Accidental Roommate

by Jolie Day

  Sniffling, I wiped my eyes and began to pick my way through the crowd toward the huge double doors of the museum. Standing around in the place where I’d undoubtedly just been fired from wasn’t going to do me any good. My feet hit the steps that led down from the Met into the rivers of human traffic below, and I found myself instinctively walking toward the apartment I’d been sharing with Ethan for some time now. I was hungry, and I knew there was leftover pad Thai and a beer in the fridge waiting for me.

  I realized what I was doing and stopped short just in front of the subway entrance that would have transported me onto the train to Ethan’s street. I wasn’t ready to face him again, not after rushing out of his apartment with tears streaming down my face, and not after having the worst day of work ever. There was a part of me (actually bigger than I would have liked to admit), that wanted to run into his arms and be held until some, or all of this pain went away. Curling up in his big bed and sleeping off this whole day sounded pretty good, too, but I knew that wasn’t on the table right now. Ethan probably didn’t even want to look at me after how angry I had made him last night, and I was still mad at him, too. Maybe getting involved with him had been a bad idea. He had hurt me before. I should have known he was perfectly capable of doing it again.

  My stomach rumbled. I scrounged around in my pockets until I found a couple of dollars, and then I exchanged them for a veggie kabob from the man selling halal food out of a truck on the corner. I sat down on one of the many steps of the Metropolitan Museum and chewed on my dinner until the emptiness in my stomach was filled. I still felt pretty damn empty in general—but it was a start.

  I pulled out my phone as I nibbled on a grill-blackened pepper. Ignoring Ricky’s most recent text, I typed out:

  Hey, can I ask you something? Kind of personal.

  Sure! Fire away.

  You remember Ethan from high school?

  A pause. Three little dots blinked while Ricky typed, and I swallowed hard. What was I doing? Did I really intend to tell my brother about my new roommate, not to mention lover? He would be livid. But I was tired of all the secrets in my life.

  Yeah, why??

  Do you guys ever talk anymore?

  Nope, he ghosted me. We had a fight. He never came by after that. I think he moved to Long Island or something.

  My heart hammered against my ribs, and I had to put the phone down in my lap and take a deep breath. A fight. There had been a fight. Whatever Ethan had been so worried about mentioning, whatever he guarded so tightly that he was willing to let it tear us apart, this was it.

  What kind of fight? I wrote back, as casual as I could come across over text.

  Why do you ask??? he texted, simultaneous to my last message.

  Panic rose in my throat. I wasn’t ready to tell him yet. I loved my brother and we shared most everything, and if this whole thing with me and Ethan didn’t entirely self-destruct in a month or two, I would definitely let Ricky know about it. But right now, even bringing up Ethan’s name in conversation was terrifying, so I kept it vague.

  No reason. I remembered how he stopped coming around, and I just wondered.

  Ricky’s three little dots appeared, then vanished, then appeared again. A few minutes later, my phone started to ring.

  “Uh, hey, Ricky,” I said, trying to sound bright and happy. Ricky wasn’t big for talking over the phone unless he was ordering a pizza for delivery. Texting let him pull together his thoughts before sharing them, and I was, as a rule, the chatterbox of the family. “What’s up?”

  “Hey, Maya,” he said in his gravelly voice that always made him sound so much tougher than the big softie I knew him to be. There was a chattering baby’s voice in the background and the clatter of plastic toys. I imagined him sitting on the floor of his living room, building block towers with his little daughter, which he probably was since it was his day off from work. “So, um. About the whole Ethan thing. It’s just one of those things that’s easier to explain over the phone.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “The thing is…” Ricky sighed, and his breath was a crackle of electric static in my ear. “Listen, I know about you and Ethan.”

  I almost choked.

  That was impossible, worst-case-scenario nightmare impossible. I hadn’t told anyone about my relationship with Ethan besides my closest friends in New York, and most people didn’t even know where I was living. I opened my mouth to try and smooth things over, but Ricky spoke first.

  “About him hitting on you in the car that night.”

  Oh, thank God. Relief washed over me like a wave, but it was quickly replaced with mortification. Ricky knew? He saw? I had successfully convinced myself for years that no one knew what had transpired between Ethan and I in that Camry except the two of us, and now I was flabbergasted.

  “Oh, God, you saw that. Oh, wow, okay… this is mortifying. Listen, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for anything to happen. He just gave me a ride, and then we started to talk and—”

  “Maya, Maya!” Ricky urged, and it took him repeating my name a couple of times before I actually heard him and stopped babbling. “You don’t have to apologize; it wasn’t your fault. I know that creep pressured you into it, and don’t worry, I told him off like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “You… what?!”

  “I went out there after you’d gone inside and pulled his smug ass out of that car and gave him a good talking to. You know what I’m saying? And of course, he tried to cover for himself. Talking all this shit about how he really liked you, and how he wanted to take you out—but I knew better. Every time he took a girl out, he would drop her for the new hot chick the next week or get distracted, trying to game the stock market or whatever. He was always broke, too. I didn’t want to see you get hurt. So, I told him to stay as far away from you, or else–”

  The city was spinning, tilting dangerously to one side, and I felt like I might be sick. A rush of light-headedness overtook me, even though I was sitting on the ground.

  “You told him to leave?”

  “Not exactly. But I told him I wasn’t going to fuck with him anymore if he couldn’t leave you alone. He decided to take that to mean our friendship was over. It happens. I think we were growing apart, anyway. It’s hard to stay friends with people you meet when you’re both kids. People change.”

  I kneaded my forehead with my fingers. Everything felt surreal, like I was watching my own life on a movie screen. Ricky’s baby babbled on the other end, and he pulled away from the phone for a moment to tell her not to put her blocks so far inside her mouth. After a muffled shifting sound that I assumed was Ricky hoisting his daughter onto his lap, he got back on the line.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry that happened to you. It pisses me off to think you still remember that asshole, and what he did to you.”

  “Actually, uh…”

  All the words I wanted to speak rolled back down my throat like water. The pause that followed after was long and uncomfortable.

  “Maya? You still there?”

  I shook myself out of my daze. “Uh, yeah, just thinking. Listen, Ricky… I know this is all ancient history, and I don’t want to bring up stuff that’s already happened but… Ethan didn’t force himself on me that night in the car.”

  Ricky sighed, deep and guttural, a sound I’d heard plenty growing up. It was the sound that usually meant a parental lecture was going to follow, about drugs or credit card debt, or boys, or whatever else my brother thought I needed to be scared away from.

  “Well, not like that, sure. But guys like him, older guys who run through girls like changing their underwear, they’re all the same. They’ll talk slick to get whatever they want, and when some girl turns up pregnant or jobless ‘cause she dropped out of school to move in with him, guess who splits? That kind of guy. He was bad news, Maya. You were just too young to see it.”

  Bad news? The instinct to defend Ethan welled up in my throat. I wanted to inform Ricky, that actually, Ethan had never
walked out on or knocked up any poor girl, and that he was doing just fine for himself, thank you very much, but that impulse didn’t last long. Maybe in the end, Ricky was right, and Ethan had been bad news from the start, and all the time and money in the world couldn’t change the fact that guys like him broke the hearts of girls like me.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I guess.”

  “I’m sorry I never talked to you about it. But I didn’t want you to feel embarrassed. Anyway, I handled it, so I figured it wasn’t necessary.”

  “It’s okay, Ricky. Thanks for looking out for me.”

  “Always. It wasn’t easy for either of us back then. Hey, when are you gonna come down and see the baby? Work isn’t keeping you too busy to come and see your little niece, is it?”

  His voice was hopeful, but I felt nothing but devastation. “You know what? Maybe sooner than later. I just had some time open up.”

  “That’s great! You just let me know, and we’ll fix an extra plate for you. There’s always room for you here, Maya, remember that.”

  “I promise. Listen, I’ve got to run… hug the family for me. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Bye, talk soon.”

  The line went dead, and I felt something inside me, maybe my heart, deflate entirely. My brother meant the world to me. We had a rough childhood, with our parents being alcoholics, and he’d learned, no—had no choice but to become my guardian. I knew he genuinely thought he’d been helping me by telling Ethan to stay away all those years ago, but I couldn’t help feeling some regret, too. What could have happened between me and Ethan, if Ricky hadn’t gotten involved? Would I have just become one of his flavor-of-the-week girls, taken out twice and then dumped for the next pretty pair of legs that walked by? Or could there have been something more between us? I imagined riding to prom in his shitty old Camry, kissing him under a flower arch, while a teen photographer for the newspaper snapped dishy photos. It felt happy-ever-after nice, and I let myself lean into the daydream for a moment before the honking of tour buses and shouts of parents corralling their children brought me back down to earth.

  I wasn’t having the Disney Channel prom I deserved, the one I didn’t get because I spent prom night studying for the SAT, eating cookie dough, and wondering why boys didn’t think I was cute. I was sitting on the filthy steps of the Met with street food in my stomach, cried out and jobless, and in the middle of a lover’s spat with the guy who also happened to be my landlord.

  I hoisted myself to my feet and glanced miserably around the ruins of my life. I gave the elegant archways of the Metropolitan Museum one last respectful nod.

  “Well,” I sighed, “it was nice knowing you.”

  I rummaged through my pockets to see how much cash I had left on me. The answer was six dollars and some change. Not quite enough for a sorrow-drowning night on the town, but just the right amount for a huge, sugary, piping-hot coffee that always cheered me up on a bad day. I shoved my hands into my pockets, turned away from one of my favorite buildings in the entire world, and headed down the road to find the nearest Starbucks.

  One venti caramel macchiato with extra whip and a dusting of cinnamon later, I was strolling through the Upper East Side with night falling steadily around me. I’d killed a little time in the coffeehouse flipping through Instagram on my phone, but then all the photos of happy couples had gotten on my damn nerves, so I went for a walk between the Park Avenue high rises where the wealthy had made their home for generations, which of course only reminded me of Ethan all the more. I knew I should go back to the apartment. It was getting dark, and I didn’t have anywhere else to stay for the night. But I couldn’t stand the thought of telling him that I’d lost my job, not when our relationship felt so tangled and delicate as it was.

  In the distance, a car siren let out a high-pitched wail. New York was waking up for the night. I knew that soon the weirdos would be out. Well, weirder than usual, weird in a less pleasant way than the general colorful New Yorker. I glanced down at my watch and realized it was almost eight o’clock at night. In my miserable attempt to kill time, I might have killed a little too much.

  I tipped back my sweet caffeine bomb, taking a long swig while I debated my options. Ethan’s apartment was still blocks away, but it was probably my best bet at this time of night. Unless I wanted to hop on the subway and head over to Fordham to see if any of my old friends were on campus and available for a night of commiseration that ended with me sleeping on their air mattress.

  When I was ready to make my decision, a sleek black car pulled up beside me and slowed to a stop. On impulse, I stepped away from the car, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end as the back window started to roll down. Was someone trying to solicit me on the street corner? What if he tried something? I began to panic, wondering if I was fast enough to run away, or strong enough to fight someone off if they tried to drag me into the back of their car.

  Just as I was about to take off at a brisk power walk down the street, the window rolled the rest of the way down.

  “Maya!” Ethan leaned out of the car window. His voice had a sharp edge to it, like he was happy to see me but pissed off about it. I felt my shoulders hike up around my ears.

  “Hey…”

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for an hour. I thought you were dead in a gutter somewhere.”

  I glanced down at my phone and realized (quite self-consciously) that yes, Ethan had called me twice in the last forty minutes, and that, considering I’d ignored all of his texts from earlier and put my phone on airplane mode to avoid receiving more, he probably thought I’d been kidnapped and sold for internal organs.

  “Get in the car, Maya.” His voice had relaxed from its frantic tone, but he opened his door and held it for me expectantly, and it got on my nerves. I felt the overwhelming need to be independent, despite the fact (or maybe because) I had very few options at this point in time and getting in the car was probably the best one of them.

  “I don’t have to go anywhere I don’t want to,” I snapped and felt a little stupid arguing with Ethan from the sidewalk in the middle of Park Avenue. Pedestrians walked around me averting their eyes in embarrassment, but I stood my ground. He had to know I made my own decisions, no matter what was going on between us.

  Ethan let out a heavy sigh, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him, even after two all-nighters pulled in a row at the office. He left the door open but pulled his arm back in the car.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to boss you around. But I’ve been looking for you for over an hour, and I’m just relieved you’re safe.”

  A woman walking her terrier brushed past me, pushing me closer to the car.

  “What?”

  “You said I would hear from you today, and I never did. I get that you wanted space and everything, but you never showed up at the apartment after work, and when I tried to call, you didn’t answer your phone. I was worried.”

  I switched my phone back on. It was obviously far too late, but it made me feel better. “Sorry, I just… didn’t really feel like talking.”

  “Listen, you don’t have to come home with me, but let me take you where you’re going. It’s getting dark out here. I don’t like the idea of you out on the streets alone at night.”

  “I can handle myself,” I grumbled, crossing my arms.

  Ethan quirked his eyebrow at me in a way that reminded me of the attempted mugging that had happened in broad daylight right outside his house.

  “Maya,” he said, somewhere between an order and a plea.

  “Fine.”

  I climbed into the car and swung the door shut behind me. Ethan sat ramrod straight on the leather seat a few feet away from me, and I didn’t move any closer to him. Normally, we sat with our hips touching, my hand on his knee, Ethan’s arm around my shoulders. In the back of his car, with its tinted windows, we could be as affectionate as we wanted with each other without worrying about the assumptions the public world m
ight make. My body ached for him instinctively—I wanted to feel him smooth my hair away from my face after this terrible day and kiss me softly. But I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to him, not after how our last conversation had ended.

  “Take Miss St. James wherever she needs to go.” Ethan’s eyes were on me as he talked to the chauffeur.

  I leaned forward and spoke through the partition window. “Just back to the apartment, please. Thank you.” I closed the window and leaned back into my seat, staring straight ahead as the car moved forward. Ethan glanced over to me, a question in his eyes, but I said nothing.

  We rode in silence for a few minutes, our short commute getting longer and longer as the driver hit a nasty mass of traffic. Road noise rumbled on outside, but I felt protected and safe in the back of Ethan’s car. Grudgingly, I realized I was grateful he’d picked me up when he did.

  “You just drove around Manhattan in circles looking for me?” I asked.

  “Mostly just the Upper East Side, but yes. I was this close to calling your friends in Greenwich. I thought you might’ve decided to stay with them another night and just forgot to tell me.”

  “No, I meant to come home. I just… got distracted.”

  Home. Somehow, in the past few weeks, Ethan’s grandiose apartment had begun to feel like my home. Ethan had begun to feel like home. Which was why it hurt so damn much when everything started to fall apart.

  Ethan’s voice became soft, private, conspiratorial. I’d never been able to resist him when he spoke to me like this, and I wondered if he knew that. “Maya… What’s going on with you? Something happened, and by that, I mean more than what happened between us. Talk to me. It’s not your family, is it?”