The One I'm With

by Jamie Bennett

  I was a little short of breath. I could smell him, that delicious aroma of spicy-woodsy-man that he’d always had. “Uh huh.”

  “Let’s go see the house. This is pretty big for one person, isn’t it?”

  We walked up the front steps. “It has a yard for Maisie, my dog,” I explained. Another Starhurst teacher had a real estate broker for a partner, and she had given me the tip about this rental.

  “You weren’t kidding about devoting your life to her, rather than getting married,” he noted.

  I dropped the lockbox I had been fiddling with. “What? Oh, right. I said that about marrying you. I mean, when you were joking about that.” I managed to get the key out and we went in.

  I saw immediately that it was much, much too big for one person. “Nice, but large,” Brooks said, echoing my thoughts. “How much is this per month?” When I told him, he whistled. “Not cheap.”

  I shrugged. My dad had left me income, too, not that I liked to throw that around among the other teachers who were always struggling, but Brooks knew it. Not that I wanted to waste money on a giant house, though.

  “How big is your dog, that you need such a large yard?” he asked, looking out into the emerald grass in the back. Everything was green, green, green with all the winter rain.

  I held out my hands, considered Maisie, and brought them closer together.

  “That’s it?” Brooks said. He laughed.

  “And she’s extremely lazy,” I told him. “And verging on portly.”

  He laughed again. “This is a great house, but I wonder if you need all this space for one person, or all that yard for a dog that would fit in a lunchbox.”

  “She would not! Maybe a picnic basket, and since you seem pretty strong, maybe you could even carry it.”

  We both started to laugh. I had a feeling Maisie would really, really like him. Even more than she liked stupid Ava.

  “Anywhere else on your list to look?” he asked me.

  “Not really.” I sighed. “What about you? Where are you staying?”

  “With my mom, right now. Which, although I love my mom, is not fun. I’ve looked a lot in the city.”

  “I thought you wanted to move home to be close to nature,” I said. “Golden Gate Park is enough for you?”

  “It’s just a ride back across the bridge and then I’d be here,” Brooks told me. “But no, I have another option. Follow me in your car and I’ll show you.”

  I did, down Highway 101 into San Anselmo, where he drove through the cute little town, and back onto one of the residential streets. He stopped in front of a Craftsman-style cottage.

  I knew this place. “Isn’t this Scarlett’s house?” I called as I got out of my car.

  “It is. The house our grandmother bought for her. Scarlett moved in with Mats in San Francisco, so we’ll see how much longer they remain engaged. She’s renting this to me. She’s gouging me terribly,” he said ruefully. “Blood ties mean nothing to her.”

  “It’s really, really cute,” I said. It was close enough to walk to the tiny downtown, close enough to go up in the hills to hike and bike. “Can I see the inside?”

  “Yes, because I have an idea.” He unlocked the door and we went in, and just as I expected, the house was amazing inside. Anything that Scarlett owned would have to be both perfect and stylish and this absolutely was. “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “Definitely.” There was a raised firepit in the back yard, a big awning over a stone patio, and a tiny strip of grass that was Maisie-sized.

  “It would be a really close commute to Starhurst Academy,” Brooks noted. “In nice weather, you could walk.”

  “I guess I could, if I lived here.”

  “You could live here,” he said. “There are three bedrooms. Help me out with the rent.”

  I turned to stare at Brooks. “Are you serious?”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Why not? “Do you really need help to pay for this?”

  “I’m not going to be taking a salary for a while, and I hate the idea of asking my little sister to give me a break on the rent. She’s heartless.” He grinned. “No, I have savings. I don’t really need help. But I thought it might work out perfectly. Both of us need a place, we need to get away from living with our mothers. We’re old friends.”

  Yes. Old friends.

  “I’ll be working from home at first, so I could help you with the dog during the day. I’m fairly clean. Usually. I’ve been told that I have a beautiful singing voice when I shower.”

  Oh, wow. Brooks in the shower. My mind flashed back to him standing on the side of the pool, passing a yellow water polo ball back and forth from hand to hand, the water sluicing down his arms, over his thighs…

  He was waiting for me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I asked, what do you think? You don’t have to tell me now, but I’m interested in your first impression.”

  That would have been hard to put into words. Shock? Awe? Shock and awe?

  Fear puke?

  “I’m going to have to consider it a little. Thank you for thinking of me,” I said.

  “One bedroom is on this floor, which I thought I’d use for an office. It’s about the size of a closet. The other two are upstairs. Two baths, so we wouldn’t have to share.”

  Brooks in the shower. Brooks naked. In the room next to mine.

  Could there maybe have been a brief ice storm, just to take down my temperature a few notches? I would have taken sleet, freezing rain…

  “Take a look around,” he suggested, “then let’s go have lunch.”

  I nodded and walked up the staircase. The bedrooms were each bigger than the one I currently had. The bathrooms were nicer, too. Plenty of closet space, which made sense for a house owned by Scarlett, who rarely wore the same thing twice. It really was great. None of the drab paint like my mom had noted about my current house. I’d save the planet by walking to school some days, and Maisie would get extra cardio going up and down stairs.

  Was I talking myself into this?

  Brooks stuck his head in the bedroom. “Lanie, are you ready?”

  I swallowed. Was I?

  ∞

  “Are you out of your mind?” Jolie demanded. “You haven’t said yes yet? If you’re not going to take it, do you think he would mind me and Nola moving in? I mean, a kid is somewhat like a dog, and he’s ok with Maisie.”

  “I didn’t say no. Yet,” I answered. But it had been six days, and I hadn’t said yes, either. It wasn’t nice to make him wait and I wasn’t any closer to coming to a conclusion about my living situation. Maybe Ava had been right about my decision-making skills.

  “Hang on, let me put my load in the dryer,” Jolie told me. “Keep an eye on my girl.” Nola and I hung out until Jolie came running back up from the laundry room in the basement. “What I wouldn’t do to have in-unit laundry,” she complained. “That should be first on your list of the reasons to take the house.”

  I didn’t mention that while I lived at the guest house, my mom’s housekeeper did my laundry. Jolie would probably try to dismember me. “That’s a good idea,” I said instead. “I should make a pro and con list.”

  “Here.” She slid over an old receipt tapped it with a pen. “Write it out. First on the pro side should actually be that you don’t have anywhere else to go, and your mom and the boy-toy will be back in three days.”

  “Yep.” I didn’t write for a moment, thinking, then I jotted down my best pro reason, and my best con. I looked at the list.

  “You wrote ‘Brooks’ on both sides?” Jolie shook her head. “How long have you had it for him?”

  “How old am I, again?” I asked her, and sighed. “Ever since I was a kid, he’s just been my ideal.”

  “He’s physical perfection,” she agreed.

  “No, not just that. I mean, there is that for sure.” But also a lot more than his looks. I thought back to when we climbed trails in the mountains in Tahoe in the summer,
and Brooks walked behind me and held the loop at the top of my backpack so it would be lighter for me. When he carried me back up to the house from the beach when a jellyfish stung me in Hawaii, making me laugh by offering to pee on the sting for me. Stuff like that had made him my ideal.

  “Could you live with him, just as a roommate?” Jolie asked. “Without losing your mind from jealousy or masturbating yourself blind?”

  I sighed. “I guess that’s what’s holding me back. I don’t want to make myself miserable, living so close to him and not being able to have him.”

  “Mama, up,” Nola announced, and Jolie complied, kissing her daughter’s rosy cheek. Her whole face changed, softened, when she looked at Nola.

  “Why wouldn’t you be able to have him?” Jolie asked, resting her chin on Nola’s curls. “I mean, start as friends, go to benefits, make it permanent.”

  I perked up, interested. “Do you really think that would work?”

  Her daughter squirmed off her lap and went back to her blocks and Jolie watched her. “Step one is already done. You’re already friends,” she told me.

  Yes, I guessed we were. “And then what would I do? How would I make it go to the benefits level?”

  “Lanie, there are a million things! Like say you’re in the kitchen together.” She pantomimed reaching over her head, thrusting her chest out. “I’m just getting the cereal on this high shelf, sorry my boobs are in your face.”

  I looked down at my chest. He might not notice if they were.

  “Oh, sorry, yes, that’s my very sexy lace thong that got put into your sheets by mistake,” she continued. “I didn’t mean to lick my lips like that while I was looking at your crotch, I was just thinking I need lip gloss. Was I eating my banana in a funny way? Ha ha, I was sucking it?” Jolie was getting really warmed up, talking in a high, breathy voice that I assumed was supposed to be the sexy version of me.

  “Have you done this before or something? You seem to have thought a lot about it,” I said.

  “I just took a long, hot, steamy shower and I forgot my towel,” she purred, brushing her fingers across her chest. “I was going to walk to my room naked, but so sorry, this is your room and here I am naked…” She switched back to her normal voice. “I can think of more.”

  I tried to picture myself doing any of those things. The closest I got was that I did, in fact, eat cereal and bananas, and I also took showers. “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “I don’t have a lot of faith in my powers of seduction.”

  Jolie shrugged. “It’s there, you just have to access it.”

  “Jolie, I’m not…” I looked down at myself again. “I’m not the kind of woman who men think of like that.”

  “Lanie, men will think of any woman like that, especially if she’s walking naked in front of them. And you sell yourself way too short. You’re a beautiful girl, and you’re sweet and so funny!”

  “I knew I liked you,” I told her.

  She smiled. “I mean it. That Brooks is kind of s-e-x on a stick,” she spelled, glancing at her daughter, “but I don’t see any impediment to you getting on his stick, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh my God…” I groaned.

  “I just happened to be walking by and oops, my open mouth went right onto your d-i-c-k!” she panted.

  “Jolie!”

  “And that’s how I would do it if I had the chance to live with a guy I liked. If I ever, in a million years, wanted something permanent again,” she concluded.

  “You don’t want anything permanent?” I asked, interested.

  “I have something permanent.” She nodded at Nola, banging blocks on the floor. “This is enough for me. I’m with kids all day, I come home to my own. I don’t want one more person to need something from me, you know? One more person touching me, demanding my attention, my care. My love. I don’t have the room for any more. I just want, you know,” she finished, eyebrows raised. “Something easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”

  I thought. “I could go for some easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”

  “Really?” Jolie looked very skeptical. “I would peg you as a forever girl. Do you really just want to bang him?” She mouthed the last part.

  My mouth went dry at the thought. “Well…”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Forever girl. Then I think this is a great opportunity for you, Lanie. And that house is so nice! Laundry.” She stared off into the distance, daydreaming.

  Maybe it was a great opportunity. I had only thought of myself crying alone in a dark room as he left to date other women, not of the possibility that I could somehow trick him into falling for me, too. Then the thought of tricking him…no, no, no. I didn’t want to try to manipulate him, to play games. Just no.

  My phone rang and I could tell by the string of numbers on the screen that it was my mom calling from her far-off island. “I have to talk to her,” I told Jolie. “I’ve been avoiding her since the day I saw Scarlett’s house with Brooks. She’ll just keep calling and then she’ll sic her assistant on me.”

  We both stared at my phone as it continued to ring until Jolie hit the button and handed it to me. I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “Hi, Mom. How is paradise?”

  “Gorgeous as always. But you know, some reality TV people just got to the resort and they are so déclassé. It may be the beginning of the end.” If her tacky antennae were up, she wouldn’t be returning there. She told me what she and Kristian were doing, which sounded like him lying on the beach and her working. She never really stopped. She even answered emails between points in her tennis games. And Kristian never really got off his ass, no matter where in the world he was, so they were both true to form.

  She also didn’t beat around the bush. “Did you find a place to live yet?”

  “I’m looking,” I said.

  “Tell me where.”

  I did, about the house in San Rafael that Brooks and I had visited, an apartment in Cow Hollow in the city, a condo in Novato, a few more that I had seen or read the listings for. I didn’t mention Scarlett’s house in San Anselmo, where I would have Brooks as my roommate.

  The phone crackled a little.

  “Oh, I think we’re losing the connection,” I said happily.

  “I can hear you perfectly,” my mom said. “Lanie, it’s really time for you to be on your own.”

  “Why, Mom? Why now? I mean, is there a reason in particular? It seems like this just sprang up out of nowhere.” I waited, wondering if she would tell me about the Russian artist moving in.

  “I know how upset you were about me marrying Kristian. You didn’t think anyone could replace your father.”

  “What? Replace—no. If you wanted to get remarried—but that guy,” I sputtered. We were getting off-topic.

  “Life has to go on, I had to go on, whether you were ready for me to or not. Now, you being there with all your disapproval, it makes Kristian uncomfortable. He’s very sensitive.”

  “Kristian,” I stated clearly, “is an asshole.”

  There was silence on the phone. Oh, shit. I hadn’t meant to swear in front of Jolie’s little girl. I hadn’t meant to tell my mom that I felt that way, not ever.

  “Exactly,” my mom said, and even with the tropical sun beaming down on her, her voice was icy cold. “And now you’ll need to find somewhere else to live before we come home.”

  She hung up. I looked at the phone.

  “Ok,” I told Jolie. “I made my decision.”

  Chapter 6

  I closed the door to my car, closed the door on the sound of Maisie’s pissed-off barks. She hated her little kennel and she hated going on rides, which often ended in vomit for her. I was hating the idea of this ride also, dreading it to the extent that I was thinking it might end that way for me as well. Maybe my dog and I would puke together when we reached our destination, which would be a great cap to this already awesome morning.

  “Let’s run down the list again,” Ava said, holding up her phone. There was one reason t
he morning sucked: Ava had arrived bright and early. She was weekend casual today, perfectly fitted jeans and the same down coat that Coco had, puffy but somehow also flattering. How?

  “No, there’s no need to triple-check your list. I have everything. And I’m moving about twenty minutes north, so if it ends up that I forgot something, I feel like there’s a remedy,” I said.

  She did her little lip twist thing and I got the feeling that me coming back to this house wasn’t really in the plans my mom had discussed with her. I had texted my mom that I was moving out today and just like clockwork, her unhappy minion had rung the doorbell before eight AM to “help send me off.” I wanted to smack Ava and then reach across the ocean and do the same to my mom. They couldn’t have even trusted me to put my stuff in boxes? I didn’t even have that much—no furniture, just clothes and school stuff. And a giant box of mementos of my dad that I had gathered up, afraid that my mom and Kristian would rid themselves of them, like his missing portrait. I seethed again, remembering my last conversation with my mom and how she mentioned Kristian as my dad’s replacement. That skinny twerp couldn’t have stood in for a doorstop, let alone be in the place of my dad.

  Ava made a little waving motion. “If you’re all packed up, then you’re ready to go.” Shoo, shoo, her hands said to me. Move along.

  “You know, it’s probably better for me to do just one more check,” I told her. “A slow walk-through, to be thorough.” I wouldn’t really have done that to Maisie, but I wondered how Ava would react.

  She stared at me and somehow her bland face managed to convey a lot of objection to that plan.

  “Why is it so important to you that I go right now?” I asked, point blank.

  “Your mother wanted you to leave before noon. She has another house guest coming today.”

  “Today? She’s moving in that woman today? Wait a minute, another house guest? I’m not a guest here.”

  “In any case, she has another…person moving in and she thought you would be upset to be here to see it.”

  “Ok, fine. I’m gratified to know how much she cares about my feelings.” I picked up a bag from the ground. “I know how much you enjoy ‘babysitting,’ so I’ll be on my way.” I didn’t move.