Roomies

by Christina Lauren

  He begins to argue, but Dougherty has materialized a few feet away, and we stand in a burst, as if saluting.

  How long has he been there? Did he hear us? Oh my God, we are idiots.

  “Hey there,” Dougherty says. “Come on back.”

  With a small, encouraging smile, he turns and we follow. It feels so familiar—the walk to his office, the gray view out his window, the tight ball of anxiety in my stomach—but I’m also struck by how different it is, how much more we know now. Our first interview was a naive shot into the dark, with fingers crossed. Now we’re walking across the room, dragging all this emotional and marital baggage behind us. Even if we make it out of this meeting intact, how long will we stay that way?

  Do I want to be married to someone who’s been keeping a Natalie on the back burner?

  Do I want to be married to someone who may have married me only for this job, and because I looked like someone named Amanda?

  Dougherty tells us to sit and closes the door behind us before rounding his desk. In front of him are three stacks of papers, and to the right is a thick file I can only assume is ours.

  “I’m going to lay it out straight up,” he says, scratching an eyebrow. He doesn’t look pleased. “After your first interview, I’m required to do an audit of the documentation to create my report.”

  We both nod.

  “At first blush, your story was pretty clear-cut. You met at the subway station, went on a date, fell in love.”

  Calvin and I nod again.

  But it’s like I know what’s coming, and I can’t breathe.

  “Something jumped out at me.” He pulls a sheet off the top of the middle pile, and reads it quietly for a few seconds. “The police report. Holland, here it is, dated January ninth. You were assaulted at the Fiftieth Street station. You claimed there was an unnamed musician in the station as a witness to your injury, correct?”

  There it is.

  I swallow before speaking. “That’s right.”

  “Now, you also mentioned that Calvin used to play sometimes. Wasn’t the assault at the station where you used to play, Calvin?”

  “That’s right, sir.” And before I can catch his eye, give him a tiny shake of my head—he adds, “That’s how it all began.”

  But then he pulls back in a jerky motion, turning to me. “Wait.”

  I watch as understanding dawns.

  “No,” he says. “I wasn’t there that night, right?”

  Silence blankets the room.

  “You don’t remember whether you were present when your girlfriend at the time was assaulted?”

  Calvin closes his eyes, slumping. “I was there.”

  Slowly, Dougherty slides the paper onto his desk and leans back, rubbing his eyes.

  Neither of us says a thing. We both know we’re busted.

  We told Dougherty we met six months before we got married. If Calvin was at the station when I got injured in January, he would undoubtedly be named in the police report as a witness—the victim’s boyfriend.

  “Okay, so I was right. The timelines don’t match up,” Dougherty says quietly, resting his elbows on his desk and meeting our eyes in turn. “See, I do the first audit, but there’s always a second, independent assessment of the docs. Sometimes they’ll skim the paperwork, but sometimes they’re really thorough.” He leans back again, studying us. “Normally, I would reject this outright and not even bother to bring you in, but I like you, and Jeff is a good friend. Unfortunately, this is easy to catch, because I have that Calvin played at that station, and you were assaulted at that station. If Calvin was there the night you were assaulted, then why didn’t he come forward with information, and why isn’t he explicitly named? I don’t want to get caught in a situation where I’ve pushed through an obviously fraudulent marriage.”

  “It isn’t, though,” Calvin says, sliding forward in his seat. “We may have . . . stretched a few details, but it’s a love marriage.”

  A thick knot of emotion takes up residence in my throat. Dougherty looks at me, and I nod. He probably assumes my watery eyes are tears of intense agreement rather than heartache because I’m not even sure whether Calvin is telling the truth or is just a really, really good liar.

  “On a personal note, I’m glad to hear that,” he says, “but it’s pretty immaterial here.” He sweeps his hand over our files. “This doesn’t look great.”

  Beside me, Calvin leans back heavily in his chair, covering his face with his hands.

  “Before you panic,” Dougherty continues, “I have come up with a solution.” He pulls the pile of papers from the left side of his desk and pushes them toward Calvin. “When Jeff approached me initially, I advised him off the record that you’d be unlikely to qualify for an EB-1A green card, or O-1B visa, because of the length of your illegal tenure in the U.S.”

  “Right,” I say. “Jeff said those are really competitive and Calvin wouldn’t qualify because he’d broken the law.”

  Dougherty nods. “But given the current change in circumstance—specifically that Calvin is arguably one of the brightest stars on Broadway at the moment—I say we can easily make the case for national or even international acclaim and apply for a visa for Persons with Extraordinary Ability.”

  Calvin sits forward, eyes red, and finally takes a look at the papers. “So we’d do this sort of visa instead of the green card?”

  Dougherty nods. “Whether you stay married is up to you, but I worry about the red flags there. I know we can put an O-1B through now.”

  The sun can’t decide what it wants to do; it fights behind clouds, and even when it’s free and exposed, it seems to beam weakly down on us. Outside the building, Calvin and I huddle in our coats. I want to look up to the cold spring sky and laugh my face off. All of this was moot—the wedding, the information sharing, the checking account, the utility bills. Even the emotional entanglement. We were all so naive.

  “This is what happens when you put a bunch of artists in charge of a legal decision,” I mumble.

  “I’ll fill these out later and send them in first thing tomorrow,” he says, and nods down to the forms clutched to his chest. “Holy Christ, I’m glad this doesn’t affect us.”

  It’s like we’ve walked out of a movie theater thinking we were together only to realize we watched two different shows. “This,” I say, pointing between us, “is totally moot. You get that, right?”

  He reacts like I’ve shoved him, shifting a step back. “Is that what you’re taking away from the meeting?”

  “That we don’t need to be married?” I say, laughing harshly. “Yeah. That’s what I’m taking away.”

  What a mess this is. I want to go back in time—two weeks, that would be perfect. And I want to find a way to get him to tell me about Amanda, and explain it in a way where his explanations don’t sound convenient and shady. I want it to happen before I meet his family, before I realize that I could be Holland, or Amanda, or Natalie, or anybody—that Calvin just needed a warm American citizen in his bed.

  But does that time exist? I’m not sure there would have been a way for him to tell me about Amanda and our convenient similarity without it sounding like utter bullshit if he said in the next breath, But I do love you.

  He stares off down the street, squinting. “My takeaway was a bit different.”

  “Which is?”

  “That we’re free to just be together now.” He turns back to me. “That this marriage can exist without the odd pressures of obligation.”

  Defeat is a weight, pulling my heart low. “I like the idea of that, but two hours ago I found out I’m just a convenient doppelgänger. Even without the obligation of the green card, we still have that to address.”

  He growls, tugging at his hair. “The Amanda thing isn’t relevant here. It’s not relevant between us—it was just a way to keep my family from worrying!”

  His defensiveness stokes a fire in me. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it sounds terr
ible,” he says, laughing incredulously.

  “It is terrible.”

  Calvin tilts his face up to the sky, his jaw tight with frustration. “You know, I think you need to back off me a little here. Your parents still don’t even know I exist.”

  “You’re right.” I nod. “But I never lied to you about it. I planned to tell them everything. The emotions that happened between us were unexpected, and I figured I had time to tell them before I took you home. I was just swept up in it.”

  “As was I.”

  “Yeah, but I only need to tell them that I fell in love with someone. Your family has been carrying around a photo of a woman they think is your wife—a photo you sent them, by the way—and have explained away the differences between us because they think I’ve lost a little weight and that I’ve done something to my hair. Is that why you always want me to wear it up?”

  He looks furious. “No! I want you to wear it up because I like it up.”

  “You’ve been lying to me about all of it this entire time, and would have been happy for me to go along with it.”

  “Not everything here was a lie, Holland.” The wind whips his jacket collar against his neck. “I think we can both admit that what happened between us in bed wasn’t a fraud.”

  He’s right, and inside, I am a simmering pot of feelings. Without question, I’m in love with him, and can so acutely remember the bliss of making love to him in the middle of last night that it makes my jaw clench with need. But I’m mad at myself for thinking this fucked-up situation was what I deserved. What happened between us in bed was the truth, but what about outside of that? I can’t even trust my internal compass of emotion anymore. Is this love?

  “I know the sex wasn’t a fraud,” I say, and meet his eyes in time to catch his tiny wince. “But I don’t know how to believe you want more than that when you stood there and asked me to let them call me Amanda. That doesn’t scream long term.”

  “Holland, I—”

  “I need some time to think. Maybe I’ll call my family tonight and talk it out.”

  “The show is tonight, love. Mam and Bridge—”

  “You can’t honestly expect me to come along, can you?”

  His expression crashes and he steps forward, holding my arm in his free hand. “Holland, this is all shite, I get that. But I’ll talk to them, I’ll explain. We’ll fix this.”

  I know I’m going to hate that I say it, but I can’t seem to hold the words back: “We don’t need to fix it anymore. You’re free.”

  The wind chooses this moment to burst past us, propelling us apart. It’s the perfect moment for the perfect metaphor.

  Calvin searches my eyes for a few more seconds and then looks away. “All right. I’ll come round later to gather my things.”

  twenty-six

  I’ve done a lot of crazy things in the last four months, but calling Brian and quitting before tonight’s performance might be the craziest. I couldn’t tell if he was speechless from glee or shock, but his silence on the other end allowed me to get the words out, even as my own realization that I was quitting rather than just calling in sick unfolded over the phone:

  I’m not coming in tonight.

  Actually, I really need to find something else to do.

  I’m not happy working there anymore.

  I think . . . I’m quitting.

  Jeff and Robert I have to tell in person—I owe them that courtesy after everything they did to get me the job in the first place. But Lulu—bless her heart—replied with a string of hearts and eggplants and smiley faces and rocker-hand emojis before typing the actual words It’s about fucking time. Within ten minutes she sent me a list of restaurants where I should apply.

  So while the fire of mania and heartache and terror and regret still burns me up inside, I update my résumé, planning to take it to a dozen places this week.

  I worked at the dining hall when I was at Yale—that’s about the extent of my food industry experience. But I’m hoping that my days at the Levin-Gladstone will cash out here, because it is hard as hell to get a job there, and archivist and customer relations looks pretty bad-ass on paper. I get now that what Robert gave me wasn’t a great job, but a great investment.

  And then I come home and open my article on Calvin, and the production, and my hunt for talent in New York, trying to Rumpelstiltskin my black angst into golden prose and do everything I can to avoid thinking about how it’s going to feel when Calvin gets home and I realize we’re really over.

  I’m hammering away at my keyboard, high on word count and two glasses of wine, but my righteous resolve melts when Calvin walks into the apartment and hangs his coat up on the hook.

  He stands by the door, expression somber, and then pulls in a deep breath, stepping into the room.

  Taking a perch on the corner of the coffee table, he says quietly, “You weren’t even out in the lobby.” He looks exhausted: blue circles bloom beneath bloodshot eyes, and his normally smiling mouth is a grim, flat line.

  I slide my laptop onto the table beside him. “I called Brian and quit.”

  He doesn’t seem at all surprised by this. He just nods, staring down at his interlaced hands. Seeing his wedding band glint in the lamplight is enough to suck the air from my lungs.

  “Where are your mom and sister?” I ask. A glance at the clock shows me that it’s well past midnight; the show ended at least two hours ago.

  “Back at the hotel.”

  “Did they have fun?”

  He nods but doesn’t answer aloud.

  “I’m sure they were so proud of you.”

  “I think so,” he says.

  I tink so.

  This is nothing like my breakup with Bradley, where it felt like all we had to do was put a lid on a box. Right now, my heart hurts. It’s squeezing and squeezing and squeezing, trying to keep me moving through this moment where I’m pretty sure I’ve decided that in order to get myself back, I’ll be losing him.

  “I told them about Amanda.” He scratches at a fleck of white on his black dress trousers. “They’re peeved. They’ll get over it.”

  I don’t know what to say to this. All that comes out is a sympathetic hum.

  Calvin looks up at me. “Will you?”

  “Get over it?”

  He nods.

  “Maybe,” I tell him, “but not right away. I mean, I think I understand why you lied to them—you didn’t want them to worry about you out here. But then you didn’t tell me, either, and it all just seems very . . . convenient. I had a hard time trusting that this was real at the beginning, and it doesn’t exactly help that you wanted me to lie about my name to your family.”

  “I’ll explain whatever you need me to,” he says. “I did a shite job explaining this—I was panicked. I realize it all looks so bad from where you’re sitting.”

  “Yeah.” I look up at him. “And although we can hash out the Amanda thing, I’m not sure you can explain away Natalie.”

  He leans forward, taking both of my hands in his. “There is nothing happening with Natalie. When she called at the restaurant, I told her I was starting a new relationship. That’s what I said. I didn’t give her an expiration date.” He bends, kissing my knuckles. “It was cowardly to not tell my parents about Amanda. Plain and simple. And yeah, I married you at first to stay here but my love for you isn’t a lie. It was shite to expect you to lie with me. I just . . .” He shakes his head, and looks to the window. “In the moment, it was all a swarm in my head. I’m so sorry, but I’m here now, and I’ll do whatever you need me to do to fix this between us.”

  I study his face. His smooth skin, dancing green eyes, the full mouth I’ve kissed thousands of times. He looks positively miserable, and I don’t even know what to say.

  “I fucked this up,” he whispers, and his eyes fall closed. “I really fucked it up.”

  God.

  This hurts.

  I hate this,

  I hate it. I hate it.

  When he opens
his eyes again and looks at me, I don’t want him to leave, but I know I’m going to make him go. We are such a mess.

  “Well, anyway, I told you I’d come back later and get my things,” he says, trailing off.

  I try to swallow around the clog in my throat, my chest, my gut. “Yeah.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “I don’t want you to, no. But right now I need you to.”

  He directs his next quiet question to the floor: “Do you want to stay married?”

  My heart screams yes. Most of my body, in fact, screams yes, yes, yes. But a tiny fragment inside, a spark that’s turned into an ember, whispers no. I know we could talk through Amanda, or Natalie, or all the secrets we’ve kept from our families, the way we talked through Lulu’s Insane Stalker accusations. But in the grand scheme of life, those are all small things, and the big things need to happen with a clean slate. Before this, I had nothing going on in my life. This man was presented as an option, and I was willing to marry him just to have something to do, some victory to claim.

  My willingness to jump into a fake marriage seems depressing in hindsight. The fact that he lied to me feels terrible. The fact that—over and over again—I’m not sure whether or not I can trust his feelings to be genuine is gutting.

  But the worst feeling is the deep confusion inside me about why he would love me at all; I feel stale and tiresome. No matter what my uncles say, Calvin and I aren’t Robert and Jeff—we didn’t start out with clear intentions and unequivocal declarations of love. I can’t be the Jeff, working on the sidelines while Calvin takes off like a comet. I need to fill my life with accomplishments I create, not just witness.

  “I love you,” I tell him earnestly, and swallow a few times so I don’t cry when I get through the rest of it. It’s the first time I’ve said it. In every book I’ve ever read where the protagonist does what I’m about to do, I hate it, I yell at the pages . . . but I get it now. “And part of me really does want to stay married and work through this, and have the unexpected perfect ending. But I’ve been really good at letting other people take care of me, and making my decisions based on what other people need. I’ve been scared of figuring out my own shit, or trying something and failing. And now I’m sitting here thinking, ‘I wouldn’t even be in love with me. How can I believe him when he says he is?’ ”