Roommates

Lucky for Iris and Megan, there was little damage to the pickup truck. However, the Saturn was another story. The back bumper was crunched beyond recognition, and the trunk wouldn’t open. The accident was bad news for Elise, too, because when they slid back into the car after surveying the damage Iris moaned, “What are we going to do? Nicole is coming back in a month.”

That meant Elise had to move again soon, and she still didn’t have a roommate lined up. But she couldn’t even think about that. All she could think about was Stan and Carly—the liars.

Stan was waiting outside her front door for her when she returned to her apartment. “Can I please come in and talk to you?” he asked.

Iris and Megan watched the two of them with a flicker of glee in their eyes. She couldn’t blame them. This was far more interesting than any of their fights over the car. She wondered if she had watched the two of them with the same look in her eyes. For once, she was the one fighting with a sibling.

He followed her up the stairs, and when they reached the top they both stood staring at one another. It was the first time she had ever seen her brother look frightened. “Look,” he said, then stopped. “I . . .” He stopped again.

She sat on her bed and pulled Bella into her lap. Scrubbles hopped on the mattress and began to purr. He stepped on her purse as he climbed closer to Elise. She didn’t mind that his little feet were walking over her bag. She was too pissed to care. It was strange, listening to a purring cat when she felt like she could explode at any given moment.

“Why didn’t you guys tell me? I have felt like neither one of you have wanted to be around me all summer. I’ve felt like I’ve had no friends.”

“I am so sorry. Really, I am. I just . . . we just didn’t know what was going to happen with us. It started out as a drunken fling that night at Winston’s. And we figured, what was the point in telling you when it was just one of those things that would never happen again? But then it turned into something more, and by that time it had all snowballed. Every time I saw you I wanted to tell you, but it just became harder and harder.”

“Look, I’m really pissed. And I have to be honest with you. I don’t think I’ll get over it any time soon. So you guys are just going to have to leave me alone for a while.”

“You’re so ridiculous.” He became angry. “How is this any different from you hiding Max from our family?”

“No. I wasn’t. I didn’t want to tell you because if things didn’t work out with us, I didn’t want it to put a strain on your friendship with her. But you . . . you won’t introduce Max to our parents because you’re ashamed that he isn’t some freaking CEO of some Fortune 500 company. You lied and said he was my friend the day they came over. You are afraid of what they’ll say about his tattoos.”

She didn’t know what bugged her more. The fact that he had a point—She had lied, and for the past two and half months she had been having the time of her life with Max and hadn’t once mentioned that she was dating him to her parents or sister. However, he was twisting this all around on her. This wasn’t about Max and her. This was about the fact that her brother had been sleeping with her best friend behind her back. It was weird, and she felt deceived. “You know what? Just go home. I don’t want you here anymore.”

As soon as he was gone, she went to her cell phone. She wanted to call her sister to see if she had known anything about this. When she fished her phone from her bag, she felt the color drain from her face. When Scrubbles had stepped all over purse he had stepped on her cell phone and dialed someone. She picked up the receiver, praying her mother wasn’t waiting on the other end.

Dead air answered her, and she wondered if she was speaking into someone’s voice mail. How much of their conversation had this person heard? Would her parents come home from the country club and find out everything about their kids’ love lives? Frankly, she didn’t care at this point. It’s not as if they were porn stars. She had found someone she liked, and it was about time they found out.

She scrolled to her dialed calls box, praying the whole time it was one of her friends from Arizona that she’d called, or perhaps even Justine. She felt a surge of something worse than adrenaline when she looked at whom she had dialed. Her worst fear was confirmed when she realized who it was. It was not her mother. It was Max.

How her life had gone from pure bliss to utter hell in one morning was a total myth to her. Just a few hours earlier she had been sitting in her underwear eating eggs and bacon with the love of her life, and now she was trying to figure out if he would ever speak to her again. She prayed that by some miracle their voices had been muffled and he hadn’t heard, but she had a bad feeling. If his voice mail picked up, there was the slight possibility she could intercept him before he heard anything.

She could always call him and tell him to just disregard her previous message. But then what if that piqued his curiosity and drove him to listen to every single word they had spoken. She needed to see him remove the message in her presence. She grabbed her purse and headed for Maxes Axes.

She’d never felt more anguish in her life as she sped into North Park. She parked directly in front of his shop and could see him behind the counter inside. Maggie lay in a beam of sunlight in front of the door when she entered. “Hi,” she said. He took his eyes away from a mustard-colored Les Paul and looked up at her. It was hard to read him.

“I, uh. You said to just come on by, and so here I am. Um, I think I may have left you a message earlier that you can just disregard.”

“I got your message.” He stared at her. She felt her stomach turn, and she thought she might actually barf on his carpet.

“Look. I really wish you hadn’t heard any of that. Stan was angry, and he said a bunch of things that just aren’t—”

“You know, I’m probably not the right guy for you. Not that I could see you with that Yackrell dipshit, but I just want a girl who wants me back. Not someone who has a bunch of issues about my tattoos.” His voice was growing colder. “I have never in all my life had anyone be ashamed of me because of that, and I’m not going to start now.”

The front door swung open, and a bald guy wearing makeup and a fedora came in holding a guitar case. Max acknowledged the rocker, then turned to Elise. “Look, I can’t talk right now. I’ve got work to do. These guys have a show tonight.”

She wanted to tell him to say they’d clear everything up later, that he’d call her. Instead he shook his friend’s hand. She turned and left, crying the whole way home.