The Roommate Situation (20 page)

“He seemed like the keep-to-himself type,” she says. “Quiet. Socially awkward, you know? I hope he’s doing well in his new room. I’m just going to warm up these potatoes again.”

“I think we’re done with the potatoes, Margaret,” Dad says.

“I’ll just give them a quick warm-up. Can I get anybody anything while I’m up?”

“Dad,” I say while she bends to slide the potatoes in the oven.

He looks over, brows raised.

“Does she have an Off button?”

He looks at me a second longer, then throws back his head and laughs.

“What’s so funny?” she says, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

“Can I be excused?” I ask.

“I thought we were going to play rummy after this.”

“I thought I’d go for a walk first.”

“Well, hang on. Your dad and I can go too. Walk off all these carbs.”

Great
. “Fine. I’m just going to go the bathroom first.”

“Okay, honey. Are you finished with your plate?”

In the bathroom, I shut the door and sit fully dressed on the toilet lid, my phone in my hands.
Help
, I text Derek.

What are they doing now? Roasting you over a spit?

Insisting on joining me on a walk. I’m holed up in the bathroom.

How’s the surf?
he asks.

Dismal. And we have gin rummy planned for later.

Before Derek has a chance to respond, I tap in,
Please tell me you’re filing your grandmother’s bunions or something equally horrifying.

Nah. Just hanging out watching
Looper.

I hate you.

Sorry.

Pots and dishes clatter on the other side of the wall, accompanied by the rise and fall of my mother’s voice.

Enjoy the movie
, I send before slipping the phone into my pocket. I nearly slip it back out to type,
By tonight it’ll be the longest I’ve gone without sex since I started having sex
, but with my luck, I’d come crawling out of my room in the morning, squinting in the sun and rubbing my hair, only to be stopped dead by my mom and dad gathered around my glowing phone screen.

I flush the toilet, wash my hands, and let myself back out into my “vacation.”

“Oh, there you are. I’m almost finished with this. Franklin, why don’t you get your shoes on?”

I drop onto the couch and tip my head back, staring at the rattan blades of the unmoving ceiling fan.

“Are you warm, honey?” she calls from the other side of the kitchen counter.

“I’m fine.”

“There. Let me just change out of my house shoes, and we’ll go.”

I roll my head toward my dad as he comes out of the bedroom, shrugging into a light cardigan.

“Want to go to a movie tonight?” he asks.

Instead of hanging with you guys?
“Sure, I guess.”

“It’s that or get dragged into charades,” he says as he buttons his sweater.

“Oh God, no.”

“All right,” Mom says. “Let’s go. Maybe the sun will come out while we’re walking.”

As we make our way toward the door, the phone buzzes. I reach for my pocket instinctively, but Dad already has his out.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I have to take this.”

“Frank. It’s a holiday weekend.”

“Not for everybody. I’ll catch up.”

I glance back as I pull the door closed. He puts the phone to his ear long enough to say, “Just a second,” before giving me a little nod to go on. I draw a deep breath and let it out slowly.

At least I don’t have to do much talking. She has plenty to tell me about the arts fair she went to last weekend. All I have to do is kick pebbles along the sidewalk and make the appropriate polite noises.

* * * *

“So who would you say you spend the most time with at college?” she asks over tea and Fig Newtons Saturday night. I could swear we’ve covered this already. “I imagine your friends with girlfriends are spending a lot of their time with their girlfriends.”

“Yeah. I see Pete less than before he hooked up, I guess.” I’ve never liked Fig Newtons. I wash down the bite that’s stuck in my throat with a swig of hot tea.

“But you don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Nope.”

“You don’t need the distraction anyway,” she says.

“I met
you
in college,” Dad says.

I find it hard to even picture that, my parents as young, single people, flirting, courting.

Leaning in conspiratorially, she says to me, “And you wouldn’t believe the distraction I had to create to get his attention.” She laughs and squeezes my arm. “Isn’t that right, Franklin? Always with his nose in one book or another.”

“I guess I hang out with Derek the most,” I say.

“I guess you’re around him the most since you share a room. Do you ever go to the library to study?”

“Only if they have something I can’t get online.” I pinch the rest of the cookie between my thumb and forefinger till it crumbles.

“What kind of family life does Derek come from? Are his parents together?”

“No.”

“So he was raised by his mother?”

That’d be something.

She says, “What?”

I shake my head. “She’s a little…unreliable. He grew up with his dad and uncle.”

“Well, that explains some things.”

“What things?” I ask.

“The motorcycle and the leather jacket and the smoking.”

“Of course. Because no man ever raised by his mother smoked a cigarette.”

Her eyebrows arch. “Have you?”

“Once. Not thanks to Derek,” I’m quick to add, though the way her brain stores information, she’s almost definitely already put a mark in Derek’s column:
Influenced my son to try smoking
. You watch—when I’m forty, she’s going to say,
And that college roommate of yours, trying to turn you into a smoker too
. I say, “Jamie swiped one from his aunt’s purse. We both threw up.” Not that that put Jamie off them.

“You know why you threw up, don’t you? That stuff is pure poison.”

“And I didn’t like it, so I never bothered with it again,” I finish.

“Good. What’s unstable about Derek’s mother? Is it a mental illness? Substance abuse?”

“I didn’t say
unstable
. I said
unreliable
. She’s flighty, always moving around. She wanted Derek to move out to Oregon with her last time she visited.”

“Oregon—I hear it’s pretty out there. He didn’t want to go?”

“He was in the middle of a semester. He’s in the middle of a degree.”
He’s got a boyfriend here
. “He likes where he is.”

“Well. That makes sense, I guess. I hope you know how fortunate you are.”

“In what way?” I ask, because I’m thinking a motorcycle, a leather jacket, and parents who get off my fucking back wouldn’t be the most unfortunate things ever.

“That your parents are still married. That you have a good, solid foundation of support at home. That we care about you and wouldn’t let you go running around with cigarettes and motorbikes.”

“Derek has a good, solid foundation of support. He has his dad and his uncle—”

“It’s not the same. You’ll see that one day. He’s doing very well considering the circumstances, but being raised by a single parent, without his mother as a stable figure in his life—”

“Again with the
stable
. I never said she was unstable. And at least his parents don’t force their decisions on him and pretend he’s onboard with it.” My gut drops a little as the words come out. I’m going to pay for this.

She says, “And look what it leads to.”

“What? A three-point-eight GPA while he runs his own business to help pay for school?”

“You don’t have to worry about paying—”

“Gaining valuable experience that looks good on a résumé? That’s what his résumé will say:
ran a business for four years while going to school full time
. What’s mine going to say?
Studied
?”

“We should certainly talk about volunteer opportunities, and you’ll get a chance to do an internsh—”

“I want to volunteer to be in a band.” I cross my arms.

“Shane,” she says.

“Now, we’ve talked about this,” Dad says. “You finish your semester, and let’s see what kind of grades you’re making before you start spreading yourself around.”

“Oh, it’s all right to play foosball and video games, but God forb—”

“You can imagine,” my mother says, her voice brittle as a crystal flute, “that I would rather you were not spending your free time in a dark room slaughtering imaginary bad guys, but I sat there quietly and let it go when you mentioned it.”

“Very big of you.”

“Shane Alexander.” My dad pushes back his chair.

“I just want my guitar. Why is that so hard? You’d think I was asking you to let me do crack.”

“You have finals coming up,” Dad says. “You need to be studying for those. You get one chance at those.” He taps his finger, hard, against the table. “One chance, and that’s your grade; that’s what goes down on your record.”

Mom squeezes my arm, making me flinch a little. “You’ll be coming home for Christmas break soon anyway. You can play your guitar all you want then.”

Notice how it’s “play your guitar,” not “get your guitar.” I shove my chair back, its legs bumping over the tiled floor. “Jesus Christ.”

“Shane!” Dad says.

“And economics sucks, by the way.”

“I think we need a little cooling-off,” Mom says.

“Oh, here we go.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” my dad asks.

“This happens every time. You guys say we need a little cooling-off—by which you mean
me
—and then the next day, you sit me down and tell me how you’ve decided it’ll be.”

My mother says, “You are always welcome—and encouraged—to voice your side. But when you resort to profanity and raising your voice, then yes, I do think a cooling-off is in order.”

“I’m gonna cool the fuck off at the beach.” I grab my phone off the arm of the couch. My dad starts to move in my direction, but my mother puts a hand on his arm.

I slam the door on my way out.

* * * *

They’re asleep when I let myself in, or at least the door to their room is closed and the light’s off. I grab the last piece of store-bought pumpkin pie from the fridge and a glass of milk and shut myself in the other bedroom.

In the morning, after letting me sleep till nearly ten, Mom pops her head in to remind me to check the dresser drawers to make sure I’m not leaving anything behind. I haven’t even opened the dresser drawers.

“And eat the last bagel, please, so we don’t have to throw it away.”

I shower, throw on clothes, stuff my belongings back into two bags—the one I brought from school and the one Mom brought from home with my “beach stuff” in it. Then I plant myself on the couch with my phone until Mom’s double- and triple-checked all five rooms in the rental. Finally we’re ready to get on the road.

“Who’s driving first?” she asks, feigning cheer as I drop my bags into the trunk. “Shane?”

“I don’t care.” I open the back door and drop into the leather seat.

When she opens the passenger door, instead of sitting down, she leans in, one hand grasping the headrest on her seat, her French nails digging into the headrest. “It’s the last day of our holiday weekend. You can spend it being sour, or you can have an enjoyable trip back to school. It is entirely your choice.”

“I’m going to play
Angry Birds
,” I say.

“Did you remember to pack your phone charger?”

“Yes, Mom.”

She kneads the sides of her sweater as if trying to ascertain whether something is in its pockets. “I think I’m going to check the house one more time.”

Dad, in the driver’s seat, lets out a quiet sigh.

I push my earbuds in. If Dad is about to take this opportunity to have a man-to-man, father-to-son talk, he’s going to be doing it minus the other half of the construction.

By the time we stop for an early dinner, I’m mostly over wishing they’d fall into a bottomless pit—over it enough to put up with being chattered at while I eat my burger—but I still don’t have anything to say to them.

When they drop me off behind Quaid, the sky is already darkening. I tolerate a good-bye hug and participate in the usual businesslike handshake, with my one bag—the one I’d brought—thrown over my shoulder.

I don’t stand on the sidewalk to watch them pull away. I hear their doors shut as I round the building. Craning my neck, I check the windows of my room. Dark. Maybe Derek’s grabbing a cigarette, or something to eat. Maybe he’s not even back yet.

I flip on the light. The lockers are closed, the beds made. Not even a dent where Derek might have set his bag when he came in. So…not back yet. Fine. I drop my bag by my locker and throw myself on my bed, facedown, one arm hanging off the side. All I’d done all day was sleep, sit in a car, and drive a little, yet I’m wiped out.

The door unlocking wakes me.

I pull my knuckles off the floor and roll over. I might have lost feeling in that arm. I stretch it over my head, flexing my fingers, turning it into a wave when Derek comes through the doorway.

“Hey, yourself,” he says.

“You’re back.”

“Yep.” He tongues his toothpick, making its end bob as he tosses his helmet on the other bed and shrugs out of his backpack. He’s dressed for riding—jacket, gloves, a scarf tucked into the jacket.

Grinning, I hop to my feet. The first thing I do is pluck the toothpick from his mouth. The second is kiss him. His lips are cool and a little dry, the inside of his mouth warm.

“Well, hello,” he says, smiling. He loosens the fingers of one of his gloves.

“Leave them on,” I say. “I’m feeling a little kinky.”

“You? Kinky? Have you been drinking funny water?”

I grin. “Everything else can come off, but leave the gloves.”

“Whatever floats your boat.” His gloves are cold on my lower back as he sweeps my shirt up and over my head. “Maybe I’ll leave
everything
on and just take everything off you.”

“Whatever floats your boat.” I hang my arms over his shoulders and kiss him again.

My belt jingles as Derek pulls it free. I let him turn me by the hips and walk me backward until my calves hit the bed. He gives my chest a shove, sitting me down, then bends, bracing his hands on my knees. His five-o’clock shadow scrapes my earlobe, and his warm breath tickles inside my ear as he says, “Maybe I’ll spank you with these gloves for talking back to your parents the way you told me you did.”