Roommaid

by Sariah Wilson

  The sound shocked me and I rushed out of his closet, like whoever was calling could see what I was doing.

  It was Shay.

  I swiped to answer. “Shay! You just scared the bejeebers out of me.”

  “What are you doing?” She sounded suspicious (rightfully so). Was her Spidey-sense tingling or something?

  I was too flustered to come up with even a white lie. “I’m being creepy and going through Tyler’s closet.”

  “Oh.” She waited a beat before saying, “You should go through his drawers, too.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, if you’re going to violate his personal space, you might as well go all the way. And describe it to me, woman with no boundaries.”

  Laughing, I said, “The no-boundaries thing is not my fault. I didn’t have personal space growing up.” There was always a bunch of people coming in and out of my room to clean up or put something away or tell me my parents wanted to speak with me so that they could let me know all the ways I was disappointing them. “I blame my parents.”

  “I blame your parents for lots of things. Climate change, trouble in the Middle East, why men don’t ask me on second dates.”

  “Mine is blaming them for me being emotionally stunted. But Tyler should have his privacy. I’m leaving his room now.”

  “Are you really choosing now of all times to be mature and respectful?” she asked.

  I walked across the hall into my own room and set the vacuum down near my dresser. Pigeon intuited that I planned on cleaning up in here next, and she took off. I asked, “Did you ever consider that maybe this goes against my moral code?”

  “And here I thought your morals weren’t up to code.”

  My phone buzzed and it was a text.

  From Tyler.

  “I have to go! I’ll explain later!” I don’t know why I made Shay get off the phone; I could have just as easily read the text while she waited for a second. It said:

  I replied with a sad face and told him to fly safe. After I pressed send, I immediately felt stupid. It wasn’t like he was the pilot. He had zero control over what happened with the plane and whether or not it flew safely.

  He seemed to pick up on this when he replied:

  I smiled.

  There was a loud clatter and what I guessed were swear words in Russian. I went out into the front of the apartment and found Oksana smoking outside on the balcony. I was glad she was doing it out there and not in here, although she’d left the sliding door wide open. She was taking a picture and leaning back over the balcony rail and I had a sudden flash of her tumbling backward like one of those Instagram influencers who fell off a cliff while trying to get a perfect selfie.

  “Hey, Oksana?”

  She paused what she was doing, blowing a ring of smoke in my direction.

  “I just got a text from Tyler. His flight was delayed so he won’t be back tonight.”

  She shook her cigarette, letting some ash fall to the ground. She held her phone back up, presumably to verify if I was telling the truth.

  But from the look on her face, Tyler hadn’t contacted her.

  That should not have delighted me the way that it did.

  “The borscht simmers until twenty minutes of the ninth hour.”

  I wasn’t sure what time that actually was. 8:40? 9:20? I was about to ask, but she kept talking.

  “Then you will pack it up and keep it for Tyler.”

  It took me a second to register her instructions. Soon-ish the soup would be done and she wanted me to put it away for her? And given everything still out on the counters, clean up her mess, too? I opened my mouth to protest, but she grabbed her coat and left before I could.

  Yes, that’s just what I’ll do. I’ll put away your homemade soup and clean up the kitchen and lie down like the pushover that I am and you can take him and love him and I’ll just be pathetic, sitting on the sidelines.

  I went into the kitchen and started putting the leftover vegetables into the drawer in the fridge. I turned the heat off on the soup. I didn’t care when it was supposed to finish. I considered dumping it down the sink, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  Why was it so hard for me to say no? I figured it was a combination of needing to please scary, cold women and having no money—I couldn’t let this much food go to waste, especially since there was enough soup here to feed a platoon.

  And it smelled delicious. I decided to have a bowl and it was amazing and I wanted to curse her name for being so good at everything, but I held back just in case I made her appear again.

  I wanted to have another serving of the borscht but decided against and finished cleaning the kitchen instead. When I started the dishwasher, I noticed that Pigeon had been hiding for a long time.

  “Pigeon? Where are you, girl? The Wicked Witch is gone. Come out, come out, wherever you are!” I walked past Tyler’s bedroom and that’s where I saw her.

  Lying on the floor, chewing up one of his shoes.

  I’d forgotten to close his closet door!

  “No, no, no, no,” I muttered as I reached for what had once been a shoe. A very expensive one, from the looks of it. While I ran to the closet to find the matching one, Pigeon stared at me as if she couldn’t figure out why I was upset. I had to throw a bunch of clothes around, ignoring the fact that everything smelled like him. I finally located the other shoe and I made sure to close the door nice and tight this time.

  “Well, Pidge, I’ll give you this. At least you have good taste.” And considering what a mess his closet was, she also possessed a fierce determination in unearthing the shoe that I wouldn’t have anticipated.

  I had to get replacement shoes tonight. Before Tyler got back in the morning. I didn’t want him to think that I was irresponsible. Especially after he’d specifically warned me not to leave closet doors open. First, I called Pigeon’s vet. The number was listed on the fridge. Pigeon didn’t normally ingest shoes; she just liked to gnaw on them. His vet told me to contact her if Pigeon started acting strangely but that, more likely than not, Pidge would be just fine.

  Then I looked up his shoes online. Fortunately there was a store just a few blocks away that had the exact same name brand, color, and size of Tyler’s shoes. I’d just go exchange them and he would never know that I had been creepily fingering his ties and smelling his dress shirts like some kind of deranged stalker.

  If he knew, then he’d probably take a restraining order out against me, too.

  I worried about leaving Pigeon alone, but she was curled up on my bed and seemed okay. Deciding to take the vet at her word, I was going to just run over, grab the shoes, and come right back.

  I walked quickly, hoping the entire way that the shoes would be there. I didn’t recognize the name of the upscale men’s clothing store that had the shoes in stock. Admittedly, my expertise was limited to women’s fashion. A salesman in a three-piece suit approached me.

  “May I help you?”

  “Yes, I need to replace these.” I put the one good shoe on the counter. “Same size, same color.”

  He nodded. “I believe I have that in back. Let me go check.”

  It occurred to me only right then that the website might have been wrong and this particular store might not have them in stock. I leaned against the counter, not knowing what I would do. Even if I found them online someplace like Zappos or Amazon, they would arrive after Tyler got home. And what if he wanted to wear them to work tomorrow?

  I had started to work myself up into a frenzied panic when the salesman returned, shoes in hand. “We do have them. Can I ring these up for you?”

  Exhaling pure relief, I said, “Yes, thank you.”

  He scanned the shoes, opening it to show them to me and double-checking that they were both the same size. “That comes to one thousand and sixty-eight dollars and thirty-two cents.”

  Did he just say $1,000?

  All my frenzied panic returned an actual thousandfold. One piece of sheer panic for every
outrageous dollar.

  I mean, it was so out of my reach financially that it might as well have been $10,000.

  It was sad to think that six months ago I would have thought $1,000 for a pair of shoes to be totally reasonable and it would have seemed an insignificant amount of money. Now it seemed like all the money in the world.

  I should have expected this. I knew that Tyler’s clothes were expensive; it had been so long since I’d shopped somewhere upscale that it was like I forgot how much stuff like this could cost.

  The problem was, I didn’t have $1,000. I didn’t even have an extra hundred. I also didn’t have any credit cards that I could use because they’d all either been in my parents’ names, or I’d defaulted in repaying them and the accounts had been closed.

  This was too big of an ask for Shay or Delia. I wasn’t sure they could even afford it.

  If I called Brad, there would be so many expectations and strings attached to him helping me that I’d never get him out of my life. And I just couldn’t be in debt to him. Not when things between us were over.

  There was only one person I could call.

  “That’s a little more than I was expecting,” I confessed to the salesman and his expression changed from someone eager to please to utter disdain. “Let me make a quick phone call.”

  I pulled up my contacts and clicked on the number.

  “Madison? What do you need?” my oldest sister asked. It was probably as much my fault as it was hers that she would assume that I’d call her only because I needed something.

  And in this case, it was a totally accurate assumption.

  “I need your help. My roommate’s shoes got chewed up and it’s my fault.”

  “You chewed up your roommate’s shoes?”

  “No. There’s a dog and she did it, but I’m the one who accidentally left the door open when he told me not to and the problem is that I have to replace them right away before he gets back and they’re like a thousand dollars and I don’t have any money.”

  There was a long pause and I fully expected her to say no. To say, I told you so, or, What did you expect? To my surprise she said, “I’ll do this, but you’re going to owe me.”

  “Yes, absolutely. Anything. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” That was how things worked in our family. Tit for tat. I would say I hadn’t expected anything less, but that would be untrue since I’d expected her to say no.

  I turned to the salesman and said, “My sister is going to pay for it.” I handed him the phone and he took down the credit card information and was able to run it through the system. Another store probably wouldn’t have done so, but given that this was the sort of place that catered to the wealthy, they would do whatever their customers wanted.

  Even the broke ones.

  He gave my phone back to me and I said Violet’s name, intending to thank her for what she’d done, but she’d already hung up. I took the receipt and the shoes and started back for my apartment.

  I was wondering whether Tyler would notice that I’d swapped out his old shoes for new ones when two people stepped in front of me, exiting a restaurant. I looked up and saw the sign. Yuto’s. It had been one of my favorite sushi places back when I could still afford it.

  Boy, did I want sushi.

  Feeling poor should have discouraged me from spending money, but I’d been finding the opposite to be true. When I had no money, I wanted to spend it more. It was an inclination I had to fight regularly.

  Tonight I was tired of fighting. Tonight I just wanted overpriced sushi.

  It meant I’d have to eat ramen for the rest of the week, but I was okay with that. I wasn’t going to order very much; I wasn’t all that hungry, given all the borscht I’d inhaled back at the apartment. This was definitely more of a symbolic gesture. I would just grab a small roll and eat it on my way back home.

  I went inside and smiled with nostalgia. I’d forgotten how romantic the atmosphere was. Brad and I had had several dates here. There was low lighting and private booths. As I looked around, I spotted someone who looked familiar.

  Blinking, I figured I had to be hallucinating. I checked again. Not my imagination. That woman over in the corner with a man who most definitely was not Tyler—it was Oksana.

  Was she cheating on him? I had to call Shay right away. I got my phone out.

  As if he knew I was thinking about him, a text came in from Tyler.

  It was a picture of the Singapore skyline at sunset, taken from the restaurant I’d recommended. My pulse sputtered as the air solidified in my chest.

  He deserved so much better than Oksana. So. Much. Better.

  The hostess returned and asked, “Is this for here or to go?”

  It didn’t take much to make up my mind.

  “For here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The hostess showed me to a table, but I couldn’t see Oksana. “Do you have a booth available? Over there?” I pointed to where I could feasibly hide but still keep an eye on Tyler’s cheating girlfriend. She would have to turn and look over her shoulder to see me, and given how wrapped up she was in her date, I didn’t think that was much of a possibility.

  And I was assuming a lot here. Like the fact that I had registered enough on her radar for her to remember who I was. Because the two times I’d talked to her, I got the distinct impression that she thought me beneath her notice.

  I called Shay and before I could speak, she said, “Did you figure out a way to get her last name?”

  “I’m at Yuto’s and she’s here and it looks like she may be on a date.”

  “Oooh.” She sounded way too excited. “How does she look?”

  Like she always did? The same way she had when she’d been in my apartment earlier? “Like a shark wearing a human costume? Gorgeous but deadly? And she makes me feel inadequate in every way that a woman can possibly feel inadequate?”

  “Well, that’s not true. You’re not a mother yet and that’s going to be a whole new level of inadequacies. I meant, is she dressed up?”

  “I don’t know. She’s wearing a dress, but she was wearing the same thing at my house.”

  “What kind of woman makes a guy what we’re calling soup and then meets up with another dude?”

  Much as I didn’t want to be fair, in this instance I had to be. “You can’t mock the borscht. It was really good.”

  My waitress came by then to ask what I wanted to drink and I told her just water. This was not a situation that needed to be alcohol fueled. It was important that I stay low-key and not start shouting things across the room at her.

  Which may or may not have happened in some previous situations.

  Shay asked, “Why are you in a sushi restaurant?”

  So I explained the situation to her, leaving out the parts about the cost and Violet. Shay wouldn’t want me to have to owe anyone in my family and I wasn’t really in the mood to hash it out.

  “Can’t you teach the dog not to chew on shoes?”

  “Probably. But Tyler’s not really into disciplining Pigeon. He likes to spoil her.” Which I couldn’t blame him for, because she was the cutest and was usually such a good girl.

  “That’s excellent,” she informed me.

  “Why?”

  “Because a man who spoils his dog will definitely spoil the woman he’s in love with.”

  “Which is not me and is a very scary Russian woman who may or may not be cheating on him right this very second.” And if I was being honest, none of that was any of my business. I really had no right to be sitting here. “I shouldn’t be doing this. I feel like I’m breaching Tyler’s privacy.”

  “More than when you were playing with his clothes?”

  “I never should have told you that,” I muttered.

  “Probably not,” she agreed. “This is probably some psychological thing. Where you stood by while Brad treated you like garbage so you’re not willing to stand by and see someone you care about get treated the same way.”

  “
What?” I asked, shocked by her assertion.

  “Or I could be totally wrong. What’s she doing now?”

  I glanced up, trying not to stare. “They’re just talking and they’re too far away for me to hear them. I should probably just go. Isn’t this technically stalking?”

  “I say desperate times call for desperate measures and he is desperately hot and you’re just desperate, so stay put.”

  “I’m not desperate—” I tried to protest, but she interrupted me.

  “Speaking of desperate, have you told Brad to leave you alone and stop texting you? He gives love a Brad name.”

  He had texted me two more times, but I didn’t mention it. “He knows not to. Maybe I should block his number. I told him he’s not the right guy for me.”

  “That’s because Tyler is the right guy for you.”

  I wished she could see me shaking my head. She needed to let the Tyler thing go. Even if I couldn’t do it myself. “I’m not ready to deal with my mother at the moment. One nuclear war at a time. Now shush. You’re distracting me from my stalking.”

  “That’s so I can tell the police I tried to stop you from committing your crime when they accuse me of being an accessory after the fact.”

  “Hate to tell you, Shay, but you’re an accessory during the fact.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I went silent, covertly watching Oksana and her date. I wished I could hear them. I could see only the side of Oksana’s face, so it was hard to tell if she was flirting or if she was just talking to him.

  I tried to figure out why this bothered me so much. Why I was sitting here watching this woman when it literally had no bearing on my life. I figured it was probably because Brad had cheated on me so often and it infuriated me to think that someone might be doing this to a guy as nice as Tyler. He didn’t deserve it.