Page 39 of Roommate
“To what?”
“To you. If you don’t know the sound of Grindr, it’s a clue. I’ve been trying to figure you out.”
When he speaks, it’s not to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business. “If you do, let me know,” he says. Then he goes upstairs until I call him back down again to eat pancakes.
* * *
After breakfast, Kieran leaves to do chores at his parents’ farm. He reappears at suppertime, when the house smells like heaven.
“Wow,” he says, tossing his coat onto a hook he installed this week. “That smells amazing. Did it work?”
“It always works,” I say, swirling the wine in my half-empty glass. I splurged on a cheap pinot noir, which I’ve been sipping while I wait for him to reappear. “I pulled it out three hours ago. You check it, okay? Use the tongs.”
In the kitchen I watch as he lifts the pot and pokes the meat. “It’s falling apart. I just want to dive in head first.”
“You will,” I promise. “But my rolls are in the oven for another fifteen minutes, okay? Turn on the burner and we’ll heat this up. I’ll call you when it’s time.”
“Awesome. Right back,” he says, then disappears upstairs.
When the bread is done and steaming up the kitchen, I call up the stairs. “Kieran?”
There is no response.
After a second try, I climb the stairs slowly. This is Kieran’s private domain, and I don’t want to invade it. On the other hand, there’s pulled pork waiting.
When I reach his room, I realize why he can’t hear me. He’s facing his desk, painting away on a giant, propped-up pad of watercolor paper, earbuds in his ears.
“Kieran.”
Nothing.
I step closer. “Food’s ready!” I call.
He startles violently. Then he drops his head, as if embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says, yanking out the ear buds.
“I didn’t know you painted.” I try to see around him. “Is that…a tractor?”
He puts his hands on my shoulders for the first time ever—their weight is way too enticing—and steers me away from his work. “It’s terrible. Let’s eat.”
His hands fall away as we jog down the stairs. “Did you always paint?”
“No, almost never,” he says heavily as we enter the kitchen. “Can I have some of that wine?”
“Of course you can. I already poured your glass.” I point it out on the counter. “But you have to pull the pork first. Here.” I hand him two forks. “Easiest thing in the world. But you have to do all the steps yourself or it doesn’t count.”
“Count as what?”
“Something you made yourself. We’re cheating already with the barbecue sauce.” I open a bottle from the store. My cooking-school buddies would never let me live it down, but I didn’t want to overwhelm Kieran with recipes just yet.
He gets to work tugging the meat apart, while my mouth waters.
“So why don’t you paint more often?” I ask, because the wine has already obliterated my crappy impulse control.
He stops working for a second, as if trying to decide whether or not to answer me. Then he puts the forks down and looks me right in the eye. “When I was twelve years old, my mother was hanging one of my thousands of drawings on the refrigerator. And my father said, ‘Don’t encourage him. We don’t want him to grow up to be a faggy artist.’”
“Oh,” I say slowly. “And maybe that hit a little too close to the truth?”
“At twelve, I really didn’t know…” He shakes his head instead of finishing that sentence. “I stopped drawing immediately. For, like, ten years.”
