The Roommate Situation (5 page)

“He has one.”

“Of course. You don’t go riding on it, do you?”

“I haven’t even seen it.”

“Good. You know, they could move you in with someone more compatible. Do you want us to call the school and talk to them?”

“No!” I do not want to be that kid.

Again.

“It’s fine,” I say. “Really. How can I study if I’m spending all my time moving from room to room anyway?”

She stirs her iced tea.

“We’re not incompatible anyway. He wants to be a forensic chemist,” I say. “You know, analyzing crime scene evidence. He’s putting himself through school with a side business.”

“Oh? Doing what?” Her voice has a politely distant tone as she pokes the tines of her fork into a cherry tomato.

“He makes leather products—belts, wallets, that sort of thing. That’s why the room smells like leather. He sells them online.”

“He makes them in the room?”

“Yeah.”

“How industrious. The school doesn’t have a regulation against running a business from your room?”

“Not that I know of.”
Please don’t look it up, find out they do, and call the school to complain
. I wouldn’t put it past her. I say, “He manages to do that and keep his grades up.” This is my opening for what I really want to talk about, though I’m finding I also really want to talk about Derek, defend him. Because she’s already made her mind up, and it’s made up on the basis of stupid bullshit, not what Derek’s really like.

“Well,” she says, “we can do anything if we’re forced into a situation where we need to.”

“I was thinking I could do something like that. It would be good experience.”

“You want to start a business?” my dad says, wandering into the conversation for the first time in ten minutes. He’s been looking at his phone. He drops it back in his pocket and reaches for the last of his sandwich.

I focus on the pickle slice I’m pulling from the side of my burger as I say, “There’s this band that’s looking for a guitar player.”

“Oh, now,” my mother says.

“And it pays?” Dad says.

“I don’t know. I haven’t actually talked to them. A guy I met told me about it.”

“So it’s not a very well-thought-out plan,” he says, wiping his hands with his napkin.

“I didn’t want to go talking to them when I don’t even have a guitar here to play. That’s why I was going to ask you—”

“What’s your astronomy grade like?” he says.

“Sketchy,” I admit, “but I’m bringing it up.”

He frowns. His glasses had gone blank, the sun moving behind a cloud. “You need to focus on your coursework. This is college. This is what your future employer will be looking at.”

My mother says, “I brought you some of those Haribo gummi bears you like.”

* * * *

“Shiiit!” Pete calls out when I trounce him in the latest round of
DOA5
’s fight mode. I headed straight here after seeing my parents off, finding myself highly unmotivated to work on my Public Speaking assignment. Fuck my grades, fuck my future employer, and fuck them.

“Keep. It. The Fuck. Down,” Chuck groans. He’s a lump under a Panthers comforter, nursing his hangover from the party. It’s maybe the seventeenth time he’s pled for quiet. I have to admire his persistence.

“Shit,” Pete says, dropping his controller. “I need to get ready anyway.”

“Hot date?” I ask.

“I’m returning the shirt,” Pete says.

“Loser,” Chuck says from under the blanket.

Pete shrugs. “I’m hoping to leverage it into coffee. Or maybe ice cream. Not dinner. I don’t have the funds for dinner.”

“Poon,” Chuck says. He pushes the comforter back, revealing torqued and twisted hair. “Come on, why else would she have you bring her shirt by on a
Saturday night?
She’d have scheduled you for an afternoon if she wasn’t interested in taking your pecker for a joyride.”

“We’ll see where it goes,” Pete says.

“Probably she just wants her shirt back in time for her real date tonight,” Chuck says. “You know, the one she’s going on with some other guy. Who can afford dinner.”

Pete shrugs again. He looks at the controller. “Anyway. I guess I’ll make myself presentable, just in case.”

“Good plan,” I say.

I have no plans myself, so I head to my room, thinking maybe I’ll work on my speech. If I get my grades up by Christmas break, I’ll be able to show I’ve applied myself, and maybe I can come back with my guitar—without catching a lot of grief over it.

The room’s empty, Derek probably out grabbing something to eat. My stomach growls at the thought of food. The care package from Mom saves me a trip out of the room. I tear open the gummi bears.

Sitting on my bed, I pull up the outline I’m working on for the informative speech and find myself thinking more about music than “How to Improve Your Foosball Game.” Music and guitars and a particular beat-up Silvertone that I can still feel under my fingers as I slide them down the sides of my laptop.

Before leaving, my dad slipped me some cash. I had it stuffed in my pocket, two twenties and a ten. I’d been planning on wasting it on albums, but fifty bucks is decent money. I pull up eBay and click my way to the vintage guitar listings, where I find some beauties I wouldn’t mind owning. The gap between what I have in my pocket and the going bids is a little too wide to straddle, though. For fifty bucks, I can’t get much more than shipping on a decent guitar.

Damn.

I suppose I could get a job; my parents don’t have to know. It’s not like they have a tracker on me. That I know of.

I pull up the student job board…and that entertains me for all of five minutes. Jobs I don’t qualify for, jobs I can’t imagine doing, jobs I probably wouldn’t get.

The only job I’ve had in my life, my mother got for me, in the office she works at. I can’t even envision applying for a job. Is an interview involved? Do I need a suit? I have clothes for church that I never wear, because I never go, but then what if I’m overdressed?

So that’s my evening.

With a sigh, I crumple the gummi-bear bag. Instead of tossing it at the garbage, I lean against the wall, sighing again. There’s foosball. If I can get good enough to beat Chuck consistently, maybe I could pull in some money.

Or lose what little I have trying.

Putting a guitar on the debit card is out of the question. Getting enough cash out of an ATM to pay for a guitar: also out of the question. How do I explain why I needed a few hundred dollars?
Um, all my textbooks burned in a fire. No, it was a small fire; the only thing damaged was my textbooks. I don’t know why I didn’t just put them on the debit card. I think the machine was offline when I went in to buy them. Receipts? Um…I know I had them somewhere. You know what? I think they went through the wash.

I pull my computer into my lap. There’s always studying, getting As, getting my
own
guitar back with my parents’ blessing. Everybody’s happy.

Eventually.

I’d closed the job board, but eBay is still up, the guitars taunting me. I move the cursor to close it, then change my mind and sweep the cursor to the search box. It takes a few minutes to remember the eBay seller name Chuck had shown me. CustomLeatherBondage. I pull up the listings page. The three pairs of cuffs Derek showed me, including the ones with the iron crosses, are listed at forty, fifty, and sixty dollars a pair. They’d been photographed on a white background—a piece of poster board, it looked like. Remembering the weight of them in my hands, the soft jingle of the buckles, the smell of leather… The photos don’t do them justice.

I look at a collar with hearts stamped on it. It comes with a leather leash that hooks to a D-ring on the collar. I wonder how well something like that sells. Couldn’t you just buy pretty much the same thing at PetSmart? If Derek had included a photo of a woman on all fours, wearing nothing but the collar, smiling seductively at the camera—now that might get sales. You don’t see that at PetSmart.

I suppose she couldn’t be naked in an eBay listing, though.

The chest harness is just stretched out on a white background, its straps like so much linguini. How it might look on someone is left to the imagination. I crease my brow. My imagination’s not up to it. Is it for a man? A woman? Either? Which is the front? The back?

Curious, I search for other chest harnesses to see what the competition’s doing. Most model theirs on mannequins, which don’t do much to up the sexiness factor, but at least I can see how they’re supposed to be worn.

Most of the mannequins are male. They look like college guys: shiny, dead, fake-looking college guys, some with their wigs sliding toward their noses.

Does nobody fucking care when they put these listings together?

As I study one, my brain brings up an image of Derek stripping out of his motorcycle jacket, nothing but a leather harness underneath.

That
would sell.

I shift under the heat bleeding from the bottom of my laptop.

Derek’s head wouldn’t need to be in the photo, just from the neck down to, say, his crotch. And the motorcycle jacket, in the process of being shed. Yeah. That would sell. I flip back over to his listings and find myself better able to see how the harness goes on.

The lock on our door snicks.

The handle starts to move.

I click the browser window closed and bring up my e-mail, my heart thudding. The laptop hides what looking at that stuff had started to do to me.

And there’s Derek in the flesh, walking through the door in the very same motorcycle jacket.

Chapter Five

I hunch down a little more behind the laptop and say, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

I stare at my e-mail. No new messages, but there are a few I busy myself with getting rid of.

Derek sweeps back the curtain, leaving it open while he swings his jacket onto the chair.

The fact that I’m now picturing Derek stripping his T-shirt off, revealing his trim body, is not helping the situation going on below my laptop. I concentrate hard on the screen in front of me.

A thud comes, the sound of one of Derek’s boots dropping. “How’d the visit go?” he asks, followed by a second thump.

I clear my throat. “About as expected.”

“Are you getting your guitar?”

“As if.”

“Sorry.” He appears at the periphery of my vision, dragging his chair back to sit down at his workbench.

I lean against the wall, letting out a quiet exhale of relief. I wonder if my face looks as hot as it feels. “Going out tonight?” I ask.

“Nah.”

I can almost hear the toothpick shift to the other side of his mouth.

He says, “I’ve got a project due Monday. Probably should be working on it.”

A minute or so goes by, and an acrid smell drifts over. I lean forward. “That doesn’t look like schoolwork.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a belt I’d rather be burning a design into.” A wisp of smoke rises over the side of his arm. He’s holding the iron like a pencil.

“Smells like burning hair.”

“I can open a window.”

“Nah.” I lean back. Derek’s eBay listings are in my browser history—they show up in the browser’s address bar when I start typing in eBay. Hot-faced, I erase my history and cache before bringing the guitar listings back up.

“Do they have yard sales around here?” I ask, thinking of the Silvertone. Thinking a yard sale might be a cheaper way to get something to play.

“Sure, I guess. Are you selling stuff?”

That’s an idea. Sell some stuff I don’t need, add the cash to the fifty in my pocket. But what do I have in the room that I don’t need? “Do you think people would buy snacks?” I ask.

“I’ve seen them do it at convenience stores.”

“I mean from me.” I have a box of cocoa mix, some juice packs, applesauce, microwave popcorn…

“I guess if it’s cheaper than they can get it elsewhere.”

“Tell me if I’m bugging you,” I say.

Derek sits back and puts his tool down. “My head’s not in it anyway. I really should be working on my project.”

“Yeah, me too.”

He stretches his arms over his head, lacing his fingers together, pulling his back straight. The slight curl in his hair touches between his shoulder blades as he tips his head back. Then he lets go and drops his arms. “Tell you what. We study for an hour, and I’ll go get us some beer to make the second hour easier.”

“Serious?”

“Only if you buy the next round.”

“Deal!”

* * * *

After the first hour, he heads out with his cigarettes and returns with a six-pack of Natty Ice. After handing me a can and sticking the rest in his mini fridge, he puts his back against the side of my locker and slides down until he’s sitting on the floor. He pops his beer open. Taking a sip, he closes his eyes for a second, enjoying it. When he opens them, he says, “So what are you gonna do about the guitar situation?”

“I’m thinking of getting a job, if I can find one.”

“I guess that’s the other way around it. It is your guitar, though. You’re an adult, right?”

“It’s just easier…”

Derek sighs before taking another pull.

I’m impressed that he’s able to do it without swallowing his toothpick.

After taking a sip off my own, I say, “The alternate plan is to get my grades up so they can see I can handle the schoolwork.”

“We are talking about your guitar, right? One you own, that belongs to you?”

It’s my turn to sigh. “It’s four hours away. It’s not like I can swing by and pick it up. I can insist they send it, but past experience shows they’re really good at turning me into an irrational jerk, and I end up apologizing and doing extra chores. I guess at least they can’t guilt me into extra chores here.”

“There’s that.”

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Twenty.”

“How’d you get the beer?”

“Trade secret.”

“When did your parents stop running your life?”

He laughs. “I’m not sure they ever did, you know, beyond the usual ‘Don’t touch the hot stove, kid,’ and ‘Don’t make me tell you to brush your teeth again.’”

I push my laptop lid down. “So what else do you do?”

“What else do I do?”

“Besides go to class and make things with leather.”