Flat-Out Love

by Jessica Park

  “How far is Whitney? Maybe I could find an apartment around here?”

  “Not far on the T. Whitney is in Back Bay which is Boston, not Cambridge, so you’d get off at Hynes. It’s right near Berklee College of Music.”

  “Nice. So if I get hit by an impulse to belt out some Lady Gaga, I’ll be able to find some backup singers without any trouble.” Julie frowned at Matt’s blank look. “Lady Gaga? Atrocious headpieces? Shoulder pads galore? Took the music world by storm a few years ago? Skintight outfights with feathers and leather and buckles, oh my? Nothin’?”

  “You lost me,” he said. “Well, here we are.” Matt pulled the car into the driveway of a large blue-gray house with white trim and black shutters. This side street was lusciously green with trees and flowing gardens, each gorgeous old house nestled behind a fence or an evergreen hedge. It was hard to believe that they were just off a main road, so close to the bustle of Harvard Square. It didn’t take an MIT student to see that this was an extremely wealthy neighborhood.

  “My mother should be home by now. I know she wanted to be here when you arrived. And my father and Celeste are probably on their way home. He had a meeting at her school.”

  “Your sister?” Julie guessed.

  Matt got out of the car. “Yup. She just turned thirteen. Hope you like take-out for dinner. Nobody here has cooked a real meal in years.”

  “As long as it’s not burritos, I’ll be thrilled.”

  Matt opened the trunk and then stopped. “Julie? I should probably…” His voice trailed off.

  “Yeah?” She looked at Matt. “What is it? Is something wrong? I’m mortified. We’re having burritos, aren’t we?” He shook his head. “Oh. I knew it. Your parents are totally annoyed that I’m getting pushed on them, right? Nobody wants some stranger staying in their house.”

  “No. Not at all. It’s just that Celeste is… “ He seemed to struggle to figure out how to say what he wanted. “Well, she’s an interesting kid.”

  “I like interesting,” Julie said, pulling a suitcase from the trunk. “I like interesting a lot.”

  Chapter 2

  Julie considered the possibility that she might have walked into a library rather than a residence. The front hall was lined with white shelves that were absolutely packed with books. And not paperback thrillers. This was obviously not a house of casual readers. A small room opened off to the right, where a piano took up most of the sunlit space. She followed Matt to the left into the living room and immediately loved the feeling evoked by the décor. Cultural masks and paintings covered the walls, and a globe and a thick world map sat on two end tables that encased a comfortable-looking beige sectional.

  Julie couldn’t help but notice the stark contrast between this house and her own. She liked her mother’s affinity for country plaid, yellow walls and yard sale findings, and the way the house was always orderly and clean. Simple, but homey. But as she looked around this room, Julie had to admit that there was something terribly enticing about the cluttered mass of unique statues, bold, patterned pillows and the general aura of academia.

  “Matt? Is that you? Did you find her?” A voice rang out from another room and was followed by the sound of quick footsteps. Julie looked up at the relieved face of the woman who entered the room. “Julie Seagle! Are you the spitting image of your mother or what? I’m Erin Watkins. Welcome. Thank goodness your mother was able to reach me.” She crossed the floor and shook Julie’s hand.

  “Thank you so much for helping me out. It’s really nice of you to let me stay here tonight. I’m going to look for an apartment first thing in the morning.”

  Erin was nearly as tall as Matt, and Julie could feel the bones in Erin’s cool hand. Good Lord, the woman was thin. Not unhealthy-looking, but certainly delicate.

  Erin waved her hand and then brushed back a stray hair from her thick, tightly pinned bun. “I’d do anything for Kate, so you’re more than welcome to stay until you find a place. Speaking of your mother, you should let her know that you’re safe. Let me take you upstairs and show you your room, and then you can call her.”

  “I’ll show her.” Matt walked briskly over to Julie’s bags.

  “Nonsense. I know you have schoolwork to do. I’ll tell you when your father and Celeste get home with dinner. Julie, follow me.” Erin moved smoothly through the living room and picked up one of Julie’s suitcases. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here. I know you were expecting to move into your apartment today, but at least you’re not at a hotel.”

  “Mom, I really need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, yes, Matt. Relax,” Erin said.

  Julie grabbed her other bags and trailed after Erin, while Matt stood seemingly frozen in place. She turned her head back. “Thanks again for picking me up.”

  Matt nodded and rocked back on his heels, his hands in his pockets. “Sure thing.”

  Matt seemed nice enough. He was easy to talk to, if not terribly easy on the eyes, and he was certainly smart and had a sense of humor. He was a bit quirky, she supposed, but Julie was pretty good at handling quirky.

  Julie made her way up the airy staircase to the second floor. The landing was a roomy open square with four doors that presumably led to bedrooms, and a short hallway off one of side. More bright-white walls and expensive looking artwork.

  “You’re right here,” Erin said as she pushed open a door with her shoulder.

  The bedroom had a definite masculine feel to it, with dark bedding and wooden shelves and a few books, pictures, stereo equipment, and DVDs. A small flat-screen TV hung across from the bed, and an empty spot on the desk had just enough room for a laptop.

  “Make yourself comfortable. The bathroom is right down the hall. I’ll put some fresh towels out for you, and… Oh, this must be Roger calling.” Erin turned her head toward a phone ringing from another room. “Do you like Thai?”

  “That’s great. Thank you.”

  “Take your time getting settled. There are empty drawers if you want to unpack,” Erin said, backing out of the room to take the call.

  Julie sat down on the bed and scanned the room. Yup, this had boy written all over it. Not that she minded. She liked boys after all. But she was looking forward to making a run to Target and picking out her own girlie room accessories with some of the money she had left over from the summer. Thank God she’d won that essay contest the school district had run, or she would have had to use all her savings on a computer. It’d taken her weeks to write her piece on the United States’ responses to natural disasters, but it was not a bad trade for a new Mac laptop. It was a good thing that her friends didn’t follow high school news—unless it had to do with sports, dances, or a battle of the bands—because she would have been teased mercilessly for having participated in such a socially warped endeavor.

  The truth was that her friends didn’t entirely get her. Her mom didn’t get her either, although she was certainly proud of how well Julie did in her classes. In fact, her mom had kept secret the fact that Julie had stayed after school to do extra-credit work for her English class. Her friends would have snorted with laughter. And while Julie had been happy to sacrifice time after school to hear her teacher’s thoughts on Graham Greene, she hadn’t been willing to try to explain to her less academic friends why she had done so. They just didn’t care about school the way she did and half the time didn’t seem to understand what she was talking about. Jared, her ex, would have rolled his eyes at the notion of volunteering to spend more time studying.

  Speaking of Jared, Julie wondered what he was doing right now. Probably sporting a toga and doing keg stands at the miserable state university he was attending. Asshole. She hoped he was lost in a crowd of dumb jocks and getting rejected by every busty, tank-top-wearing, fake-tanned airhead he hit on. Arizona could have him. And yet, Julie couldn’t resist seeing if he’d commented on her Facebook status.

  She set her laptop on the desk and turned it on. Yes, she had her fancy phone; she just wasn’t a big fan of
typing on the miniature keyboard if she didn’t have to. She liked capital letters and some semblance of punctuation, and the margin for error on the handheld device was too great. Julie was a traditional typist.

  She realized that she needed a password to access the Watkins’ network. Great. She’d intruded on their house and now needed to ask for this. Internet access came before pride. Julie caught Erin as she was getting off the phone.

  “Mrs. Watkins? I hate to bother you, but I was wondering if I could get the password to go online?”

  “Call me Erin. Please. And of course you can. Let me get it from Matthew. He generated a random, meaningless code so that none of the neighbors would be able to pilfer our service. He is our own private securities expert. Hold on.” Erin disappeared for a moment and returned holding a scrap of paper.

  “Thank you.” Julie took the paper and looked at the fifteen-digit password. Paranoid much? No one could remember this. Except, it seems, Matthew.

  “I’ll let you know when dinner is here.” Erin shut the door.

  Julie opened her Facebook profile page and frowned. Already eight comments under her status from concerned friends who actually gave a damn about her (“What happened????” “What R U going to do?” “Ack! Call me!”), but nothing from Jared. She clicked on his page. Huh. Well, it was nice that he had the time to post pictures of himself from his first days at college, yet hadn’t bothered to call or email her since he’d dumped her a month before they’d both left for college.

  Jared had up and announced that they shouldn’t even attempt to maintain a long-distance relationship, and so he was preemptively breaking up with her. Not that it really mattered. Julie had no doubt that Jared was the classic case of a boy satisfying his homosexual impulses by participating in close-contact sports. God, how many times had she sat on the sidelines of one of his wrestling matches, applauding wildly while he ground his body against another spandex-wearing wrestler, a look of glee plastered across his face? No wonder he’d earned a wrestling scholarship. Some other girl could put up with his fumbling attempts to appear heterosexual, his big tongue pulsing disgustingly in her mouth, and his overly enthusiastic murmuring as he groped under her shirt. Good riddance. Julie may have been dumb enough to go out with him, but at least she’d never been dumb enough to sleep with him. Had he even been able to fake his way through it.

  Julie should have dumped him herself months ago.

  Now she was out of small-town Ohio, out of that below-average high school, and out of a social circle dominated by girls blindly cheering on their sports-playing boyfriends.

  Boston could be different. It would be different. She could be who she was without worrying about dumbing down her vocabulary or hiding her interest in school.

  Julie took a last peek at Jared and his new college-wrestling buddies, silently wished him well (or mostly well), and promptly removed him from her list of friends. Her new status update?

  Julie Seagle Have survived streets of Boston with no permanent injury (save for crushing ego blow regarding stupidity of renting unseen room via nefarious internet site) and am currently in safe haven.

  Julie leaned back in the desk chair. She hesitated for a moment, then checked the Gmail account that she’d set up. Her father was the only person who had that email address, and her inbox was empty. He’d write when he had time. She closed the laptop.

  She sighed, blew her bangs out of her eyes, and picked up a framed picture from the desk. The photo was of someone bundled up in winter gear on a snowy hillside, snowboard in hand. It didn’t look like Matt, although it was hard to make out who it might be in the blurry picture.

  Julie unpacked a few things from her suitcase, folding her clothes neatly and setting them into the dresser and hanging a few casual dresses in the closet. As much as she hated to keep all her clothes stuffed into suitcases, where they were getting permanently wrinkled, it didn’t seem right to unpack everything she had as though she were moving in for the long haul.

  After dinner she would go online and start trying to find somewhere to live. Whitney’s freshman orientation was on Thursday, so that gave her all day tomorrow to come up with something. She’d really love to take care of this quickly, and, in a city this big, there simply had to be something decent available.

  She glared at her reflection in the mirror and quickly rifled through her luggage until she located her makeup bag and flat iron. A few minutes later, she practically resembled a normal human being again. Maybe not by cheerleader standards, but she’d get through dinner without frightening anyone and then take a good long shower before bed.

  “Julie? Do you need anything?” Matt knocked as he opened the door.

  “I thought you were supposed to be studying,” she teased. “Thanks, I’m all set. Whose room am I in, by the way?”

  “Finn’s.” He stared over her shoulder, looking vacantly into the room. “He’s away. Traveling.”

  “Finn is your brother?”

  “Yup. He’s my brother.”

  Julie smiled. God, Matt was so… odd. “Older or younger?” she prompted.

  “Older. By two years.”

  “Making him…?”

  He dropped his head, his hair falling over his eye, and laughed softly. “Twenty-three.”

  “So you’re twenty-one. And a junior? When is your birthday? Did you take a year off from school after high school?”

  “I did. You know, you seem to have your own interest in math. This flagrant fascination with numbers might mean you’re headed for a new major.”

  Julie crossed her arms. “Unlikely. I haven’t been fitted with your newfangled compression filter.”

  “I could put in a good word with the developer. Maybe get you on the list for the next model?”

  “I’ll pass, but thanks.”

  “Yeah. This beta version still needs some tweaking.”

  Julie smiled. “No kidding. But it’s all right.”

  Chapter 3

  “Dinner will be here in a few minutes. You must be ravenous.” Erin reached into a kitchen cabinet and retrieved a stack of ceramic plates. She had changed into a linen vest and dark jeans, and retightened her long hair into a neat twist at the nape of her neck.

  The air conditioning in the house relieved the heavy air Julie had been suffering through all day, and she knew she should enjoy it while she could; the odds of renting an apartment with central AC were extremely unlikely. Julie took the plates from Erin. “I’ll do this.”

  “Thanks. Matthew has the placemats and silverware.” She nodded her head toward the dining room. “Oh, Julie? Did you reach your mother?”

  “I did. And she asked me to thank you again.”

  “No more thanks necessary. It’s a good thing she hadn’t shipped out the rest of your things yet. They would be sitting on a street corner. I told her to just send everything here, and Matthew can help you move them when you find a place.”

  Julie moved to the dining room as Matt set down the last fork. She set the plates on the table and frowned as she re-counted the setting. “There’ll be five of us, right? You, me, Erin, your dad, and Celeste? We’ve got an extra place set.” Julie went to remove the plate.

  “No. Just… um…” Matt cleared his throat. “Just leave that one. I should probably tell you,” he started, while busying himself with the napkins, “that Celeste has this thing she does. She has this… I guess, it would be considered…”

  Julie waited while he started and stopped a few times, and finally she leaned in to whisper, “I’ll need to hear more actual words in order to understand you.”

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you.” He sighed. “Celeste—” The front door opened and Matt mumbled something.

  Julie looked questioningly at him. “What?”

  He shook his head. “Just try to go with it.”

  **********

  Well, the food was good. Cambridge Thai restaurants had a clear win over the single Thai restaurant back home that served generous por
tions of distinctly unappetizing dishes. And the company was entertaining, if not alternately overwhelming or altogether intelligible.

  Erin had kept up a stream of information regarding Massachusetts politics (“A tangled web of corruption, nepotism, and general discombobulation”), the hierarchy of Harvard professors and chances for tenure (“Dominated by a goddamn miserable social infrastructure!”), and the history of Boston’s public transportation system (“A toxic blend of poor planning and archaic engineering”). Just when she feared Erin might absolutely run out of breath and collapse face-first into her meal, Julie managed to ask Roger what he did for work, prompting the quieter man to let loose a slew of information.

  “I’m particularly drawn to the study of nutrient dynamics and interdisciplinary investigations of coastal habitats.” Erin’s husband Roger was now in the middle of a complex explanation about his most recent research paper. He was a researcher at the Laboratory for Microbial Oceanography and had received a grant to travel to Southeast Asia. “But my trip will focus primarily on shrimp defense mechanisms and immunomodulation to enhance sustainability and reduce antibiotic usage in shrimp culture.”

  Julie poked at her curry. “Shrimp culture. Yes.” She essentially had no idea what Roger was talking about, but she enjoyed his enthusiasm. He had a real Dad look about him: button-down shirt, khaki pants, loafers with no socks, thinning gray hair, soft blue eyes, and charming wrinkles that appeared when he even hinted at a smile.

  Roger adjusted his wire glasses and leaned his thin frame into the table, gesticulating with a forkful of chicken satay. Despite his flailing hand motions, his voice was soft, soothing. “Refining techniques to determine the activity of shrimp defense mechanisms is important. Pagocytic activity, phenoloxidase activity, and of course, bacterial clearance ability. There will be a lot to explore on this trip.” He spilled some peanut sauce onto the cuff of his wrinkled button down shirt and smudged it dry with a napkin. “Which reminds me that I have to go back to the office tonight. I’ve got more paperwork that needs to be filled out for the grant commission.”