My Roommate's Girl

by Julianna Keyes

  I think about how I felt when I first saw Aster. How badly I wanted her. What I was willing to do to get it.

  “Shaw,” T.J. says, when Wes can’t continue. “You’ve gotta help us.”

  “I can’t,” I hear myself say. “Drugs...that’s not my scene.”

  “I know,” Wes says. “But you steal cars, right?”

  “No.” My voice is adamant. “Past tense. I stole cars. I don’t anymore. I don’t steal anything anymore.”

  Well. Mostly.

  “Please,” Wes says, voice breaking. “I’ve done everything I can think of. Just call your old crew—”

  “Is your mother even sick?” I interrupt. “Was any of that true?”

  He hesitates, the answer obvious.

  “No? So all those trips out of town? The missed classes, extracurriculars—that’s all because of this?”

  He tips his chin, the barest acknowledgment of his lies.

  I scrub my hands over my face. “Oh my God.”

  “They know where we live,” T.J. ventures. “They said we have ten days, then they’ll come and they’ll...”

  I know how that sentence ends. Hell, I know how this whole story ends. I heard it every day of my life growing up. My dad and the ever-present threats lurking over his shoulder. The promises. The broken promises.

  The repeat cycle.

  “Please. Just make a phone call,” Wes says. “I’ve got a couple things lined up here, but it won’t be enough. We can go with you, back home. One weekend—one night—we lift a few cars and—”

  “Have you ever stolen a car before?” I demand.

  It’s clear from his expression that he hasn’t.

  I glare at T.J. “You?”

  “No.”

  “What about Brix? Does he know about this?”

  They shake their heads. “We didn’t want to involve him,” T.J. mumbles. “He’s married, they have a house, a life. He’s different now. He’s different from us.”

  “That’s because he’s trying!” I snap. “He’s trying to be different.” I want to add that I’m trying too, that I’m not married, but I have Aster. And I don’t have a house, but I could, one day, if I don’t fuck everything up. It sounds so trite and stupid, so fucking naïve, so...hopeful. And I know just as I believed my dad when he said he’d get Daisy back, that we’d get more birthday presents, that they’d rebuild our fucking burned down house, that no matter how much Wes and T.J. believe what they’re saying, it doesn’t make it true.

  Until I met Aster, I’d been living firmly in Holsom’s gray area, not doing too great, not doing too bad. I’d done well to ignore the familiar temptations of the dark side, never seeing any reason to move toward the light. Then Aster came along, and without even realizing it, I’d been sidling closer to that bright side, to the promise and potential I’m supposed to have. That we’re all supposed to have.

  “We’re trying, too,” Wes insists. “If you help us out, we can do this. We’ll pay back the money and we’ll get out and we’ll never do it again. I’ve learned my lesson. I knew it was a mistake, I was just stupid. Haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

  “We all have,” I snap. “But three years in, we’re supposed to have learned something from them.”

  “You know us,” T.J. insists. “We’ve been friends a long time. That whole first year, when you wanted to walk away from all this, we kept you here. We helped you. Now we need you to help us.”

  “Just this once,” Wes adds. “It’ll be the last time. I promise.”

  The words sound achingly familiar, my instinct to help them as ingrained as it is wrong, but even as I shake my head, trying to say no, trying to do the right thing, I feel myself stepping away from the light and wading back into the murky gray.

  * * *

  I feel guilty when Aster smiles at me. The same smile that hooked me the day we met, the one I’ve lived for every day since, makes me lower my eyes in shame as I step into her room. I take off my boots and put my bag on the desk, scanning the small space, everything sparse and tidy and upfront. No lies here. Not until I showed up.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  “Totally fine.”

  She looks doubtful, and she should. She’d called me an hour ago to invite me over to hang out, and while I’ve always jumped at her invitations, today I didn’t. I didn’t want to see Aster, but I couldn’t turn her down, either, and I know she heard the reluctance in my voice.

  “You sounded pretty upset on the phone,” she comments. “I was just kidding about the vegetarian pizza. I ordered the one with all the meat.” To prove her point she lifts the lid of the large orange box sitting on the table, and I know it’s bad when not even the smell of fresh pizza improves my mood. Not even when she makes a comical show of wafting the aroma in my direction to lure me over.

  “This is great,” I say, taking a seat and trying to sound enthusiastic. “Thanks.”

  She grabs two beers from her tiny fridge and sets them on the table before sitting down, her knees bumping mine. She eats straight out of the box, a string of cheese refusing to relinquish its hold on the pizza until she twirls it in her finger to snap it. “So today,” she begins, chewing thoughtfully, “one of the kids on my floor called to say she was hearing weird noises from another student’s room and thought he might need help.”

  “Oh yeah?” I take a bite of my pizza, but it tastes like dust.

  “Yeah, so I went down there to check on him, and he’s acting really weird. Won’t come to the door until I threaten to get the master key and unlock it myself. Finally he lets me in, barely opening the door wide enough for me to fit through, then slams it closed.”

  I remember the last time she told me a story like this, that day at the ice cream parlor. How she was opening the door for me to confess, and I’d walked right by it and into an ambush instead. But how could she know about the problem with T.J. and Wes?

  “Was it drugs?” I ask warily.

  “A squirrel,” she says around a mouthful of pizza.

  I stop chewing. “What?”

  “He’d been raising a squirrel in his room since November. And now it wants to go outside, except it doesn’t know how to go outside, and it’s making lots of anxious little squirrel noises.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. He’s probably the only guy in here whose browsing history includes ‘how to feed a baby squirrel’ and not lesbian porn.”

  “He probably has the porn, too.”

  She sips her beer. “Yeah. Probably.”

  “So what’d you do? Confiscate the squirrel?”

  “Well, technically we’re not allowed to have pets. Not even a goldfish. But I thought, what the hell? There are only a couple of weeks left until everyone’s exams finish. Move-out day is the end of the month. I’ll just let him keep the squirrel.”

  “So it’s still in there?”

  “Yep. Our little secret.”

  “I don’t know if you’re a good R.A. or a terrible one.”

  “What I am is a great secret keeper,” she says. “Totally trustworthy.”

  My stomach clenches. Turns out this is exactly like the ice cream parlor, except this time she doesn’t know what the problem is, only that there is one.

  “Aster,” I lie, feeling horrible, “I don’t have a secret.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?” she presses. “You’ve taken two bites of pizza. Zero beer. You didn’t even kiss me when you walked in. Didn’t even try. And look how low-cut my shirt is! Not even a grope? Something is obviously very wrong.”

  She’s trying to make light of it, but I can tell she’s hurt and concerned.

  I give myself a mental kick. I thought I’d helped with some of her stress by talking to Jim about the mentorship project, but all I’d done was replace one issue with an even bigger one.

  This is the second time Aster’s given me an opportunity to come clean, essentially promising to forgive me if I tell her the truth. But I don’t think she wil
l forgive me this time; I don’t think she can. Aster may be part of the program, but she knew her promise and potential before she ever set foot on this campus. She’s done making mistakes, and she’s done with people who make them.

  It’s hard to know I’m sitting a foot away from her, lying to her face. It’s hard knowing my friends are in a bad place, and it’s hard knowing I’m slipping back into that precarious gray area to help them out. But the hardest thing of all would be watching Aster walk away, slamming the same door she’d opened for me, hearing the lock click as she turned the deadbolt and gave up on me forever.

  If I tell her, I’ll lose her. And that’s the one thing I’m not willing to risk.

  44

  Aster

  I’ve never been dumped before. Jerry’s my only proper boyfriend, and I dumped him when he confessed to cheating on me. But that whole evening he’d been acting strange, not making eye contact, fidgeting, being distracted. When I pressed him for answers I thought he was going to say he’d gotten a bad mark on an essay or had a fight with his mom; I never expected him to say he’d gotten a blow job at a bar.

  Now, as Aidan picks at the toppings on his meat lover’s pizza—his favorite kind—I’m waiting for the same bad news and remembering my stupid joke at the library: I don’t care if you’re cheating on me. That’s not true at all. I would care. I would be devastated.

  I try to keep my hand from shaking as I reach for my beer and take a fortifying sip. As bad as the news was about my father’s death, what was worse was the build up. Finding the letter, hiding the letter, ignoring the phone calls. I’d peeled back the bandage with agonizing slowness when I could have saved myself a lot of pain if I’d just mustered up the nerve to yank it off and admit there was a wound.

  “Is it about Sindy?” I ask abruptly. I watch Aidan for any sign of guilt but the only emotions that cross his handsome face are confusion and surprise.

  “What?” he exclaims, sounding sincere. “From the bar? The pros—What? No. No. God. No.”

  “Someone else?” I push. I know there’s a secret, I just don’t know what the hell it is.

  “No!” he exclaims. “Aster, I’m not cheating on you. I wouldn’t.”

  “Then what’s going on?”

  He drops the pizza and runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Nothing. Jesus. I’m just tired. Work. School. You know the drill.”

  “The squirrel story is true,” I say quietly. “You can trust me. With anything.”

  He studies the table for a second, hands flat on the surface, the ink on his knuckles stark against his skin. Ride hard. He looks like he’s working up to something, but instead of a confession he gives me a small smile. “I know I can,” he says, reaching out to stroke my jaw with his thumb. “It’s just stress. End of year stuff and all that. You’re the only reason it’s bearable. Don’t let me mess up.”

  I cover his hand with mine. “I won’t.”

  “Good.” He leans in to kiss me, soft and sweet, just his lips on mine, his fingertips on my cheek. He takes his time, almost too much time, and finally I’m the one to touch my tongue to his bottom lip, nudge him open, deepen the kiss.

  He makes a soft sound in his throat and lets me in, the intimacy sweet and reassuring. I shift to the edge of my chair and he slides his hands around my waist, pulling me onto his lap, my thighs straddling his. I curl my fingers in his hair, press my breasts against his chest, my nipples tight, an ache growing between my legs. What I don’t feel, however, is him.

  And not just because there’s still some sort of emotional distance, but because he’s not hard. I tell myself it’s stress, stop being so impatient, but after several long minutes of kissing and groping and hips grinding, there’s just...nothing. I try to slip a hand between us to make sure I’m not missing anything, but he tenses and snags my wrist before my fingers can locate his waistband.

  “Aster,” he says, twisting away. He looks like he’s going to say more, then falters and falls silent.

  I’m breathing hard, but it’s not arousal coursing through me, it’s dread. It’s how you feel lying in bed as a kid, convinced there’s a monster in the dark closet, knowing one wrong move will set it free.

  I lean forward and press a kiss to Aidan’s jaw, trying to diffuse the situation. “It’s been a long week,” I say calmly. Supportively. “Want to watch a movie in bed and call it a night?”

  I hear him swallow, see his throat move, and know the answer before I hear it.

  “I think I’m just going to go,” he says, avoiding my stare. “Wes has been sick all week. I might have caught whatever he has.” He presses my hips gently, urging me to stand, and I clamber off, feeling graceless and unsteady.

  A good girlfriend might offer to accompany him to the pharmacy, make him chicken noodle soup, take his temperature.

  But a good boyfriend wouldn’t lie.

  My bandage metaphor from earlier was wrong. Maybe slowly peeling it off isn’t the most painful thing you can do. Maybe the thing that hurts the most is leaving the bandage in place, letting it hide a festering wound while you pretend there’s nothing wrong.

  * * *

  “Think he’s cheating on you?” Missy asks with her characteristic bluntness.

  We’re at an outdoor café in the middle of campus, and her question turns a few curious heads.

  “No,” I mumble, stirring my tea, wishing the spring sunshine didn’t feel like an interrogator’s spotlight. “He said he wasn’t.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  I study the swirling liquid. “I don’t know. Even if he’s not cheating, it’s something. I don’t know why he wouldn’t tell me; he knows my secrets.”

  “Oh yeah? Spill.”

  I smirk, the closest I can come to smiling today. “No.”

  “C’mon, I’ll tell you mine.”

  “I’m afraid to hear yours.”

  “You should be.” Then her expression turns serious. “Listen, if Aidan doesn’t want to tell you the truth, force it out of him.”

  “Aidan’s not Jerry. He’s not guided by a super clean conscience and fear of going to hell.”

  She sighs. “Lucky you. Jerry washed my whites and darks together and called me to confess.”

  “To doing your laundry?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m feeling better already.”

  “Yeah, you dodged a bullet. A doctor-in-the-making bullet.”

  “My loss, your gain.”

  “Listen,” she says seriously. “Jerry’s a sweetheart, but I’ve dated my share of assholes. Southern men are charming. They make you feel cherished even when they’re lying to you.”

  The mouthful of tea I’d just sipped suddenly tastes like acid and I have to force myself to swallow. “Aidan’s not from the south,” I protest lamely.

  She gives me a look that says I’m a dumbass. “When you’re dealing with someone who knows all the right words and all the right buttons to press, you can’t beat them by playing a different game.”

  “Huh?”

  “So you beat them at their game. You out-charm them,” she clarifies, when I continue to stare blankly. “You laugh at their jokes and you buy what they’re selling, then you get in close and gut them.”

  I choke on my tea. “Missy!”

  “Not literally,” she adds, glancing around for eavesdroppers. “Unless you can get away with it.” Her exaggerated wink makes me think of my prison bunkmate, Loretta. She’d tried unsuccessfully to poison her husband for eating all her favorite cereal and taking the toy, even though she’d called dibs. Now that I think about it, she was from the south.

  “What’s the not-literal version of gutting someone?” I ask, knowing I shouldn’t. Knowing this advice is bad, but not having any better ideas. Picturing Loretta in her bunk, recounting the details of her trial as she filed her nails.

  “In this day and age?” Missy says, sipping her latte and looking deceptively sweet and delicate in a matching pink sweater set. “You check t
heir phone.”

  45

  Aidan

  “All right, Aidan,” Mack says, standing and slapping his hand in mine. “The job’s yours. Surprise, surprise.”

  I shake his hand. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “You kidding? I appreciate you coming back for more suffering each year. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

  I duck out of Mack’s cramped office, buried in the bowels of the college maintenance building on the north side of campus. My footsteps are muted by the pocked cement floor as I return to the elevator and start the rickety ride back up to ground level, relieved to see the sun again. The groundskeeping job isn’t incredible by any means, but it’s exhausting and every night I go back to my room and collapse into bed and stay out of trouble, repeating the process the next day. That’s part of the PPP structure: it keeps you so busy you can’t find the energy to mess up.

  Mostly.

  With my summer job confirmed, the next nine days should be pretty straight forward. Write my second to last exam, compete in the Frisbee baseball tournament, travel back home to Vickers and steal two cars to save Wes’s ass, return to Holsom for my last exam, and pray Aster never finds out and still likes me.

  Easy.

  It’s a gorgeous spring day, the trees green and leafy, the sky clear and cloudless. I pass students laughing as they mingle with friends, exams finished for another year, a weight lifted off their shoulders. I keep my head down and my hands in my pockets, my pace slowing to a reluctant crawl the closer I get to home. That’s been happening more and more lately. Since finding out about Wes’s “situation,” I hate going back to that house. Every time I reach the front steps it’s a flashback to my childhood, walking into wherever we were living that month and finding some new disappointment, my mother in tears on the couch, my father promising not to do it again.

  At the last second I veer into the liquor store a couple of blocks from home and pick up a six-pack to go with dinner tonight. T.J. and Wes are gone for the day, doing their part to find money to make up the shortfall, and I invited Aster over to try to make up for our disastrous last encounter. Fortunately she prefers beer to wine, so I don’t have to choke down a glass to pretend I’m sophisticated. One less lie to tell her.