Page 51 of Drawn Together
My roommate is gone already, weaving through the panicked crowd and going straight up to Chip himself. I can’t hear the full conversation, but I know the situation of the building must not be too severe, because he is smiling contentedly at her and she is nodding along with every word.
I wrap my jacket tighter around my body and wait for Lennon to come back. When she eventually does, she is texting and walking right by me.
“Come on, we’re going to Stephan’s.” She grabs the wrist of my jacket and yanks me across the street while the light is red.
“Oh. He lives across the street, too?”
“Yeah,” Lennon says, like duh before she sees the genuine confusion on my face. “Did I not tell you that?”
“No.”
“Huh. Weird.”
I wonder just how much Lennon hasn’t told me that she thinks she has.
The apartment building across the street is almost identical to ours, except a tad fancier. There are marble-tiled floors, golden light fixtures, and fancy twelve-foot art pieces made of recycled trash shaped to look like a man rowing a boat off a waterfall.There is a staff of five in the lobby, all glued to the windows, as they watch the commotion of our building across the street.
They must know Lennon well, because when they turn to her with expectant eyes she shrugs.
“Gas leak.”
We all ‘ahh’ in unison.
On floor seven, four doors down, Lennon unlocks a door and flings it open. Stephan is right behind the door, grabbing his girlfriend's waist with zero hesitation. Fletcher isn’t far behind him, leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, the softest of grins on his face.
“Hi.” I squeeze past the couple’s embrace and make my way into the apartment.
Shockingly, their kitchen is much smaller than ours, consisting of one wall of cabinets, a stainless-steel fridge, and a sink that looks like it belongs to a toddlers play kitchen rather than a real one. Ours is at least double the size of this, but their countertops aren’t peeling up in the corners, and there’s no weird smell coming from the drain in the floor that reminds us it used to be a community bathroom. Their living room, even just the small glimpse I can see of it from here, makes up for the lack of cooking space, though. There is a tiny view of bookshelves, and my skin crawls for me to go snoop.
“We’re gonna go grab some pizza. What kind do you like?” Stephan looks up from his arms around Lennon.
Fletcher, with zero hesitation, answers, “Flora likes meat lovers.”
I don’t remember even telling him that. My nod is sheepish. “I do, but I will eat anything.”
Lennon pipes in, “She also likes ham and pineapple.”
Did I tell her that, too? Am I just jumping around person to person discussing pizza toppings on the regular?
“Done and done. We’ll be back soon, kids.” Stephan winks at Fletcher and shuts the door, leaving just the two of us.
It’s so odd, seeing everything from this side of the window. Seeing the texture of his throw blankets. The few dirty dishes in the sink—an empty mug turned upside down and a fork set straight beside it, like he had to fix it that way. In the living room, there’s a dark green sofa with matching pillows, a recliner with leather worn in the outline of a person sitting there from thousands of hours of watching tv, and bookshelves—so many bookshelves. It’s flooding in them.
There are books everywhere, and not just on the shelves themselves. They’re scattered in big stacks against the windows, squished together on the shelves, and even more are set on top of those books—like the lack of room resulted in Fletcher giving up his organizational mind, too. There is even a stack of cookbooks on the floor by a side table.
I wonder how many of these were Ryan’s. There are three doors down a distant hallway and one down the other. I wonder if maybe he lived here at one point. Maybe that’s why Lennon is over here all the time, searching for any final traces of her brother.
Fletcher clears his throat, and I rein my snooping in.
“This is your apartment.”
Hands tucked in his pockets, Fletcher raises his shoulders. “This is my apartment.”
“I didn’t even know Stephan lived with you.”
“You didn’t?”
“I wondered where Lennon always was when I first moved in. It must’ve been here.”
