Roomies

by Christina Lauren

  I want that, too. When will you be home?

  “Only two?” I ask, trying to maintain the thread of our actual conversation.

  “Well, two real girlfriends. Aileen and Rori.”

  “Those are very Irish names.”

  This makes him grin and then let out a big belly laugh. “They were very Irish girls.”

  “No one here in the States?”

  “Rori moved here with me when I started school, but went home after a few months. Since her . . . there were a couple I mostly just got off with, but not many.” Calvin winces as he lifts his head and tilts his bottle to his lips, adding, “One girl from school, Amanda.” He squints as he thinks. “Six months, maybe? But she was a bit diabolical. And bossy.”

  “I would think a bossy woman is a good thing in bed.”

  “You’d be right. That aspect wasn’t the problem.” He takes another sip, not meeting my eyes. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  He looks up at me, eyes narrowed. “Men.”

  “Oh. After Bradley . . . hundreds.”

  He sits up a little. “Really?” His voice is full of dramatic, drunken interest, but it dies when he sees I’m joking and he lies back down. “I mean, it wouldn’t be unheard of. Sexual freedom and all.”

  “Not hundreds. Some.”

  “You know,” he says sleepily, “secrets are currency.”

  “Are they?”

  Briefly, he glances at his phone, typing something out with rapid fingers. My heart seems to erupt in my chest. Calvin nods when he looks back up at me. “Mam says that secrets unlock something between friends.”

  I look down at him in playful exasperation. “You’re bringing sweet mother-in-law Marina into this talk of my sex life?”

  “She’s grand.”

  I glance at my phone and the words that appear there.

  I’ll be home as soon as I can. You’re all I can think about.

  My breath is trapped in my throat, a thick, cottony presence.

  “Besides,” he says quietly, “you’re too beautiful to be inexperienced in love.” Before I can let the full flush of this roll through me, he adds, “I only know of Bradley, and then whoever Lulu was talking about tonight.”

  I groan at the memory of Lulu’s mortifying outburst. “Okay, so: I lost the V-card to a guy named Eric on my sixteenth birthday. Jake was my boyfriend my last year in high school . . . we were only together for about eight months. Bradley was most of college. Since then . . . a few more, but—as you say—they were relationships mostly in bed, including the one Lulu was talking about.” I look down to see his reaction, but it’s clear he’s waiting. He seems to want a number. “I’ve had sex with six people.”

  “Six isn’t so bad.”

  “For who?”

  He looks up at me and gives a self-conscious wince. “Me, I suppose.”

  I look away. I’m honestly not sure what to think of all this. We’ve been acquaintances for a time that can be counted in days, not years, and it’s still so insane to me that he’s here in my apartment—in my lap. Beyond that, there seems to be a genuine commitment he’s made to this marriage, and a genuine interest in me as a person. Given my desire to protect myself, I don’t know how to feel about this.

  Touched, maybe. Similarly possessive. Also wary.

  We’ve never established that we’ll be faithful in any way.

  “I spent so much of the last four years trying to get a job,” he says quietly. “Relationships absolutely took a backseat. I think I auditioned for everything. But classical guitar is tricky. People want guitar to be rock.”

  “You play rock, too.”

  He eyes me. “Yeah, but not as a passion.”

  “No,” I say, “of course not. But you could do rock if you wanted.”

  “The problem isn’t only that I didn’t want to do that, it’s that there are a million people playing rock guitar.”

  “Well, now there’s only one person playing classical guitar down at the Levin-Gladstone.”

  He does a cute little fist punch in the air.

  “But speaking of,” I say, nudging his head off my lap, “tomorrow you head down and start rehearsals.” I point to the clock that tells us it’s far past midnight. “You should sleep.”

  He looks up at me. “Tonight was hatchet.”

  I laugh. “Is that a good thing?”

  “Aye, means I had fun.”

  “Me too.”

  His smile straightens. “I don’t like to think of you playing a side part in your story.”

  I bite my lip, struggling to not look away. I’m not entirely sure what to say to this.

  “You’ve suddenly become a very large part of mine,” he says quietly. “And I yours. No? Why not make it epic?”

  Calvin sits up, leaning forward to press a chaste kiss to my cheek that I feel long after he’s walked into the bathroom.

  I head to my room to put on my pajamas and then sit on my bed, staring at my phone. His last text has gone unanswered. I reply impulsively.

  I feel the same way.

  What am I doing? I’m less afraid of getting in trouble for this fake marriage than I am of falling in love with someone who could be playing me completely.

  I have no idea how long I sit there, but when I step out to use the bathroom, I see Calvin on the sofa bed, tucked under blankets, eyes closed.

  My phone lights up again.

  And I despise every night I go to sleep without you.

  thirteen

  I remember the first time I saw Working Girl. It was at Robert and Jeff’s—of course—and they had the VHS tape of the film. There are so many classic lines (“I am not steak! You can’t just order me!”) but my favorite scene is the end—spoiler alert—when Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford are in the kitchen together, making coffee and packing lunches for her first day on the job. They’re all private smiles and shoulder bumps and it’s obscene how cute it is.

  I’m going to be honest with you and say that our morning before Calvin’s first rehearsal is not like this. For one, we both oversleep. Our panicked sprinting around each other in the tiny apartment—to brush teeth, to make coffee, Go ahead, you shower first; Oh shit, Holland, can I use your razor?—is interrupted only when my cell phone rings. It’s Robert: Calvin’s phone is on silent and my uncle’s been calling, asking him to come in an hour early to rehearse before Ramón shows up.

  Calvin emerges from the steamy bathroom with a towel around his waist. I have the absurd thought that he reminds me of the plastic torso from an anatomy course I took: each of his muscles seems perfectly defined beneath his skin.

  He shuffles past me. “I forgot my clothes out here.”

  What was I supposed to tell him again . . . ? Oh, right.

  “Robert called,” I say, and part of me wants to warn him to hold that towel tighter because he might drop it when I pass along the request. “He wants you to come in earlier.”

  Calvin blanches. “When earlier?”

  I peek at the clock over his shoulder. “Now earlier?”

  He explodes into action, grabbing his clothes from the couch, jogging back to the bathroom. I catch a flash of bare ass and find religion. I throw on whatever clothes are on top of my clean laundry pile—no one cares what I’m wearing today, or any day, for that matter—and pour coffee for each of us into travel mugs, waiting by the door.

  And then we’re off.

  It’s so cold outside that I’m legitimately worried about his wet hair freezing. Apparently he is, too, because he tucks it into a knit cap and bends into the cracking wind, cradling his guitar case to his chest. We pass the Fiftieth Street station without comment—he doesn’t even look at it this time, but I do—and my heart is pulled into a bittersweet knot.

  “What else did Robert say?” he asks, wincing in the wind.

  “Ramón is coming in at ten. He wanted to go through a few things with you first.”

  Calvin stops abruptly on the sidewalk, stunned. “Oh my God
. It’s Ramón’s first rehearsal, too.”

  Once he’s said it aloud, he seems to come to the same realization I did when Robert mentioned it—there’s no point in Ramón rehearsing with Lisa if Calvin is coming in. Today, they’ll begin working together in earnest.

  Calvin turns, continuing on his frantic march to the theater, and I jog to keep up with his long strides.

  “You’re going to be amazing,” I assure him.

  He nods into the warmth of his scarf. “Keep telling me that.”

  “You’re going to be amazing.”

  This earns a tiny grin.

  “I’ll get you drunk later, regardless.”

  Calvin laughs. “Keep telling me that, too.”

  I can tell Calvin is intimidated by the crowd that’s gathered near the stage to hear his first rehearsal. He seemed so much more laid-back at the audition—but of course he did. He’d had nothing to lose, then.

  With a little shoulder-squeeze of solidarity, I let him go at the top of the center aisle and watch him make his way toward Robert. I’m relieved to see that Ramón isn’t here yet.

  In the distance, my husband and uncle shake hands, and then Calvin is pulled into a hug. Bless Robert’s intuition for nerves, and bless Calvin for collapsing into him so readily.

  Brian comes up beside me, lifting his chin toward the stage. “Well. That certainly looks chummy.”

  I roll my eyes but otherwise stay silent. He’s wearing a dark blue shirt covered in suns and tigers and snakes and I don’t care that it’s probably Gucci, it’s ridiculous. I’m not sure if the idea of him paying eight hundred dollars for a cheesy polo makes me happy in a really catty way, or sad about the state of my own finances.

  Either way, Brian is a dick.

  “How lucky for him that there was an eligible young lady with spinster tendencies and a poor outlook on the future.”

  “Did you need something?” I ask, curling my hands into fists so I don’t reach out and slap him.

  He raises a single brow in warning at my tone. “We’ll make sure everyone knows you’re married. Robert mentioned we can’t have rumors that it’s fake.”

  I don’t even know what to say to this, so I just mumble, “Thanks.” I can already feel the way Brian wants to insert himself into this craziness, wants to collect truth and gossip like coins in a treasure chest.

  He turns and looks at me. “I have to tell you, even at that meeting . . . I never thought you’d actually do it.”

  We so rarely stand this close and look at each other so evenly, but there’s a perceptible shift in the dynamic this morning, and once I understand it, everything snaps into focus: He can’t deny I did something of value. He needs to bring me down a peg again by pointing out how insane I am to marry a stranger.

  “You seemed pretty sure it was an out-of-the-box idea,” I remind him.

  “I was fucking joking,” he says. “I mean, who does something like that?”

  He snorts out a laugh and disappears back out to the lobby. His superior attitude always makes me want to scream, You know it’s pronounced supposedly, right? Not supposably? You know there’s no ‘r’ in Washington? You realize you have your read receipts on your text messages so we always know how long you draw out your power trip before responding?

  And yet, I don’t. I carefully pull my camera out of the bag at my hip and head down the aisle to capture some pictures of Calvin and Ramón: day one.

  For a while, Robert and Calvin talk quietly, heads bowed. It reminds me of watching Dad coach out on the football field, with my oldest brother, Thomas, the high school star quarterback: their heads together, plotting out plays, feeling the pressure of hundreds of eyes on their every move. In some ways, this seems not altogether different, except the scale of celebrity here is colossal.

  The thought of Dad and Thomas makes my chest hurt a little with homesickness. I’ve stood still for so long, and suddenly my life is this moving train; having a secret this enormous makes them feel even farther away.

  In front of me, Calvin steps away, pulling his guitar out and tuning it with mannerisms that seem oddly familiar already. I get a phantom whiff of coffee and tea—he’s been tuning in the morning, wearing barely anything while I pour our respective mugs—and I know what he’s going to do next before it happens: he rolls his neck, squeezes his hands into fists, and then flexes his fingers. My heart is drumming in my throat, and when Calvin looks up to Robert for guidance, the drumming melts into fire.

  Robert lifts his hands, counting down, and then music seems to spill out of Calvin’s instrument and along the aisle, a river overflowing, flooding us all. No one moves, no one speaks, and the richness of the music gives me that odd sense of déjà vu, of something far away that’s suddenly so close again, and I’m smothered by it in this way that makes me turn my face to the ceiling, trying to inhale it, swallow more.

  He doesn’t need the sheet music; he rolls through the pieces. Every time Robert stops him to correct something it leaves me feeling like a sneeze has been cut short, or a breath punched out of me. At one point, when Robert stops Calvin again and again during a single four-measure stretch, the gathered mass groans, unconsciously, together.

  Robert turns and playfully tells them to be quiet. “Let me run this show.”

  Someone calls out, “He’s giving me chills.”

  “The chills will be better when he gets the syncopation right.” Robert turns back around and counts down for Calvin to start again.

  It’s so much like a dance—conductor and musician. Robert moves like water where he stands, and music pours out of Calvin. It’s an hour into the rehearsal before I remember I’m supposed to be doing something. I lift my camera up clumsily, balancing it on my cast to look through the viewfinder. Through the tiny square, I watch a six-foot-seven, Broadway-baby-turned-Oscar-winner, grinning, clapping Ramón Martín step onstage.

  fourteen

  Calvin is really drunk.

  Not just goofy, jokey, and smiley, but blurry—with a heavy arm draped across my shoulders as I help him up the three flights of stairs to the apartment.

  “Ramón Martín.” He’s slurred this, with dreamy emphasis, at least seventy-five times tonight. To be fair, Ramón was with us until an hour ago, when we poured him into a cab. The two of them were drunken, hugging mutual fanboys.

  “I can’t believe this is my life.” He leans his full weight into me and I groan. “Holls. This day was madness. Like a dream.”

  I struggle with my keys, propping him against the wall to get the lock open before my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Mossman, comes out and demands we shut the hell up. As tipsy as I am from my own share of martinis, I am even more intoxicated by what I witnessed today. Calvin alone was stunning. Calvin and Ramón together were prodigious. Ramón is already an impressive baritone, and with the unfurled richness of Calvin’s guitar, his voice opened up and rolled across the theater: bottomless and infinite. They brought the house down—and this was a house full of people who have seen and heard these songs hundreds of times. Even Luis Genova came by to watch the last half hour or so, and was nearly weeping with relief that the beloved show wouldn’t die in a whimper when he left.

  “And I owe it all to you.” Calvin presses his thumb below my lip. “My sweet Holland and her magical ear.” It seems to require a good deal of effort for him to focus, but when he does, he murmurs, “Your freckles really are lovely.”

  Just as my heated blood seems to press up against my skin, I manage to get the door open and he trips inside, sprawling past me and onto the couch.

  I stare down at him already half-asleep. Even in his rumpled clothes and his untied sneakers, I can’t help thinking, Look at you. Just look at you here in my apartment, being.

  “ ’S Lulu here?” he asks.

  “She went home with Gene.”

  He laughs, rolling to giggle into a pillow. “Gene.”

  I’m unreasonably pleased that Calvin is as tickled by Gene’s old-man name as I am.


  I’m less pleased, however, with Lulu’s behavior tonight. Once again, she was on obnoxious overload, teasing me in biting, passive-aggressive ways, buying shots for Calvin and Ramón, sitting on their laps, flirting shamelessly.

  Lulu’s always been my wild friend, but never this sharp before. Seeing her through Calvin’s eyes is embarrassing; I want her to relax and back off, just the tiniest bit.

  “She’s so jealous of you,” Calvin says, tugging his shirt up and over his head. He tosses it past the couch; a puddle of blue lands somewhere near the bay window.

  I shuffle to the kitchen, getting us each a glass of water so I can pretend I don’t need to respond to this—his comment about Lulu or his apparent preference for bare skin. Calvin hiccups from the couch and then groans; thank God he doesn’t need to be at the theater until Tuesday afternoon.

  “Why’s she like that?” he mumbles, and I press the glass of water into his hand.

  I wonder if he’s thinking of the same moment I am, from early in the evening: Lulu climbing on Calvin, straddling his lap, pretending to dance on him, and the barely masked revulsion that spread over his face before he urged her to stand back up. I hate that Lulu flirted so brazenly with him, but even more, I hate that she made such a mockery of our marriage tonight.

  “I don’t know, really.”

  He opens one eye, squints at me. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Maybe it’s what you said, she likes being the crazy one.” I mean . . . tonight definitely counted as crazy. I return to the living room and hand him the water. “Did you have fun?”

  His full lips push out in a thoughtful pout. “I liked being with Ramón. I like being with you.”

  The alcohol dims my natural reflexes and instead of sprinting away, my heart gives a single heavy punch to my ribs. “I like being with you, too.”

  He scrunches up his nose. “But I don’t like her.”

  This makes me laugh. In less than a week, I’ve discovered that Calvin is incredibly chill about nearly everything, but when he doesn’t like someone, he has zero poker face. “I can tell.”