Roomies

My phone buzzes.

I want to feel the heat of you next to me when I go to bed tonight.

These words detonate in my blood. My crazy brain finds this . . . applicable to our situation.

I want that, too. When will you be home?

“Only two?” I ask, trying to maintain the thread of our actual conversation.

“Well, two real girlfriends. Aileen and Rori.”

“Those are very Irish names.”

This makes him grin and then let out a big belly laugh. “They were very Irish girls.”

“No one here in the States?”

“Rori moved here with me when I started school, but went home after a few months. Since her . . . there were a couple I mostly just got off with, but not many.” Calvin winces as he lifts his head and tilts his bottle to his lips, adding, “One girl from school, Amanda.” He squints as he thinks. “Six months, maybe? But she was a bit diabolical. And bossy.”

“I would think a bossy woman is a good thing in bed.”

“You’d be right. That aspect wasn’t the problem.” He takes another sip, not meeting my eyes. “What about you?”

“Me?”

He looks up at me, eyes narrowed. “Men.”

“Oh. After Bradley . . . hundreds.”

He sits up a little. “Really?” His voice is full of dramatic, drunken interest, but it dies when he sees I’m joking and he lies back down. “I mean, it wouldn’t be unheard of. Sexual freedom and all.”

“Not hundreds. Some.”

“You know,” he says sleepily, “secrets are currency.”

“Are they?”

Briefly, he glances at his phone, typing something out with rapid fingers. My heart seems to erupt in my chest. Calvin nods when he looks back up at me. “Mam says that secrets unlock something between friends.”

I look down at him in playful exasperation. “You’re bringing sweet mother-in-law Marina into this talk of my sex life?”

“She’s grand.”

I glance at my phone and the words that appear there.

I’ll be home as soon as I can. You’re all I can think about.

My breath is trapped in my throat, a thick, cottony presence.

“Besides,” he says quietly, “you’re too beautiful to be inexperienced in love.” Before I can let the full flush of this roll through me, he adds, “I only know of Bradley, and then whoever Lulu was talking about tonight.”

I groan at the memory of Lulu’s mortifying outburst. “Okay, so: I lost the V-card to a guy named Eric on my sixteenth birthday. Jake was my boyfriend my last year in high school . . . we were only together for about eight months. Bradley was most of college. Since then . . . a few more, but—as you say—they were relationships mostly in bed, including the one Lulu was talking about.” I look down to see his reaction, but it’s clear he’s waiting. He seems to want a number. “I’ve had sex with six people.”

“Six isn’t so bad.”

“For who?”

He looks up at me and gives a self-conscious wince. “Me, I suppose.”

I look away. I’m honestly not sure what to think of all this. We’ve been acquaintances for a time that can be counted in days, not years, and it’s still so insane to me that he’s here in my apartment—in my lap. Beyond that, there seems to be a genuine commitment he’s made to this marriage, and a genuine interest in me as a person. Given my desire to protect myself, I don’t know how to feel about this.

Touched, maybe. Similarly possessive. Also wary.

We’ve never established that we’ll be faithful in any way.

“I spent so much of the last four years trying to get a job,” he says quietly. “Relationships absolutely took a backseat. I think I auditioned for everything. But classical guitar is tricky. People want guitar to be rock.”

“You play rock, too.”

He eyes me. “Yeah, but not as a passion.”

“No,” I say, “of course not. But you could do rock if you wanted.”

“The problem isn’t only that I didn’t want to do that, it’s that there are a million people playing rock guitar.”

“Well, now there’s only one person playing classical guitar down at the Levin-Gladstone.”

He does a cute little fist punch in the air.

“But speaking of,” I say, nudging his head off my lap, “tomorrow you head down and start rehearsals.” I point to the clock that tells us it’s far past midnight. “You should sleep.”

He looks up at me. “Tonight was hatchet.”

I laugh. “Is that a good thing?”

“Aye, means I had fun.”

“Me too.”

His smile straightens. “I don’t like to think of you playing a side part in your story.”

I bite my lip, struggling to not look away. I’m not entirely sure what to say to this.

“You’ve suddenly become a very large part of mine,” he says quietly. “And I yours. No? Why not make it epic?”

Calvin sits up, leaning forward to press a chaste kiss to my cheek that I feel long after he’s walked into the bathroom.

I head to my room to put on my pajamas and then sit on my bed, staring at my phone. His last text has gone unanswered. I reply impulsively.

I feel the same way.

What am I doing? I’m less afraid of getting in trouble for this fake marriage than I am of falling in love with someone who could be playing me completely.

I have no idea how long I sit there, but when I step out to use the bathroom, I see Calvin on the sofa bed, tucked under blankets, eyes closed.

My phone lights up again.

And I despise every night I go to sleep without you.

thirteen

I remember the first time I saw Working Girl. It was at Robert and Jeff’s—of course—and they had the VHS tape of the film. There are so many classic lines (“I am not steak! You can’t just order me!”) but my favorite scene is the end—spoiler alert—when Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford are in the kitchen together, making coffee and packing lunches for her first day on the job. They’re all private smiles and shoulder bumps and it’s obscene how cute it is.

I’m going to be honest with you and say that our morning before Calvin’s first rehearsal is not like this. For one, we both oversleep. Our panicked sprinting around each other in the tiny apartment—to brush teeth, to make coffee, Go ahead, you shower first; Oh shit, Holland, can I use your razor?—is interrupted only when my cell phone rings. It’s Robert: Calvin’s phone is on silent and my uncle’s been calling, asking him to come in an hour early to rehearse before Ramón shows up.

Calvin emerges from the steamy bathroom with a towel around his waist. I have the absurd thought that he reminds me of the plastic torso from an anatomy course I took: each of his muscles seems perfectly defined beneath his skin.

He shuffles past me. “I forgot my clothes out here.”

What was I supposed to tell him again . . . ? Oh, right.

“Robert called,” I say, and part of me wants to warn him to hold that towel tighter because he might drop it when I pass along the request. “He wants you to come in earlier.”

Calvin blanches. “When earlier?”

I peek at the clock over his shoulder. “Now earlier?”

He explodes into action, grabbing his clothes from the couch, jogging back to the bathroom. I catch a flash of bare ass and find religion. I throw on whatever clothes are on top of my clean laundry pile—no one cares what I’m wearing today, or any day, for that matter—and pour coffee for each of us into travel mugs, waiting by the door.