by Mary Frame
“You know, she’s still telling everyone you’re together.”
I shouldn’t engage, but I’m still too worked up to remain silent. “And that’s why you thought it was a good idea to hook up with her? Because you thought you were getting one over on me?” I stop long enough to laugh in his face. “You’re pathetic.”
Almost to my truck now.
“No more pathetic than you fighting over a girl who isn’t even yours.”
I don’t argue with that, but Kevin doesn’t understand. She might not be mine in the sense he means, but Abby and I have been friends since we were barely out of diapers. Sticking up for her is like second nature. No matter our past history, I could never stand idly by while someone hurt her. Even though doing so may have made things worse, for her and definitely for me.
I don’t think I can stare at Kevin’s smug face any longer without punching him again, and I still have to live with the guy.
Hopping into my beaten old Ford pickup, I slam the door. I half expect Kevin to continue our argument despite the door between us. He loves a good row, but instead, he smirks at me through the window before jogging back into the building.
Great. He can be her knight in shining armor.
That’s not me. Not anymore. This is exactly why I broke it off with Abby in the first place. We are too different.
Besides the gulf that’s slowly grown over the last year, I’m almost eighty percent certain she started cheating on me right after we started college. She’s changed too much and I can’t handle the drama.
When I finally broke it off, she was surprisingly calm and understanding. But then the random texts and phone calls started, and I kept responding to them like a fool, and now it’s all culminated in this.
I take stock of my sore knuckles and swollen lip. I guess it could be worse.
Earlier, in the middle of the night, Abby woke me with a text.
I wish I could go to sleep and not wake up.
Immediately I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. I tried a few times more, then tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t.
I was worried. Now . . . I don’t know what to think.
The drive home is quick. Scott’s parents have a rental property right off campus so I’m walking in the door within minutes.
I grab a bag of frozen green beans and head to my room, right down the hall from Kevin’s. I grimace at his shut door. It’s going to be even more hellish to live with him now.
It’s not that I’m jealous. I’m not. I don’t want to be with Abby anymore, but it still hurts. We were a couple for so long and friends for even longer. It’s like she wanted me to see her with Kevin. She wanted to try and make me angry or jealous, or who knows. I still hear the sound when I close my eyes.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My stomach rolls, remembering what Kevin said. You think I’m the first one here? You think you were?
I doze in and out, never quite reaching dreamland since my hand throbs from where I punched Kevin in his stupid face.
The sound of someone talking pulls me from my half sleep. I’m still fully dressed, eyes gritty. I look over at my alarm. It’s one o’clock.
I’ve missed all my classes today.
I need coffee. I head to the kitchen and start the pot, grabbing a cup from the worn-out cupboard and straining to hear Scott talking.
He’s on the phone, his voice low. I can’t make out much, but Kevin’s name comes up. And mine.
Once the coffee is done brewing, Scott’s voice has gone silent. I head out to the porch and sit on the rickety old folding chair.
He’s leaning against the railing, eyes inscrutable. “We need to talk.”
My heart thumps, a dull pulsing in my head, which is starting to throb along with my hand. “About what?” I blow on the coffee before taking a sip.
“There’s no easy way to say this.”
No way. He got to Scott already. It’s only been . . . well, it’s nearly one, so I guess it’s been about eight hours.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea if you keep staying here.”
Before I can figure out how to respond, a car pulls into the driveway.
Abby’s Mini Cooper.
She got it for her eighteenth birthday. I helped her dad pick it out. It’s black with red racing stripes, and Abby cried happy tears when her dad handed her the keys. Then we drove it to the Frostee Freeze for ice cream cones and went parking at the lake.
I put the coffee cup down on the porch next to the chair, but I can’t set aside a lifetime of memories with the same ease. I face Scott. “What is going on?”
“Sorry, Fitz.” At least he has the grace to look as uncomfortable as I feel. He won’t meet my eyes.
“Why are you giving me the boot?”
He blinks at me, his hands flexing against the straps of his bag on his shoulders. “You punched Kevin.”
“He deserved it.”
Scott winces, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand. “Maybe. But I can’t kick him out. He pays rent.”
“I can pay rent.”
He lets me stay here for free. It’s why I moved in. I actually can’t afford to pay rent, but I also can’t afford to be homeless. I could work something out. Get a job. I push away thoughts of how that might affect my grades, my cross-country scholarship . . .
I can make it work. I have to.
“Kev is my best friend. One of you has to go, and I can’t kick him out. Besides, you probably won’t want to stay here anyway since Abby’s moving in. She was kicked out of the dorms.” Scott shuffles his feet and glances over at Abby’s car, where Kevin is hauling a bag out of the trunk.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, head in my hands. I understand Scott is in a bind. He hates confrontation and this conversation is probably killing him. But I’m tired and I can’t deal with this. I’ve already missed classes today and I’ve got to keep my grades up.
“So that’s it, huh?”
“You have somewhere to go. Your parents live nearby, right?”
Maybe. It will be weird. Dad’s off work on injury and they’re both stressed to the max. They don’t need my problems or another mouth to feed.
But maybe it’s the best option, even though I haven’t told them yet Abby and I are over. We had decided to hold off informing our parents until we had to.
Now I’ll have no choice.
Feet thump on the steps and stalls our conversation. Not that there’s anything else to say.
“I’m sorry, Fitz. Really, I am.”
I stand up, but Scott leaves then, passing Kevin and Abby on the stairs with a couple quick words.
Kevin passes into the house after a smirk in my direction. I manage to hold back any response, although I do feel a bit of satisfaction at the darkening bruises around his eye.
Then Abby is there, standing at the top of the porch, eyes still rimmed in red, reminding me of when we were thirteen and Tommy Phillips called her a bitch. My hand throbbed that day too.
“Can I talk to you?” Her voice wavers.
My whole body is tense, but I can’t help the pang of something resembling sympathy underneath. Despite everything that’s happened between us over the last year, a lifetime of memories is not something I can discard easily. This is so confusing. Too many conflicting emotions. Anger. Pain. But I still care. I wish I didn’t.
Then I might not be in this situation.
“I’m sorr—”
“Don’t say it.” I swipe the words away with a hand. “I’m not ready to hear you apologize.”
“I know you hate me. You have every right. But Fitz, please . . .” She breaks away, her gaze falling to her hands wringing in front of her. “Please don’t tell our parents yet.”
Any sympathy I have evaporates.
That’s what she’s worried about? Not about me or my feelings or where I’m going to live now? The fact that she’s been acting crazy and manipulating me for the last month? Longer, actually. I didn’t see
the full picture until now.
“I have to tell my parents. I have nowhere else to live, Abby. They’re gonna wonder why I can’t stay here anymore.” It was the luckiest of breaks, or so I thought. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the scholarship and Scott’s offer of a free room.
I have to tell my parents, and they’ll tell Abby’s parents. After all, our mommas have been best friends since we were kids. She doesn’t want her parents to find out so she doesn’t have to deal with them. What an inconvenience for her.
“Please, Fitz. The truth is, I’m already in a spot of trouble. And it’s bad.” She bites her lip in a move that used to elicit sympathy and arousal, but now only makes me sick. She continues, “My grades aren’t great. If I can’t bring them up, I might have to drop out.”
I rock back on my heels. “What? Since when?”
But she doesn’t answer my question. “If my parents find out I got kicked out of the dorms on top of everything else . . .” She shakes her head. “I need you to do this one thing for me. It’s not forever. I can appeal the decision and maybe move back into the dorms, but it takes a couple months.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your grades?”
She swallows and tears stream down her face. “Because it’s embarrassing enough. I’ll deal with everything, but it would help if my parents didn’t know. You know how Daddy is.”
Her dad is a perfectionist and expects the same from his daughter. Always has. And Abby has always lived up to those expectations, until now.
“Where am I supposed to live for two months, Abby? In my truck?”
“I’m sure you’ll find something. There’s Annabel too.”
My sister. I guess it’s possible I could stay with her temporarily, but she has roommates. The housing situation in Blue Falls right now is a nightmare.
I clench my jaw, wishing for a miracle, to go back in time, and for everything in the last twelve hours to not have happened. I can’t possibly let her do this. But then I meet Abby’s blue eyes, as familiar as my own, now red with tears. Her face is pale, her arms wrapped around her stomach like it’s the only thing holding her together. The angry ball in my stomach turns hollow.
“Fine.”
She disappears inside and I stay on the porch for a minute, wondering how on earth everything could have gone so wrong so quickly.
I get all my stuff in the truck in less than a half hour without running into Abby or Kevin. They’ve disappeared into his room, the door shut. All is quiet.
I don’t have much, but it’s enough to almost fill the two-seater cab of my truck. I won’t be able to sleep here, unless I do so while sitting up with a box for a pillow.
I sit in the driveway in my now-cramped cab and call the only person who might be able to help me find a place to live, even though it’s the last person I want to call because of the sheer amount of shit she’s going to give me.
Annabel.
I take a deep breath before hitting the call button. Gotta pull it together. Time to get things sorted.
“Hey, Annabel Lee. How’s your tomb in the sounding sea?” I shouldn’t be teasing her since I’m about to ask a favor, but it’s an old joke.
“You’re not at all worth pleasing, Mr. Darcy,” she counters.
Our mother is a librarian. She loves all things literature, hence our names.
Dad—who doesn’t read anything except construction plans—might have argued, but he loved her too much to tell her no. Our parents have been together since they were children. Just like Abby and I.
My stomach lurches but I pull it together and remind myself of the conversation at hand.
“So how you been?” I ask.
There’s a long second of silence and then Annabel responds in a wary tone. “What do you want, Fitz?”
I sigh. Better to get it over with. “Can I crash on your couch for a few days?”
A longer stretch of silence ensues. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been a bit of an issue here.”
“Aren’t you staying at Scott’s?”
“It’s a long story.”
She pauses. “Please don’t tell me your psycho girlfriend has something to do with this.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
“Fitz!”
“What? And she’s not a psycho.” Also, she’s no longer my girlfriend. Also, the psycho thing might be more accurate than I’ve wanted to believe but the natural urge to defend Abby is going to be a hard one to break.
“I’m not convinced.”
Even though Abby isn’t my favorite person at the moment, I don’t really want to tell Annabel the entire horror story. But I’m not seeing any way around it at the moment. If she feels bad enough for me, I won’t have to beg too much for a spot on her couch. “Don’t be all gleeful about this, Annabel, you hear me?”
She sighs. “I’m not happy if you’re in pain, blah blah blah, now tell me what’s going on so I can come up with a solution.”
I take a breath before letting it out. Quick. Like a Band-Aid. “Abby and I broke up.”
“What?” Her shriek could wake the entire county. “When?”
“About a month ago.”
“A month? A month! What the hell, Fitz?”
“I don’t wanna get into the details. It’s over. But we were still friends, then she . . . she was sending me weird texts last night and I got worried and went to check on her and I caught her and Kevin. In her dorm. On the floor.”
She hisses and I can practically feel her breathing fire through the line. “Your roommate Kevin? She was banging your roommate? Did you kill them? Because if you haven’t, I want a shot at it.”
“I might have hit Kevin. A few times.”
“You should have punched Abby. She’s the one who likes to set up the dominos just to tap one with her overly manicured finger and watch them fall. Right onto people’s heads.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I know you’ve never liked her.”
“That’s not true, I liked her fine until she started wearing pants so tight you could see her religion.”
A startled laugh escapes me. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Fitz. She hasn’t been the same since you guys went off to college together. I could tell last summer at the midnight hay ride she was looking to park her car in someone else’s garage.”
She’s right. It’s why I ended things already, and yet I still got sucked into her crap. I thump my head against the steering wheel. I have been blind. “I get it and you’re right, okay? You’re always right. Are you happy now?”
“Kind of. I would like to hear it again in person. Maybe in writing too.”
“I have a more pressing problem. I have nowhere to live.”
“You could go home. I mean, I know it will be strange and all since Dad’s not working but you still have a room there.”
How can I tell her? “I can’t tell Momma.”
“Oh my God. Don’t tell me Abby is making you keep this a secret? Because she’s so selfish, it’s all about her.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to.” She groans in frustration. “I get it, Fitz. I know you think you should have some kind of Lifetime-movie love story like our parents, but sometimes life isn’t like that. You’ve got a skewed vision of reality.”
But that’s the thing. Abby and I did have an epic love story. Just like my parents and my grandparents. “Why are you such a cynic? Wait. Don’t answer.” I’ve gone down this road with Annabel before. She thinks love is all a “social construct,” despite the fact that our own parents have been together for almost thirty years and are still as in love as the day they first met. “I didn’t call to argue with you. I need a place to crash for a little bit.”
Annabel is like a prickly pear—a tough exterior hiding a soft center.
She’s quiet for a few seconds before speaking. “I’m sorry, Fitz, but you can’t stay at my place.”
&n
bsp; “Why not?”
“We’ve got three women in a two-bedroom condo. Susie and Christie just got married. It’s not happening.”
She lives with a couple she met in journalism school. They’ve all been roommates since her last year of college.
“I’ll sleep in the bathtub. I’m desperate.”
“One, it’s a stand-up shower. Two, they’re newlyweds and want to be alone. I promised them I would start looking for a new place myself. I’m lucky they’re cutting me some slack since the market is so bad right now.”
A local landowner found a cave full of blue topaz last year, bringing a ton of mining and business to an area just outside our sleepy little town, but also sucking up all available housing. They’ve started building new apartments to fill the gap, but it hasn’t caught up to the demand. It’s a nightmare to find anywhere to live.
“So, then what are my other options?”
“If you can’t stay at home and you can’t stay with me . . . maybe try the housing center on campus?”
“You really think there’s going to be something? It’s a month into the semester.”
“You never know,” Annabel says. “You might get lucky. Or grow a set of balls, tell everyone the truth, and let Abby go to hell.”
“I guess I could give Dad a heart attack as well as a bad back.”
My guilt trip doesn’t work. Annabel just sighs. “Let me know what you decide. And . . . hey, I’ll keep an eye on the ads at the paper. Maybe someone somewhere is renting a room. I’ll get you first look.”
“Thanks, sis.”
We hang up and I rub at my tired eyes.
Guess I’m heading to the housing center.
3
A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.
—Maya Angelou
Reese
Scarlett’s phone goes straight to voice mail.
“Hey. It’s me. Your sister.” Why did I say that? She knows who I am. Ugh, I can’t escape the awkward even with family. “I know you’re busy, but . . . can you call me? Whenever you can. Miss you.”
I end the call and slump back in the drivers’ seat.
My eyes are dry and grubby. I still can’t believe it. I’ve been kicked out of the dorms, of any official university housing. I can appeal the decision, but it has to go in front of the housing board and not for another month, at least. I can request an emergency session but that involves paperwork and waiting and a bunch of bureaucratic malarkey that will probably get me nowhere since I have family locally.
