“A handshake works for me. And I am in.” I knew to never sign anything without having a lawyer look at it first, and since I couldn’t afford a lawyer, a handshake and his word were good enough.
I stood up when he held out his hand again, presumably for the handshake portion of the deal. I figured that since I’d already touched him, this second time would be no big deal.
Wrong. Tremors racked my insides at the warmth and strength of his grip and I held on for probably a second or so longer than what would be considered normal.
He gave me that grin that lit up my nerves like the Fourth of July. “I have a good feeling about this.”
Oh baby, me too. I internally hushed her again. He told me I could move in whenever I liked and that he’d be sure to let the doorman know to expect me.
“I’m looking forward to being your roommate,” I replied. It was a good thing he had no idea how much.
“Roommaid,” I heard Frederica quietly correct behind me. Fortunately, Tyler didn’t seem to notice.
Roommate, roommaid, whatever. I was so in.
He walked us to the door and pushed the button for the elevator. Frederica made small talk with him about any real estate needs that he might have and made sure to pass him her card. I stared straight ahead, ignoring them both because one, I was embarrassed by my aunt using this opportunity to try and grab a new client, and two, I needed to stop staring at him creepily.
I knew I shouldn’t be frustrated with Frederica trying to drum up business. According to my mother, Frederica had made a play for my father, who had instead chosen to marry my mom. Then it was love at first sight when my aunt met Thurston Cottonwood, a man forty years her senior. (My father liked to say it was love at first sight of Thurston’s medical history.) He had a heart condition, more money than even the Bransons, and Frederica expected him to not last long.
Good old Uncle Thurston was now in his nineties, and thanks to his ironclad prenup, when he traded Frederica in for a new twenty-four-year-old model, she walked away with only $1 million. Which she blew through in the first six months.
The prospect of poverty had awoken a savvy and determined businesswoman. She’d become a real estate agent to the wealthy in an attempt to keep something of her former lifestyle intact.
I admired her hustle even if it could be potentially embarrassing.
The doors finally opened and I hurried inside. Frederica was lingering, saying she’d keep in touch with Tyler, and I grabbed her forearm and gently tugged—or, more accurately, forcibly yanked—her into the elevator.
“See you soon!” he said with that smile that made my knees turn into melted butter.
“Yep!” was my clever reply. I forced a smile in return and jabbed repeatedly at the lobby button until the doors closed. When they finally did, I exhaled heavily, leaning over to try and get blood rushing back into my brain.
“Didn’t I tell you? Gorgeous, right?”
I didn’t respond because I wasn’t sure whether she was talking about the man or his penthouse.
“This isn’t a long-term solution,” was what I said instead. “I can’t stay here forever pretending I know how to clean or how to care for his poor traumatized dog.”
“Of course this is temporary. You can save up money and get a decent place of your own. Or Brad could finally pop the question and then you move in with him. And that’s when you call your favorite aunt and let me find you the best home his money can buy. Because I’m sure your boyfriend is not going to be happy about you living with that fine specimen of a man. Jealousy is often a powerful motivator when it comes to engagements.”
Brad’s “jealousy” was the absolute least of my concerns at the moment. Especially since I would never want a man to propose to me solely because I’d managed to make him envious. I wasn’t into the same games my mother and aunt had played when they’d set about getting husbands.
I wanted a man who would love and accept me. Someone who didn’t care about money or who my family was. I knew a guy like that was out there. I also knew that he wasn’t Brad Branson and never would be.
It was time to start a new life with a new roommate, new apartment, and new responsibilities. I was up for the challenge.
At least, I hoped I was.
CHAPTER THREE
The one place I already felt settled in was at my job. My first recess corresponded with Shay’s free period, and I was headed to the teachers’ lounge so that we could catch up. Millstone Academy was a private school that specialized in STEM education and ran from kindergarten all the way up to twelfth grade. I taught the second grade and Shay taught upper-level advanced mathematics. She was also the adviser of the Mathlete team.
I’d met Shay Simmons my freshman year of college. It was the first night of rush week and I was standing on the grass outside the Delta Alpha Gamma house. Their opening party had begun and my family expected that I would join this sorority. This was the “right” house. Brad belonged to their brother fraternity, as had both of our fathers. All I had to do was cross the lawn, go up the porch steps, and enter the house.
I couldn’t do it. I could not get my feet to move.
“Hey, are you okay? You look a little lost.” The first thing I noticed about the girl speaking to me was her concerned expression. The second was her bright-purple hair and how she’d shaved one side of her head.
“You have no idea how right you are,” I said to her. I was lost in a way I hadn’t realized until this very moment. “I’m supposed to go inside and I . . . can’t.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “I can’t blame you for that. Those girls are terrible.”
“It’s not that. If I go in there, then I’m saying I agree to it. That I’ll end up being my mother and the things I want for myself don’t matter and I’ll never make my own decisions ever again. That I’ll marry the boy they picked out for me and spend my days at the country club and lunching with the other bored housewives. I’ll be saying that I accept it, and I’m not sure I can accept it.”
“That sounds heavy.”
“They’ve chosen everything for me. Including the two majors I’m allowed to decide between.”
She made a sound. “You aren’t allowed to pick your own major? You’re the one going to school. Not them.”
“I can major in economics or be prelaw. But I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
“What do you want to be?”
Her question hit me hard, slamming against my chest so that it was difficult to catch my breath. It was such a simple question, but it suddenly felt cosmic and profound. “Do you know that you’re the first person in my life who has ever asked me that?”
“That’s . . . sad.”
It was. It was ridiculously sad. And I had a secret wish, one I’d never admitted aloud, something I wanted to be. A career that mattered, where I could change lives. I decided to say it, to see how it made me feel. “I want to be a teacher.”
“Really?” She smiled. “Me too. I’m majoring in math with an emphasis on teaching. I’m hoping to teach at the high school level.” She studied me carefully, as if forming an opinion. “A bunch of the girls in my sorority are majoring in elementary and secondary education. You should come over and meet with them.”
I’d always been grateful for whatever fates conspired for us to meet that night. I joined her sorority, and even though she was two years older than me, Shay became my best friend and closest confidant. She changed my life in so many ways, mainly by showing me that the things I wanted did matter and that I was strong enough to make my own choices. That it wasn’t normal for your parents to map out your entire life, not allowing you to have any say in it. She was always there for me, and I was grateful that her job kept her in Houston, nearby. It allowed us to stay close.
When I was applying to all the schools in the area after I’d completed my year of student teaching, she was the one who recommended me to the headmistress and helped me get my position. And she’d been kindly letting me sleep on
her couch for the last three months.
Shay was the first person I wanted to tell about Tyler and the penthouse, but when I got back to her place, she’d left me a note saying she had a date. I tried to wait up for her, but I passed out before she got home and she had already left before I woke up the next day, which wasn’t surprising. She had her Mathletes practicing and drilling both before and after school. She intended for them to win nationals this year.
I probably could have texted her, but this was an in-person conversation. And I needed to have it soon. Talking things out with Shay made it so I could let them go and move on.
Delia Hawthorne was the other member of our triumvirate friendship. She and Shay had been first-year teachers together at Millstone and they’d instantly bonded. There had been a short period of time when I had been a little envious of their friendship, but once I started working at the academy as well, we became an inseparable trio.
Because of Shay’s early-morning plans, Delia picked me up to drive me to school. I’d attempted taking public transportation on a few occasions but it turned out that having zero sense of direction was a problem. I kept ending up in different cities. Not even Google Maps helped; I had no idea how far six hundred feet or a quarter mile actually was. Delia and Shay informed me that for purely selfish reasons they were going to arrange to drive me to and from school. “I mostly don’t want to drive to Oklahoma to pick you up the next time this happens,” Shay said.
It was their way of being my friends without making me feel like I was relying too heavily on their charitable hearts. Which was something I struggled with every day. How it was so important to me to be independent and able to strike out on my own without my family paying my way and here I was letting my friends pick up the slack. It was one of the many reasons I was looking forward to moving into Tyler’s place and getting my own car. I would start picking up my own slack.
Caught up in my own thoughts, it took me a minute to realize that Delia was doing her daily rant and I’d missed the first part. But since they were always the same, I knew I hadn’t missed much. “And then I told Mr. Ramon that studies have proved that scientists with artistic skill were more likely to win awards than those without. Einstein himself said that imagination was more important than knowledge when it comes to science. And where do these students get imagination? From art!”
Pretty much every car ride to school involved Delia getting upset about the advanced sciences teacher, Mr. Tristan Ramon, shading the art classes she taught. She was our resident flower child, a bohemian artist who had been born in the wrong era. Usually she was all about inner peace and tranquility and artistic expression, but something about the way the very cute Mr. Ramon teased her made her more than a little crazy.
Fortunately, not much was required from me during these diatribes. My job was to nod and to periodically comment about what a jerk and/or how stupid Mr. Ramon was (even though both Shay and I agreed he obviously had a crush on Delia and didn’t seem to understand that teasing her was not the way to her heart). Which left me with time to think about Tyler and moving in to his apartment.
Thoughts of Tyler and second-guessing whether I’d made the right choice had led to me being so distracted this morning during class that I hadn’t been able to focus properly on my kids. I finally gave in and showed them an educational movie. Which they were neither entertained nor, I suspected, educated by. I was pretty sure that a quarter of them had just fallen asleep.
I also had to put one of my students, Denny, in a chair next to my desk since he wouldn’t stop throwing wads of paper at the other students. The past two weeks he had been acting out behaviorally, which wasn’t like him. I wasn’t sure what I could do to help him get back on track since this was the first time I’d had to deal with a situation like this. I made a note on my desk to get in touch with his parents and to discuss it with Delia and Shay when I got the chance.
I practically sprinted to the teachers’ lounge when the bell rang, anxious to talk things over with my best friend.
“There you are!” I exclaimed when I saw her. Shay was standing by the coffee machine and gave me a confused look.
Her purple hair was long gone, as was her half-shaved head. Now she had her dark-brown hair styled in a pixie cut that emphasized her large brown eyes. Where Delia wore gauzy skirts and peasant blouses, Shay always looked like she was about to walk into a law office. Pencil skirt, berry-colored satin blouse, blazer. “Here’s where I always am during my break. What’s going on with you?”
I came over and grabbed her arm, pulling her to an empty table. “I have so, so much to tell you. So my aunt—”
“Frederica? I love that crazy broad. I have to admire anyone with such naked ambition.”
“What? That’s not the point. Anyway, she took me to more horrible places—”
“And you have to keep sleeping on my couch.” She said it with a smile, but I could hear the weariness in her voice. We loved each other, but I knew I was starting to get on her nerves. Shay had her limits and I’d stretched each and every one. I knew how to be a good guest, making sure I wasn’t messy as was apparently my natural inclination, but her place was tiny and even best friends could get sick of each other. I also kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head reminding me that houseguests, like fish, go bad after three days.
And it had been three months.
“No, I am officially moving out!”
“Finally!” A mortified look covered Shay’s face. “I mean, yay for you! You found a place!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s okay. It is long overdue. But Frederica is the one who found me the most amazing apartment and I won’t even have to pay rent. I’m going to do the cleaning and take care of his dog while he’s out of town in exchange for living there.”
“He?” she echoed. “You’re going to live with some random guy and clean up after him? So you can live rent-free? Let me guess, do you have to sleep with him, too?”
“What? No!” I was outraged that she’d even suggest I’d stoop that low. Then I saw her real smile, letting me know she’d been teasing me. “This guy—his name is Tyler, by the way—had a bad situation years ago where his roommate fell in love with him and I think the only reason he’s letting me move in is that he thinks I’m in a relationship.”
“With who? The leprechaun from Lucky Charms?”
My mother hadn’t allowed any sugary cereals and I may or may not have gone a little crazy when I moved into Shay’s and was no longer following any of my mother’s rules. Plus, cold cereal was the easiest thing to make for myself and it was inexpensive. “Oh, ha-ha. No, he thinks I’m in a relationship with an actual person. You should have seen his face when Frederica told him I was with Brad.”
“Was it a look of disgust?”
“Why would it be? He doesn’t even know Brad.”
“You don’t have to know Brad to be disgusted.”
“No, Tyler looked like a prisoner on death row who had just been pardoned. He is unnaturally happy that I’m with someone else.”
She studied me skeptically. “Is this Tyler dude blind? Because you are gorgeous. Why wouldn’t he want to get with you?”
I was much vainer than I would have ever admitted out loud. I suspected this was because I had been raised by a self-centered woman whose entire identity was based on her outward appearance. Even though I tried telling myself that my outer shell didn’t matter, I still spent a lot of time trying to make mine pretty.
Although I was limited in my new financial situation. I now had to use a grocery store brand to dye my hair blonde and was trying out drugstore makeup products to go along with my hazel eyes and fair skin.
I didn’t know how well it was actually working.
“You’re a very good friend,” I told her. “But I get the feeling he doesn’t care how I look. He made it pretty clear he’d prefer to have his female roommate involved in a relationship so that she wouldn’t become his personal in-home stalker.”
/> “So this Tyler guy wants someone to live in his apartment who will clean up after him, look after his dog, and not have sex with him. Don’t they usually call those people wives?”
“You’re hilarious,” I said, while rolling my eyes.
“I just can’t believe you’ve been reduced to this. The other apartments couldn’t possibly have been as bad as you described.”
“Then I haven’t been explaining it thoroughly enough. Those other places . . . it was like the plagues-of-the-apocalypse type of stuff. I went in with the absolute lowest expectations and I still managed to come back disappointed. This Tyler thing fell out of the sky like manna from heaven. I’m not passing it up.” Defending my position restored my faith in the choice I’d made and I felt easier about it. “Not to mention that I get to come home to this.”
Frederica had sent me a link to an old listing of Tyler’s penthouse that had pictures of all the rooms. She had included a link to Tyler’s Instagram account, too, which I had clicked on quite a bit since she’d sent it. My hope was that I could somehow inoculate myself to his pretty, make myself immune to his charms.
So far it wasn’t working.
“Here.” I handed her my phone. She needed to see for herself how nice the apartment was. “Just click on that link and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
Shay let out a strangled sound. “Are you kidding me with this? Way to bury the lede! Great googly moogly! Someday, when I tell this tale to my grandchildren, I will tell them my ovaries grew three sizes that day.”
“What are you talking about—” It was then that I realized that she’d clicked on the second link instead of the first and was now ogling Tyler.
“Suddenly you wanting to move in with him makes so much more sense.”
“That’s a tall drink of wow.” I looked up to see Delia standing behind Shay, peering over her shoulder.
“Madison’s going to live with him,” Shay gleefully informed her. The last time I’d seen her this giddy was when one of our fellow teachers, Owen James, poured coffee on himself before the first bell.
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