Roomies (24 page)

The situation with Keyon does sound confusing. (And yes, the necklace is a nice reminder that Mark reciprocates how I feel about him, and since I have this idea that we’re permanently connected now, at least I’ll always have this tangible reminder of the fact that it was… lovely? (Not to get all British sounding on your arse.) I’ve actually been trying for a while now to think of a present for him because “Buy each other a present” was on that list we made of stuff to do this summer. Now I feel more pressure. I even went to the mall with Justine and Morgan, but I came home empty-handed. (My ex, Alex, was there with another girl. It’s funny how little it bothered me. I wonder how things would be different if I didn’t have Mark.)

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME!

I don’t know. In the friends with benefits scenario there is the friends bit and then the benefits bit. In the boyfriend/girlfriend scenario, it seems like there’s sort of this third element, the swoony bit that has you thinking about stuff like getting married and all that jazz, right? So, for example, handholding is, perhaps, a clue as to more than just benefits? I am not sure, though. I’ve never been in a friends with benefits scenario.

My mother’s affair has ended. He stopped calling her. No explanation. (Classy, right?) Thankfully, she seems to be taking it in stride. Which makes my life officially, well, drama free! Thank God for that. I think I’ve seriously had enough drama this summer to last a lifetime. I want to turn off the Soap Opera Network now please.

Being an only child isn’t so hot, trust me. I’d kill for a sibling because, for example, when my mom’s old and senile I’m the only one who’s going to be around to play bingo with her in the nursing home.

—EB

Yes: A swimsuit. (Just in case?)

No: Winter parka. (Right?)

Maybe: I was strangely drawn to this noise machine I saw at the mall. Could come in handy if our dorm neighbors party hard… or if you snore.

(Do you snore?)

(I really hope you don’t snore.)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9

SAN FRANCISCO

It’s 3
AM
-ish. Sleep is not happening. And not just because P.J. snores.

It’s been a somewhat shitty week.

Things have felt weird with Keyon. The weirdness is coming from me, I know, not him. I haven’t handled it right. I’ve actually been kind of a jerk, answering his e-mails with really short replies like—
Sorry so busy! More later!
—then not writing more later. At work, I’ve run away from any moment we might have alone, any opening for a real conversation. He’s asked me to go places this week, to check out some Goodwills, to take a run around the polo field, or otherwise hang out, and I’ve been claiming responsibilities at home. Which I no longer actually have.

What I
actually
have is plenty of time on my hands. To think.

And a lot of this waking up at night and staring into the dark, like now, listening to my sisters breathe and snore, to the L rumble down the hill, to the occasional car drive by. Mostly to my own thoughts.

I want to go online and delete my entire e-mail in-box, cancel my account, toss the laptop off the Golden Gate Bridge. E-mail is nothing but trouble. Without it, I would be walking into my dorm room in a couple of weeks and meeting a total stranger and starting with a clean slate, instead of knowing about her sex life, and her mom’s sex life, and her emotional life, and everything else.

And I wouldn’t be in the position of having to decide whether or not to relay the news flash: Her father is not in Italy.

Of course that wasn’t e-mail’s fault. That was my own fantastic idea to go to his stupid gallery and open this complicated can of worms.

I turn over onto my belly and smash my face into my pillow.

Why do people lie?

My little brothers and sisters lie so they won’t get in trouble. But they’re kids, it’s natural, and they always wind up telling the truth because they feel so guilty you can see it all over their faces. When you get older and smarter, when you’re not six, don’t you figure out that lying only causes more hassle, more anger, more hurt?

One thing I can say about myself: I am usually a pretty honest person. I mean, I’ll tell someone they look nice when them needing to hear it outweighs the truth factor. And, okay, I’ve lied once or twice about homework status or something to teachers. But about the important things, the things involving people’s emotions and their lives and their concept of who I am and who they are, I try to keep it true. My parents have always been honest with me that way, and I guess it rubbed off. Which is why it’s driving me crazy knowing I need to tell Ebb about going to her dad’s gallery, and about him being there.

I need to be straight with Keyon, too, because avoiding him is another kind of a lie, a sin of omission, my grandma would say when she’s feeling all spiritual and Catholic. I need to face Keyon and talk about what this is, so that two weeks from now we’re not suddenly discovering that one of us thinks it’s something with real potential and the other of us thinks it’s merely a hookup.

And while I’m at it I should stop lying to myself. Because I know we passed hookup when his parents had me over for dinner. And that kiss at the gallery.

That kiss.

The memory of it is about to turn my early-morning worry into something more enjoyable, some Lauren time, when P.J. wakes herself up with an especially loud snore. The outline of her little body sits upright. She’s disoriented, I can tell, and I know she’s scared of the dark. I go to her before the wailing can start.

“Hey, Peej,” I whisper, and put my arm around her. “It’s okay.”

She nuzzles her warm head into me without saying anything. I slip under the covers with her and we lie back down, my nose against her hair, which is unbelievably soft and smells like baby shampoo.

Such a beautiful, simple thing.

I turn my nose away, because I think if I catch another whiff, I’m going to cry.

“I’ll miss you, Peej.”

But she’s already fallen back asleep.

Dealing with the Keyon issue seems the easier of the two things I have to face, since it’s in person and immediate. As I hurtle my way toward the sandwich shop on the Hell Taraval, I promise myself I will not avoid this, or him, one more day. I should be using this time to work out what I’m going to say, but I can’t get Ebb’s stupid father off my mind. What possible reason could he have for telling her he’s in Italy when he’s not? What kind of a parent would do that?

I’ve had the thought all week that it could be Ebb who’s lying. Maybe despite her claims of not wanting drama, telling me her dad is in Italy is some way to make her life seem more dramatic and exciting than it is. Maybe her mom never was seeing her boyfriend’s married dad. Maybe there is no boyfriend, and no virginity, or no loss thereof.

Maybe
she is a psycho-compulsive-liar-roomie who is going to stab me in my sleep some night.

I’m grasping, I know. Trying to rationalize the option of pretending like I don’t know anything about her dad, and pulling the plug on the friendship before it really gets started.

When I walk into the sandwich shop, Keyon is helping an early customer and barely glances at me. I go in the back to stow my messenger bag and put on my apron, and find Joe racking the bakery delivery. Despite my promise to myself not to delay, I’ve got cold feet and tie my apron as slowly as possible while I watch Joe work.

I wonder if Keyon will look like his dad when he’s older. If he’ll have that ashy gray hair around his sideburns, and if his cut abs will give way to the comforting little paunch, like Joe’s.

“Need help?” I ask.

Joe turns, a loaf of rye in each hand. “You can help me with my son.”

“Um, okay?”

“Found him in the kitchen at four this morning, halfway up to his elbows in my Cherry Garcia.”

I wait. Keyon was awake when I was awake, in the wee hours, both of us thinking our thoughts.

“No one eats my Cherry Garcia. Unless it’s an emergency.” Joe racks the rye, and when he turns around I’m there to hand him two more loaves.

“Did he… say what this emergency was?”

“Didn’t have to.”

We move on to the sliced sourdough. I remain silent. Because what can I say? It’s complicated. And I don’t know if I should even be talking about it with Keyon’s dad.

“I’m not tryin’ to take sides,” he says. “Maybe you two changed your minds or what have you, or he did something stupid. Just don’t let it fester.” Joe turns back to the bread rack. “The longer it festers, the more I gotta spend on ice cream.”

I hand him two more loaves of bread, then go out front. Keyon is washing his hands.

“Your dad is really worried about his Cherry Garcia supply,” I say, sidling up to him at the sink. My stomach is kind of churny.

“What?” He reaches for a paper towel and dries off. I watch his face. He really does look bothered about our lack of communication. The way a boyfriend would.

“I miss when we were making business plans for our Mr. Potato Head empire.”

I meant to make him laugh, I guess, or lighten the mood, but he’s still got that bothered look on his face when he says, “So you wanna go back to being… friends?”

And I realize that’s exactly what it sounded like. “No. I mean, that’s not what I meant.” I turn on the water and wash my hands while Keyon watches. I think about his hands, and his hand holding mine, and how I like the way his skin looks next to mine, and about that very first kiss, in Yasmin Adibi’s yard.

“You meant you’re leaving in a couple weeks and so am I. I know. It’s…” He kind of kicks his toe into the rubber floor mat. “It’s bunk, is what it is.”

Honestly, he looks like he could cry. It stops my heart for a second, and it occurs to me: Maybe Key is going through the same stuff I am, about leaving home and saying good-bye—not only to each other, if that’s what we do, but to everything that’s always been the way it is for him. The sandwich shop, the hallway in his house with the pictures of him and his brother goofing around, his mom’s cooking, his dad’s gentle sort of toughness and rightness.

I put my arms around him in a hug, my hands still wet. He holds me tight and doesn’t let go until we both hear the conspicuous throat-clearing of a customer.

EB,

Nineteen days.

Wow. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling now. I mean for me it’s only going across the Bay. I can’t even begin to know what it would be like to go even a few more hours further. Farther. Further?

Delete. Delete. Delete.

It feels disingenuous to make my usual small talk before I drop the bomb.

After work, Keyon and I sat in the back of the sandwich shop and split a piece of cheesecake and I told him about the whole Ebb situation. He thought for a minute, then asked, “Would you want to know, if you were her?”

“Yeah,” I said instantly.

He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “For real? Think about it. Think about how low that is. Your own dad telling a huge-ass lie that basically says: ‘I don’t want you.’ Think about how it’s gonna feel to her.”

I shook my head. “I know it’s going to suck. But I hate secrets.” I met his eyes, his warm eyes. “That’s something to know about me, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “It is known.”

Then we looked into each other’s eyes and made contact. I don’t mean eye contact. Something more. Communication. Like the kiss at the gallery. Telling me: This is not friends who make out, if I still had any question about that. This is more. “Here’s a secret,” I said, my heart hammering, and hammering again now to remember it. “I like you.”

He smiled, dazzling but somehow shy, and after a second, said, “That ain’t a secret, Lo.”

We grinned some more, and finished our cheesecake, feet touching under the table. Eventually we stopped making googly eyes at each other and I said, “I have to tell her. I just do.”

I start the e-mail again:

EB,

So I have to tell you something. I thought actually this might be better said over the phone but then I thought it’s nice to have some time to think about how to react and stuff. You might be really mad at me. Just… don’t shoot the messenger, okay? If I were you I think I would want to know this.