The Roommate Situation (16 page)

I put my mouth around him and suck, a hunger welling in me: to have my mouth filled, to fuck with my mouth. My lips hit the side of my hand; I’m holding on just with my thumb and forefinger now, the rest of my fingers splayed over his stomach. I tug at my trapped wrist again, reminding myself that I’m Derek’s toy. I wonder if I could do this with both wrists locked to the bedposts—no hands, no control. I let go of Derek’s shaft and clasp his thigh, trying it out, digging my fingers into his flesh as I concentrate on not scraping him with my teeth.

Swallowing and breathing take attention too. His breaths start coming soft and quick. He grasps my hair.

“I’m gonna come,” he says, half-voice, half-rasp.

Go for it? Pussy out? I grasp his shaft with one hand but keep my mouth around his cock, bobbing my head, pressing my tongue hard against its underside as I fuck him with my lips.

The ocean, slick and slippery, floods my mouth, pooling under my tongue, dribbling out the corner. I pull my mouth off, fast, and tip my head back, closing my eyes, swallowing quickly, then again. Then again as I drop my shoulders against the locker.

“You all right?” he asks, the hand that had been in my hair now on my face.

I nod, then turn my face into his hand. As I say, “I’m good,” my lips drag over his palm.

He kisses me on the head before sitting on my legs, just like how we’d started, only I’m sitting up too, and when I open my eyes, I can look right into his.

A smile—almost bashful—breaks over his face before he laughs and looks away.

The laugh’s contagious. He’s contagious. I twist my fingers in the rumple of his jeans around his thighs.

“Fuck this,” he says, backing off the bed. He shucks his jeans, leaving them in a pile before grasping the bottoms of my chill pants and whisking those off too, leaving us both naked.

He picks up his toothpick from the desk and puts it back between his teeth before he crouches on the floor to dig through his pockets for the key.

I study his leg, the dark hairs on his thigh. The smoothness of his knee.

He turns and unlocks the strap before climbing over me to stretch out between me and the wall. I scoot down until my side’s pressed against his chest, the both of us breathing quietly, nestled together in my narrow bed.

Finally, I say, “I probably am gay.”

“You think about this a lot, don’t you?” His fingers play with my hair.

“I’m just trying to figure it out in my head, figure out who I am. You know?”

“You’re Shane. Shane Hahn. What’s your middle name?”

“Alexander. What’s yours?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He rolls away a little, his shoulder bumping the wall.

“Oh, come on. You can’t leave it at that.” I poke him in the ribs, making him twitch and grab my hand.

“Taltos,” he says finally.

“What?”

“From the Anne Rice books.”

“They named you after a vampire?” I twist so that I’m propped on an elbow, looking down at him.

“The witch books. My mom was seventeen when she had me, and she fancied herself a witch.”

“And your dad went along with that?”

He moves the toothpick to the other side with his tongue. “She told him it was an old family name.”

“Derek Taltos McClain.”

“Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?”

“Um. No.”

We laugh, and Derek says, “No.”

I crawl down the bed to bring the comforter up over us.

Derek leans over me to drop his toothpick on the floor.

I don’t remember much else after that.

Chapter Sixteen

I let myself into the room, my empty laundry basket against my hip. I drop it on the floor, drop my ID on the desk, and drop myself on my stripped-bare mattress. Back home my sheets get changed every Saturday morning. This morning I’d woken up—alone because Derek had already slipped out of bed, showered, and sucked down a few cigarettes outside with a cup of instant coffee—with sex on my mind. Three times already we’d come all over my sheets, not counting what I’d swallowed last night. I figured it was time. That and I’ve run out of towels to clean up with.

Now that I’m back on the bed, I miss my sheets and pillowcase. I’d like to curl up, pull the blankets over my head, and sleep for another hour. What else were Sundays for?

“What are you doing over there?” I call.

“Googling for chiropractors.”

I roll over and peer between our lockers. “Seriously?”

“No, but I should. I have a crick in my neck from trying to sleep two to a single bed. I’m making leg cuffs.”

Leg cuffs. I rest my chin on my arm and watch the part of Derek’s shoulder I can see from where I lie. I really like him. I guess I have Skip to thank for this, which seems kind of shitty. My mom’s always saying God works in mysterious ways, though. Maybe He needed Skip…and threw me a bone for my trouble.

Heh.

Bone.

Derek’s phone rings.

“Hi, Maureen,” he says as I gnaw on my arm, my lips stretching into a smile as I watch him sit back in the chair and push his hand into his hair. “It’s a little late for breakfast, isn’t it? Yeah, sure. All right. See ya.” He sets the phone down and gets up, sliding his jacket off the chair. “You want to go to brunch?”

“What? Now?”

“Yeah, my mom’s leaving today, wants to say good-bye.”

I chew my thumb as his bedsprings groan under his weight. He’s pulling on his boots.

“You didn’t ask if it was all right if I came,” I say.

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t ask me before doing things either. You coming or not? It’s not every day you get to see the circus.”

I sit up, wondering what I have clean to wear. “I’m sure she’s not that bad.”

“I guess you’ll have to come and see for yourself.”

It feels like he’s leaning a little hard on my coming along, and probably not because he’s dying for me to meet his mom.

It’s not like I’m going to say no; if nothing else, it means I get to spend the rest of the morning sitting next to Derek. I’m up for that.

He puts the spare helmet in my hand when I’ve gotten as far as a pair of jeans and a belt. “
All right
,” I say, grinning. The promise of a ride far outweighs the weirdness of meeting my boyfriend’s mother.

It’s a gorgeous morning, but the café isn’t far enough away to really enjoy the ride—it feels like almost as soon as we’ve gotten up to a decent speed, he’s downshifting and pulling into a lot alongside a purple cinderblock building.

I pull my helmet off and follow him to the doors.

The place has an artsy vibe, the tables all different colors, the chairs mismatched like they’d been picked up at yard sales. Window panes hang from the ceiling, birds and yellow daisies painted on them, making me think of Derek’s girlfriend. Ancient history. And I think, if they hadn’t broken up, Derek might not have come to this college, studied chemistry, and wound up in just the right room at the just the right time. So thank you, Selena. Another person who’s done me a favor without meaning to.

I wonder if Selena had met his mother. I wonder if his mother had liked her.

The place is semibusy, mostly families come to visit students, a few groups of locals here and there. Only one woman is seated by herself at table, but I dismiss her as a possibility for Derek’s mom, with her neat auburn bob cut and fitted blouse. I’m expecting hippie hair and flowery, loose-fitting clothes.

But her face breaks out in a smile when she sees Derek—and then her eyebrows rise a little as she registers me following behind.

“Mom, my roommate, Shane. Shane, my mother, Maureen.”

“You just referred to me as mom twice in one sentence,” she says, beaming, throwing an arm around him while he stoops a little to give her a one-armed hug back.

“Technically that was two sentences,” he says.

“One sentence, two sentences. Hello, Shane, it’s nice to meet you. Sit, sit! Take a menu.” She’s smiling again, her face tanned. She looks younger than my mom, but that’s no surprise—my parents finished their bachelors’ before they got married; then they waited until my dad had his master’s before having a kid.

“So where are you off to this time?” Derek asks, sliding the menu toward me.

“Portland.” She smiles again.

“Maine or Oregon?”

“Oregon. I’m ready to be out west again. The beautiful edge of the world.”

“The world’s more or less round,” he says. “No edges. I know because you bought me that globe once.”

“You loved that globe.”

He shrugs. I picture him sitting cross-legged on the floor, spinning the globe, putting a finger down to stop it turning, seeing where he randomly ends up.

“Did you know,” his mother’s saying, “that the University of Portland has an excellent chemistry program?”

“Good for them, I guess?”

“What are you studying, Shane?” She turns her eyes to me. They’re green, flecked with gray, nothing like Derek’s.

“Uh, economics. So far. I think.”

“It sounds like economics may be a no, then,” she says.

“I’m still adjusting to college life.”

“Oh? You’re not in the same year?” She looks from one of us to the other. As if I look old enough to be a junior.

“So what’s in Portland?” Derek asks, tapping the bottom of a fork on the table.

“Well, I guess you’ll find out when you get there.” She beams again.

“Expecting me for Christmas break?”

“Well, that, and I was thinking maybe if you liked it…”

He draws his eyebrows down. “No, thanks. I like it here.”

“Oh, Derek, it’s gorgeous. You just can’t imagine. And I was thinking, isn’t it about time we really got to know each other?” She clasps his elbow across the table. “We’ve spent all these years apart.”

“That wasn’t my doing.” He leans back, spinning a menu toward himself.

“I know. I know. But see, that’s exactly what I mean. We don’t know each other at all, so how could you understand?” Her fingers rub the leather of his sleeve. The collar of her shirt spreads open a little as she leans forward. I can see the edge of a tattoo there, the tail feathers of a bird, maybe.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says. “I know you. Different hair this time, but always the same old story, right?” He slips an unlit cigarette between his teeth just as the waitress comes up.

“Smoking’s not allowed,” is the first thing she says, but she says it almost regretfully. “State law.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m not staying.”

“Derek,” his mom says.

“Why would I go to Portland with you? I’m in the middle of a semester. I like my school. I like it here.”

I like that he likes it here. I realize I’ve been holding my breath, trying to figure out what I’d do if he left for Oregon. Already. So soon.

The waitress is standing at my shoulder, and I should order something, but I’m pinned to the conversation.

“You wouldn’t come right now,” his mom says. “I need to get a place, get us set up. Come over winter break. We can spend Christmas together. Then you can decide. You don’t have to stay if you don’t like it, but if you did…”

“There’s nothing to decide. Why would I want to move to Portland?” He leans forward. “When you come up with stuff in your head, do other people ever occur to you at all?”

“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all.”

“I’ll just come back,” the waitress says quietly. I glance up at her, the both of us spectators, and she’s already leaving.

“Last I checked,” Derek says, “I was paying my bills. I get to decide where I live.”

“Honey, I can help with that. I have some money saved up, and I’ll get a job in Portland. It’ll be cheaper than living in the dorms—”

“I ain’t asking for help.” His chair scrapes back. “If you wanted to help, you’d have helped Dad when he was taking care of me on his own.”

She straightens, her hands dropping to her lap, where they clutch each other. “I wasn’t making money then. Dave was in a better position to take care of you. He had your grandmother, your uncle. I was on my own.”

“Shyeah. Because you left!” His chair bucks back another few inches, his hands pressing the table.

“Derek, that’s not fair.”

“You want to make lists of things that are unfair? I don’t think that’s a road you want to fucking go down.”

The lines around her mouth deepen; she gains ten years just sitting there. The room feels like a shadow’s fallen over it. The waitress has completely disappeared. No one around us seems to be aware of what’s going on at our table.

Derek’s mother says, “You’re the spitting image of your father, you know? It could be him twenty years ago sitting across from me.”

He scrapes his thumb over the rough wheel of his cigarette lighter, watching her.

She says, “I just wish I could see even a little piece of me in you. Just one glimmer.”

“You want to see a piece of you in me?” His eyebrows are raised.

I swallow. I have no idea where this is going, but this is not the most fun circus I’ve ever been to.

“I can show you what you look like in me,” Derek says. “Are you watching?”

“Derek,” she says.

His chair scrapes as he stands. “Here you go. This is you. You watching?”

He walks away from us.

I glance toward his mom, whose chin is trembling a little, then back at Derek, his shoulders silhouetted by the sun streaming through the front windows. He pops an arm out to shove open the door.

To his mom, I say, “Sorry,” and I get up quickly, following after him.

By the time I get outside, he has his cigarette lit. He’s just throwing a leg over his bike.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Get on.”

He sucks down a third of his cigarette while I get my helmet strapped on and get situated behind him, my hands on his hips. My arms are shaky. I’m not sure why.

He flicks the butt into the parking lot, flips down his visor, and fires his bike up.

The ride back to campus is just as quick as the ride here. He pulls up along the sidewalk. As I climb off, he says, “I’m gonna ride awhile.”

“Sure. I’ll see you when you get back.”

He pulls away, engine roaring.

I head for the dining hall, my appetite up now that I’ve sat in a restaurant without getting to touch any food.