Roomies (9 page)

Late that night, with two fresh paper cuts incurred during the hour of filing I did at the insurance company after closing the sandwich shop, I type out a slightly condensed version of the party story to Ebb. I even write a little bit about Keyon being black and how this city is pretty diverse but he was my first nonwhite kiss. Not that I have a zillion kisses to compare it to. Only seven. Maybe eight? And that’s counting all the fifth- and sixth-grade mashed-lip quickies. Zero in recent memory.

Rankings-wise, Keyon’s was pretty good, I have to say. Pretty damn good. Maybe that’s reflective of my poor control group but… no. Scientifically and objectively, Keyon knows how to kiss a girl. Me.

Then I read it all over and think I sound like an overdramatic idiot, and possibly racist. What if she’s not white and something I say offends her and she opens some kind of discrimination case against me and I become the most hated student in Berkeley?

So I delete and start over.

Hey EB,

Fighting with friends is the worst. I’d rather put up with almost anything than fight. Suffer in silence, that’s my motto!

Kidding. Sort of. Zoe and I don’t really fight. We bicker and annoy each other and give each other “space.” Then it’s cool.

I did go to the party. Too many people and I’m not a fan of huge crowds. Nothing really to report except Zoe overdid the martinis and I had to drive us home and I’m not great with a stick shift. Maybe we can get my best friend and your best friend together to drink (or go to rehab).

So the party. I probably should have stayed home and gotten some sleep. I can always use more sleep. Wow, I sound old. Sorry! I guess I’m feeling kinda… ugh-ish. Sorry again. Downerville! Depression Central! Haha! Okay, sorrrrrry. Sorry for saying sorry over and over.

Attached with this is a link to a song that sort of cheers me up when I’m feeling this way. The video is stupid. (I mean why does it have to be a video inside a video? Why can’t it just be a video?) But the song is pretty good. Zoe likes this band ever since seeing some documentary about them and she thinks the singer guy is hot. Or he was whenever they recorded this. He’s probably like a
hundred now.

Anyway it’s a good song if you’re in a fight with your friend. But I hope it’s over soon. Your fight, I
mean.

Hope work is going well and all that.

—Lauren

TUESDAY, JULY 16

NEW JERSEY

Something about Lauren’s e-mail, which I wake up to, makes me wish there were no time difference and that we already knew each other so that I could pick up the phone and call her. Because I click the link and see that it’s a video for “We Used to Be Friends” by the Dandy Warhols—which was the
Veronica Mars
theme song—and I suddenly want to know if she ever saw the show, which my mom and I once watched like crazy people over the course of a long, rainy weekend. Also, Lauren’s starting to sound sort of, I don’t know, nice? And thoughtful. Not like do-nice-things-for-you thoughtful—I don’t see her baking me cookies or anything—but meaning, she is
full of thought
. I like people who think. Who examine things from all the angles. That’s probably why she’s so good at science.

My mother is clearly not a great thinker, as evidenced by the fact that there is a man in the kitchen with her. He is having “a quick one”—and thankfully he’s referring to a cup of coffee—before catching his “flight home…
if you know what I mean.
”

I’m overhearing this all from my perch at the top of the stairs,
where I have so far been unsuccessful at getting a look at him, this married man who says “I hope to” when my mother flirtily says, “And do you travel for work a lot?”

I try to picture his wife, his family if he has one, and imagine them thinking that he is on an airplane, or in some dreary Marriott somewhere, when really he is here. In my house. Having spent the night. With my pathetic mother, who is
charmed
by the fact that he’s running around with her behind another woman’s back. I get to wondering what kind of clueless wife wouldn’t know that her husband was having an affair. Maybe one who had something of her own going on? Would that make what my mother was doing any less morally reprehensible? And am I doomed to be some kind of cheating soul, too, because I was spawned from two cheaters? (Yes, supposedly my dad cheated on my mom. “With a man!” she always says, like that makes it worse, but I don’t really think it does. Betrayal is betrayal.)

I get the sense that these are questions that someone like Lauren might actually understand, might even ponder along with me.

I go back to my room to hide until he’s gone. Her, too.

I spend most of the week hiding, really. From my mother. From Justine, and Alex, and the rest of the six-pack. Even from Tim, who has me doing a bunch of nursery runs and solo check-ins on gardens we did last summer. I like seeing how a garden has started to grow into itself after a full cycle of seasons, seeing the way plants start to find their own way toward the sun and to mingle with each other, or not.

Friday I have no choice but to go back to Mark’s house, on Tim’s orders, to see how the gardens are faring, and whether the mulch
borders got muddied at all by a big rain we had. I’ve been avoiding Mark, too. Which is all tied up in why I’m also avoiding answering Lauren’s e-mail. It’s not like she even asked how the party was; I just feel like I should tell her about it, and I don’t want to lie by omission. But what is she going to think of me if I tell her that I kissed a guy I barely know even though I already have a boyfriend? Did I even tell her I have a boyfriend? What does it mean if I didn’t?

And I mean, I
really
kissed him. And it was so lovely and intense that just thinking about it again makes me a little woozy.

He’s home, of course. And when I’m pulling dead leaves off a few annuals on the border of the garden—mostly pansies, with their weirdly sad sort of smiley faces—he comes right over and says, “Hey.”

I look up and then stand and my knees feel weak.

“Where’ve you been?” He has sunglasses on so I can’t really read him. “I texted you. Multiple times this week.”

“Oh.” I push some hair out of my face and say, “Yeah, I saw those.”

I haven’t stopped looking at them, in fact. One said,
That was nice.
Another said,
Better than nice
. The last two were
Can I see you again?
and
If so, when?

He laughs. “Oh, you did, did you?”

I laugh, too, because it’s honestly kind of funny how bad I am at this.

“So you saw them.” He nods fake-seriously. “That’s good. ’Cause you know it’s not like you’re supposed to, I don’t know,
text back
or anything. That would be crazy.” He waves his hands in a gesture to mean crazy, palms out and shaking. Then he’s smiling and waiting.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I’m about to add, “I have a boyfriend.” But
then a car pulls into the driveway, the same sort of car that was parked in my driveway earlier that morning, and Mark’s dad gets out and Mark says, “I thought your flight got in later,” and the dad says, “Caught an earlier one but have to drive down to Philly for an overnight,” and it all clicks.

His voice in my kitchen that morning.

Money manager. Hedge fund manager. Wall Street type.

Then his father says, “Hi, are you a friend of Mark’s?” and I nod and he gives me a small wave. I can’t be sure I’m breathing.

Mark turns back to me when his father goes inside and says, “I had fun the other night and I think you did, too.”

He’s right. I did. I had more fun with him than maybe I’ve ever had with anyone. And it didn’t have anything to do with the party or even the kissing. After realizing we weren’t mingling or trying to, we went down to the bay and found two Adirondack chairs and talked about who our friends were, maybe trying to find people in common but not coming up with any, then moved on to things like the dumbest movies we’d ever seen or the world’s most overrated songs. For what felt like hours, we played this game where we thought up funny last words, like “These wild berries are absolutely delicious” or “I can totally jump over to that building.” Then after that, we were quiet together, skipping stones on the bay. That was when he turned to me out of nowhere and put his arms around me and kissed me and I felt, for once, like everything was going to be okay. More than okay, even. Maybe actually good. But none of that matters anymore. His dad and my mom made sure of that.

“I want to see you again.” Mark’s smile is so easy and real that it hurts to look at. “I mean, I know I’m seeing you right now, but I mean, I want to
see
you, see you.”

“I have a boyfriend,” I blurt.

He jolts like I’ve kicked him in the gut and then he tilts his head and says, “I don’t understand.”

And I just say, “Sorry,” and walk toward my car.

“Elizabeth,” he calls out after me, and, for a second, I regret not making him call me EB because it all sounds so dramatic and serious now. Then even though I shouldn’t—because what’s the point—I turn.

He says, “I can wait.”

“For what?” I’m definitely going to cry.

“For you.” He starts to back away and he still looks sort of confused and wounded and like he’s trying to shake the feeling off. His voice is softer, more tentative, when he says, “For you to figure it out.”

I only drive a block before I pull over and have a good cry. I want to call my mother and scream at her. I want to call Justine and apologize about missing her birthday and tell her the whole messy story, but we still haven’t talked and, well, I’m still miffed about the prude comment. I wish, again, that I could call Lauren and let it all out but what would she think of
this
? Mostly, I want to turn around and drive back to Mark’s house and tell
him
about the mess—tell him he’s in it, too—but then he wouldn’t ever want to be with me anyway, and how could he? And all of this thinking about who to tell what, makes me wish there were
one person
I could share everything—all of me, all my shit—with and that I weren’t stuck trying to cobble together some kind of (groan) “support system” out of this bunch of random people in my life. Sometimes, when I feel so adrift, so like that balloon
slipping away, I wonder if it’s my father’s fault. If his leaving
did this
. Did this to me.

My phone buzzes and I reach for it and hope it’s a text from Mark but it’s an alert from my calendar, something I’ve set up to notify me of how many days I’ve got left: forty. I wonder, if I told Lauren everything that was going on, whether I could go out there early, maybe stay with her and her five sibs. They’d hardly even notice if there was someone else bunking in their house.

Or, I don’t know, would it be crazy to ask my dad? Doesn’t he owe me that much? A place to crash for a few weeks before college? Because I can’t possibly be around my mother
or
Mark now that I know what’s going on.

Alex calls right then and I pick up. I can’t avoid everybody forever.

“We need to talk,” he says, and I say, “You’re right. We do.”

I shoot off an e-mail before heading to meet him on the beach.

Dear Lauren,

Things are crazy here. So crazy I don’t even think you’d believe me if I told you. I will suffer in silence like you, at least until we meet, and then I will inevitably bore you with all the gory details. Right now I’m going to meet my boyfriend to “talk.” Did I even mention I had a boyfriend? I do. Sort of. For about six months. Or did. I have a feeling he’s breaking up with me. He’s the one who wants to “talk.” I’m not sure I care. Ugh. Do you have a boyfriend? Wish me luck.

—EB

PS Almost forgot! Love that video. LOVED Veronica Mars. Do you know it?

PPS Also good job on the scholarship! Been meaning to say that!