Page 30 of Roommate
My second thought is that my desk is getting snowed on in the back of the truck. I’ll have to pull into the garage to keep it dry until I can get someone to help me carry it inside.
“Thanks for your help, guys.” I tip them fifty bucks.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” they say on their way out.
And then I’m completely alone in my own pad, with my brand new king-sized mattress. It takes me a while to put the new mattress pad and sheets on it. But eventually I’m lying there under my sleeping-bag-as-duvet, enjoying the silence.
Although I know it will be difficult to fall asleep. I wish Rexie was here. I wonder whose room he’s chosen to sleep in tonight. Kyle’s probably. That traitor.
I’m not really drowsy, so I open my laptop and take a peek at the real estate on Craig’s List. There’s a section for “rooms available,” and I need to know what kinds of things people put in their listings.
I read through them, and then make the mistake of glancing under the “looking for housing” heading. Right away, the newest listing catches my eye. Single guy looking to rent a room, hopefully close to Colebury. New in town, but with references. Employed full time with an early morning job. (But I will leave silently.) Clean and quiet. Gay AF. Available as soon as my first paycheck clears next Friday.
Roderick. It has to be him. He’d told us that he had a place to stay. But it’s not true, is it? Ten bucks says that right now he’s sitting in his Volkswagen behind the yarn store.
I close my laptop and put it on the floor. My new bedroom is at the back of the house, away from the streetlights, but the darkness won’t help me sleep tonight, not now that I suspect Roderick is sleeping in his car. It’s snowing, for fuck’s sake.
He’s homeless. And, damn, I’m an asshole. I could have cost him his good, full-time job at the Busy Bean, just because I was uncomfortable with something I’d done in high school.
I roll over. My bed is comfortable, but the house is too quiet. Every creak of the roof and tick of the heating system seems to echo inside my head. I always wanted to live alone, where I’d have space to breathe. I thought it would be easier to be myself.
There’s plenty of space here now, isn’t there? And yet I’m the same screwed up person I was when I was living in the cramped little room in my parents’ house.
Go figure.
Roderick
I have a job with nice people who do good work.
I get to bake things for a living.
Everything is going to be fine.
These are the blessings I repeat to myself as the temperature drops. There are snowflakes falling on my windshield now, too. I can’t even see properly out the windows.
I close my eyes and picture a comfortable bed, with a fluffy comforter and smooth sheets. But that only makes me think of our bed in Nashville, where Brian is probably right this moment. What’s in his head? I’d like to think he’s lying there missing me, but I know better. Because I hadn’t just caught him cheating, I’d caught him balls deep in a female fan, backstage at a concert he’d known I was attending.
When I’d walked into his dressing room, he hadn’t even stopped the world’s oldest activity. He just looked over his shoulder at me with a red, angry face. I’d walked out, knowing he’d punished me on purpose.
We’d had an argument that afternoon. I’d pressed him to consider coming out.
“You know I can’t,” he’d said.
“Why not? You have all the money you’ll ever need.”
“It’s not just the money. It’s my career.”
“You’re letting the fans rule your life.”
“And you’re a needy little fuck.”
I am, in fact, a needy little fuck. I need people to treat me like I matter, even when I haven’t stood up for myself.
I’d already spent way too many months of my life expecting Brian to change for me. I’d known I was pushing him to the breaking point, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself.
“We’ve been hiding ourselves for three years already,” I’d told him. “Like assholes. How does this end?”
He’d answered that question quite effectively a few hours later. He hadn’t even had the decency to break up with me. He left me to gather up the tiny scraps of my remaining pride and make the decision myself.
