, “No argument here,” without looking back.

It takes me a while to get to sleep again but then I do and then I wake up for real and it is Saturday—and a day off. I wish I had a better way to spend it than hanging around feeling cut off from all my friends but at least my mother is gone and will stay at work all day. I take a
bath, which I hardly ever do anymore, but I figure in college I won’t have the option, so why not? After the water has cooled too much and I can no longer deny how uncomfortable I am in there—who decided the standard size of a bathtub, anyway?—I get out and sit down on the bath mat with a towel around my shoulders, trying to cover every inch of my wet self. I used to do this all the time when I was younger. Back then I pretended the mat was some kind of doomed raft and I was its lone passenger on stormy seas. The memory makes me sort of sad for myself, even though the act of doing it again—silly as it must look now that I’m grown—is oddly comforting.

Down in the kitchen, I fix a bowl of cereal and look at the calendar hanging on the side of the fridge. Still five and a half weeks to go. It feels like college is never going to get here so I take one of my mom’s yellow legal pads off the counter by the phone and start to make a list of what I’m going to pack. I’ve already made a number of similar lists on my phone and my laptop but doing it like this, on paper, makes college—escape—feel real.

The doorbell rings when I’m on number thirteen—
gray hoodie
—and I look down at the skimpy tank and shorts I threw on after my bath and decide to ignore the bell. I’m not expecting anybody and UPS always leaves stuff on the porch without a signature anyway so what’s the point of opening the door so they can
hand
the package to you? But then a minute later my phone dings—a text from Mark. I have to hold the phone at strange angles to read through the slash. The message says
I know you’re in there
.

For a second I get that horror-movie sort of panic. I’m alone. Scantily clad. A creepy guy is at the door. But it’s Mark. He’s the opposite of creepy. I text back
That’s not creepy at all
.

There is a text from Morgan, too:
This sucks. Make up with her already.

I walk to the front door and open it right as Mark is reading my text. He smiles and says, “I should’ve crept over to the kitchen window, right? So you’d look up from your cereal and see maybe one of my eyes peering in at you.”

“That would’ve been better, yes.”

We just stand there, then, and I know I should’ve thrown on a robe or hoodie or something because my tank is sort of loose and I’m not wearing a bra and he seems incapable of not noticing. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to invite him in or what he’s doing here at all. Which reminds me.

“How did you know where I live?”

“Your mom told me.”

“What?” This can’t be good. I’m imagining some kind of scene in which the crazy mistress shows up at the cheating man’s house, maybe throws rocks at the windows until the wife comes over and pushes aside the curtain just in time for the mistress to shout, “I thought you should know your husband is screwing around on you.”

Mark says, “I went by her office and introduced myself and told her I wanted to bring you flowers.” He smiles. “She seemed quite taken by the idea.”

“Did you tell her, like, your last name?”

“Uh, no.”

“Did you mention where you live? Like the street?”

“Uh, no. Why?”

So she can’t know it’s her lover’s son. “Never mind,” I say. “Well, where are they? The flowers?”

He looks away for a minute, then says, “Well, once I was actually
at the flower shop I decided it would be inappropriate to give a girl who has a boyfriend flowers.”

I deflate a bit. But he is here, so that means something. “So then why did you come?”

“Because I feel like you owe me an explanation. Because you shouldn’t have let things go, well, as far as they did. I know I said I’d wait for you to figure it out, but I guess that’s not really working for me.”

I can’t be sure but I think Keyon’s dad would approve of this. Of Mark.

I step back and say, “Will you come in?” So he joins me in the foyer and I close the door behind him.

I am too quiet for too long, figuring out how to explain.

“Take your time.” He stretches exaggeratedly, then leans back against the wall, crosses his arms, and tries hard not to crack a smile. “I have all day.”

I laugh a little and he does, too, and I say, “I’m really sorry. I should have told you. I shouldn’t have gone to the party with you.”

“That’s an apology,” he says. “Not an explanation. But, for the record, apology accepted.”

“Things were bad with my boyfriend so I—”

“Well, then you break up with him. You don’t drag me into it.”

I nod. It’s all so sensible I want to cry.

“I
really
don’t want things to be weird,” he says.

Oh, but they are
, I think.
You have no idea!

Still, I cannot bring myself to tell him about my mother and his father.