Page 29 of Roommate
I climb into the truck and start it, banging the door shut. Kyle holds the dog back, and they both look at me with sad eyes while I drive away.
* * *
I drive toward Colebury feeling torn up inside. I’m ready to live my own life, but I guess I wasn’t totally ready to hear what everyone else thinks of it.
It’s only seven thirty, and I realize that some of the big box stores outside of Montpelier will still be open. As soon as I get to a hilltop—where the cell service is better—I pull over and take out my phone. I find a mattress store that closes at eight, and I call them.
“Look, if you tell me what you’re looking for, and you’re willing to plunk down your credit card number, my guys can load a couple of choices onto the truck and drive ’em to your house tonight. You’ll choose a mattress on the truck, and they’ll carry the winner inside. What size? And what’s your budget?”
“King-sized,” I say immediately. What’s the point of moving out of your tiny childhood bedroom with a cramped twin bed if you can’t have something better?
Maybe all my choices will prove ridiculous. But at least they’re mine.
He gives me a brief education on mattress pricing, because I know nothing. And we settle on a couple of lower-range choices. “You need sheets?” he asks me.
“I need everything.”
He laughs, but it’s true.
After we hang up, I lead-foot it to Colebury to pick up a few things at CVS. I need toilet paper, soap, shampoo, paper towels. Dish soap. Laundry soap.
I’ve spent eight hundred dollars in the last hour, and it’s terrifying. I’d better post a listing for a roommate immediately.
Driving out of the CVS, I still have a half hour until the mattress company is due to show up. So I roll slowly toward central Colebury, where the commercial strip gives way to my new neighborhood on the village green.
It’s quiet now, because it’s a weeknight, and the temperature is plunging. As I roll past the yarn shop, there’s a familiar car that’s visible only for a moment as the road bends.
A blue Volkswagen Beetle. And if I’m not mistaken, there was a light’s soft glow inside it again.
I finish the route home, feeling unsettled. Roderick wouldn’t be sleeping in his car, right? He said he was staying with his parents.
It’s not really my problem either way. It’s got nothing to do with me.
The Colebury diner comes into view, its too-bright lights cheerful in the dark, and beyond it, the town green. It’s one-way around the green, so I follow the streets alongside it until I get to my house.
Mine. What a crazy concept.
I pull into my empty driveway and park as close to the garage door as possible. Then I hope out of my truck, feeling like a kid on Christmas. The backdoor opens onto the driveway, and I unlock it in a hurry.
It’s quiet inside, and cold, too. Zara has the thermostat turned low. The place is perfectly empty, and I walk through every echoing room with a smile on my face. There’s a downstairs bedroom next to a bathroom with a big tub in it. That’s the room I’ll rent out.
Upstairs there’re two more bedrooms. One will be my room, and the other will be my studio. I’ll find someone to help me carry the desk upstairs, and I’ll put it near a window.
Then I’ll paint again for the first time in years.
* * *
As promised, the delivery guys drive up to the house at eight thirty. I’m waiting on the porch, watching snowflakes fall—something that was not in the forecast.
“Are you Kieran?” the driver asks, hopping out. “Let’s do this.”
Although I feel ridiculous lying down on a plastic-covered mattress on the back of a truck, I shop carefully. Ten minutes later I’ve chosen the firmest of the three mattresses he brought.
It takes all three of us to struggle the thing upstairs and into the back bedroom of the dark house.
“Better turn the heat up, dude.” The driver chuckles as we flop the mattress onto the bare floor. “It’s gonna snow tonight.”
My first thought is that I hope the rest of the oats don’t get too wet.
