Hold On To Me

by Taylor Holloway

  “Oh yeah?” I asked absently. I hadn’t identified myself as a lawyer. There was no quicker way to get police to dislike you, and quit talking to you, than to be a lawyer who isn’t a prosecutor. Instead, I was just Ryan Conroe, concerned friend of an innocent tenant.

  “Oh yeah,” Alvarez confirmed. He poked a patch of floor, noticed that it buckled under his pipe, and frowned. He poked in the opposite direction and seemed more encouraged when the floor stayed where it ought to be. Above all, he looked excited to get his hands on some evidence. “We’ve seen a bunch of sketchy folks buzzing around this address. Low-level street dealers are whatever, but there were some higher-level distributors too. You know, the dangerous guys. The guys that shoot people. Whoever owned this place knew what they were doing when they set up the property the way they did. They had enough ‘regular’ tenants like your friend who they basically gave free rent to in order to camouflage all the illegal shit.”

  How the hell had Rosie ended up living here? I was beginning to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

  Rosie and her father must have had some sort of a falling out that resulted in him cutting her off financially. I suspected she’d pushed him away when he got too controlling. Since Rosie’s mom was unwilling to talk to her since she’d reconnected with her father at all, Rosie had no choice but to take matters into her own hands. Her alternatives were effective homelessness, capitulating to her father by accepting his control over her life, or capitulating to her mother by cutting off her father again. Knowing Rosie for even just a few hours, it did not surprise me that she chose homelessness. Well, actually she’d chosen Trina.

  The two had gone out and found the cheapest possible apartment possible. Rosie was probably living off student loans, and Trina probably didn’t have a lot of money, either. They’d settled on this hell-hole. And now they were both paying for it.

  “So, my friend can’t come back to her apartment at all, can she?” I asked Alvarez. I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway.

  He shook his head from side to side apologetically. “I’m really sorry, but no. She definitely can’t. Even though she had nothing to do with any of this, her apartment is a crime scene.” He pointed to one of the pot plants with his pole. “It’ll probably be weeks before we separate out everything that’s evidence from everything that’s not.” He paused. “Actually, weeks might be too optimistic. It could be months.”

  That was the bad news. The good news, if you wanted to call it that, was that because the damage to Rosie’s property was due to some fairly gross negligence on the part of her landlord, there was a very decent legal chance that I’d be able to get her compensated for all her losses. If, and it was a big if, the landlord had any money left after the police had their way with him. According to Alvarez, no one had seen the guy in months. He might have already fled the country.

  A ping from my phone distracted me from the conversation with Alvarez. I excused myself and stepped outside before I gave Ian a call back.

  “I hope you grabbed me a few of those pots,” he said by way of greeting. “It does wonders for my anxiety.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I might have.”

  I did. I had four or five in my car. Under a tarp. There were way too many cops buzzing around to advertise the fact that I’d stolen evidence to help my brother with his anxiety disorder.

  “So, Rosie’s apartment was underneath an illegal grow operation that collapsed atop her living room? Those pictures were crazy.” Ian sounded appropriately shocked.

  I frowned into the phone. “Yeah. The reality is even crazier.”

  “I can only imagine. Is Rosie upset?”

  “She’s pretty freaked out. She basically just lost everything but two outfits and her guitar.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  He was right. When Ian and I were living hand-to-mouth in Dallas as kids, a fire in our duplex had wiped out virtually everything we owned. We’d been nineteen and twenty-two, respectively. We’d been totally unprepared to deal with a real, adult crisis. We came home from classes to discover that what we had in our backpacks was what we had, period. The difference was that we had parents who were there to swoop in and help.

  We didn’t come from a wealthy family, and despite being divorced, our mom and dad rallied behind us and fixed everything. They somehow both got time off from their demanding-but-still-somehow-shitty jobs. They drove up from the suburbs and found us a new place to live that very day. I have no idea where they got the security deposit from. Probably their meager savings. I remembered our mom making us macaroni and cheese in an empty apartment while our dad bought a couple of air mattresses from a nearby Costco, so we’d have somewhere to sleep.

  It wasn’t even the material help that really made the difference during those first, confusing and upsetting days after the fire. It was the fact that when we needed them, our parents were there for Ian and me. I remember feeling very loved. Our parents hated each other, and still do, but when we needed their help, they were willing to put those feelings aside for our sake. I was angry on Rosie’s behalf that her parents weren’t mature enough to do that. They were so far from that, she couldn’t even call them.

  Instead, Rosie got parents who treated her like a toy they could fight over. Like two children fighting over a doll, they both held on to opposite ends for dear life and pulled. Rosie got to be collateral damage in their private war against one another whether she liked it or not. After two decades, their war appeared to have become one of attrition. They honestly didn’t seem to mind if their only daughter ended up as a casualty.

  Rosie had learned through experience that she shouldn’t even tell her father the extent of her problems. If she did, he would use it against her, to control her. It all seemed so ridiculously unfair. Parents were supposed to protect their children, not use them like pawns in a high-stakes game of ego chicken.

  Rosie’s dad had even sent me, a stranger, to impose his will on her from four states away. Little did he know, the only agenda I was interested in advancing was my own. I’d now fully made up my mind. I wanted to snatch Rosie away from the game her parents were playing over her. Protect her. Keep her.

  Maybe that made me no better than either one of them, but I suddenly couldn’t imagine letting Rosie go. This was all supposed to be temporary. A simple assignment from a boss that I knew to be manipulative but never dreamed would stoop to this sort of low. There was no way I was going along with anything he wanted for Rosie. That being said…

  “I’m not sure what to do now,” I told Ian. “I don’t know how to help Rosie.”

  “Yeah, I get that.” His voice was sympathetic. “It sounds like she’s having a really shitty couple of days.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” I sighed deeply. I’d never felt as conflicted. "I’m afraid if I come on too strong, she’ll run away. Her parents are super controlling, and I’m pretty sure she’s suspicious of anyone who says they know what’s best for her. I don’t want her to think that I’m trying to tell her what to do or manipulate her. But I want to help her.”

  Ian was quiet for a second. “You’re really into her, aren’t you?”

  “I guess I am.” It had been, what? Twenty-four hours? Less than that. And I was already dreaming of more. I was dreaming big. Really big. Long-term big.

  “Does she know that?”

  “I kissed her.” Part of me still couldn’t believe it, but it was true. I’d kissed her within an inch of her life. And I couldn’t wait to do it again.

  I could almost hear Ian rolling his eyes at me. “Well that’s a good first step. Try telling her now.”

  I couldn’t think of any words to even reply to Ian, so telling Rosie how much I wanted her seemed a bit beyond my powers of communication at the moment. When he spoke again, Ian’s voice was uncharacteristically mild. “Well, why don’t you ask her what you can do to help? Have her tell you what she needs. That way you won’t seem like a creep, and you can help if she lets you.”
/>   I frowned into the phone. “I guess I could do that.”

  Damn Ian, always being so damn reasonable lately.

  17

  Rosie

  Geometry book? Check. Music theory book? Check. Overpriced calculator that was objectively worse than my phone but somehow still required in the twenty-first freakin’ century? Check. Using my dad’s credit card and tacitly agreeing to him monitoring and controlling every move I make again? Check, check, check.

  Probably it was a result of growing up in a world where money was something that was always in dangerously short supply, but the luxury of suddenly having a credit card and the instruction to ‘get whatever I needed or wanted’ had been potent and intoxicating when I first reconnected with my father. Extremely so. But I certainly hadn’t realized that taking that money from my dad, who was almost a stranger to me on my eighteenth birthday, meant giving him total insight into what I wore, ate, read, studied, and watched at the movies. Now, I knew better.

  It wasn’t long before I received a text from my dad, letting me know that he’d seen me buying books for class.

  Calvin Ross [12:00 p.m.]: Hi sweetheart. I heard from Ryan that your school things got ruined and saw the charges from the campus book store. I’m glad you’re replacing them. I noticed you bought used books though. There’s no reason to do that, and I don’t want the other students to judge you. You can buy the new ones next time!

  I ground my teeth. The used ones were totally fine. No one would judge me either way (except my dad). Buying new books was just giving money to the evil publishing companies that were in bed with the university anyway. Plus, it was wasteful and bad for the environment. But I wasn’t in the mood to fight at the moment—I desperately needed my books. Plus, my dad was genuinely just trying to make sure I had what I needed for class, even if his methods were a bit… oppressive.

  Rosie Ross [12:04 p.m.]: Thanks dad. I really appreciate your help.

  Calvin Ross [12:05 p.m.]: I notice you bought a book for music theory. Is that for an elective class?

  Rosie Ross [12:06 p.m.]: I’m still undeclared. It fulfills a general education humanities requirement.

  Ok, that was a little bit of a white lie. I might be undeclared on paper, but I was ninety percent sure I wanted to pursue a dual major of BA in Education and BFA in Music. That way if I couldn’t hack it as a musician, at least I could teach guitar or something. Even if I hated teaching.

  Actually, if I was really, truly honest with myself, what I wanted was to drop out and focus on building my audience. To find a couple of bars that would let me play and just start trying to make it. But I wasn’t brave enough to admit it, let alone do it.

  Calvin Ross [12:07 a.m.]: It’s good you’re getting those easy A classes out of the way as a sophomore. They’re great for your GPA.

  My grade point average was totally fine. I had a three-point-seven-nine-five GPA. It might be terrible by Korean immigrant parent standards (ok, it was definitely dumb by Korean immigrant parent standards), but it was perfectly respectable otherwise.

  I’m good at school. I might not enjoy it, but I’m good at it. I was raised by a classic Korean tiger mom, after all. We may not have had a lot of money, but if I was pulling A minuses in any subject, she always found space in the budget for tutoring. Math tutoring, Korean language classes, and music lessons were my mom’s trifecta of perfect parenting.

  “What did he do?” Trina asked, coming up alongside me as we walked back to our ruined apartment.

  “Who?”

  “Your dad. You’re wearing the look. The one you always wear when he says something that really bothers you.”

  I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

  Trina frowned. “You know, when you first told me your dad was controlling and weird, I thought you were just being dramatic.” She rolled her blue eyes. “But then you told me about the whole guitar string thing and I realized he was an actual psycho. I’m sorry you feel like you’re back in his web again.”

  The ‘guitar string thing’ was the first sign that me and my dad were on a collision course. I’d broken the A string on my acoustic guitar and ordered a replacement set on Amazon. It never arrived. I ordered another. Cancelled. Then it happened a third time. It took me some digging, but I soon realized that my dad was monitoring my online orders. All of them. And my emails. And my personal bank account. He was monitoring everything, and he was extremely detail-oriented. Even something as innocuous as a twelve-dollar set of replacement strings for my guitar caught his attention. The kicker? They were paid for with the money I’d earned myself at a part-time office job I had that semester.

  It was one thing if my dad wanted to control what I purchased with his money. It was, after all, his money. He’d earned it, and I had no problem with him telling me how to use it.

  But trying to control purchases made with my money? Using his sneaky lawyer skills to get access to my Amazon account and email? It was an invasion of my privacy, and violation of my trust that went far deeper than I’d realized. What followed was an arms race of me trying to assert some independence and him attempting to guilt me into letting him know everything I was up to. I’d won the battle of the guitar strings, but I lost the war. And then we’d both lost when I finally got so fed up that I cut off contact with him and got myself some student loans instead.

  “I think he’s making an effort not to be as judgmental this time around,” I told her. I felt like I needed to defend him because he was my father, but also because it was true. It really seemed like he was attempting to reign himself in.

  Trina frowned. “I hope so, Rosie.” Then, what she was really thinking slipped out, as usual. “Or maybe he’s trying to introduce by stealth the same sort of bullshit that drove you to cut him off last time.”

  Technically we cut each other off, but whatever. Our last conversation had been a real, honest-to-goodness screaming match. The fact that we were now talking—well texting—in a civil manner was an improvement.

  “Maybe. But I’m in no position to turn him down at the moment.”

  “We’ll find a new apartment,” Trina promised. “Tomorrow we’ll call around, ok?”

  I nodded. “I’ve already maxed out my loans for the semester. I have exactly twelve hundred dollars in my account and it needs to last for the next two months.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, ok? I’m not going anywhere.”

  The amount that I depended on Trina made me feel guilty sometimes. She was such a good friend to me. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve her.

  “I know you want to move in with Chris,” I told her. “Now’s your chance. I can find something. Maybe they’ll let me move back into the dorms…”

  Last year we’d lived in the Honors Program dorms together. They’d sucked royally. But it was a place to live and the ceilings never rained.

  “No way Rosie.” Trina laughed at me. “I’d flunk out in two seconds if I lived with Chris. He’s too distracting.” She winked. “I need you to keep me on track.”

  There was that. Trina depended on me to help her with her homework. She was on the electrical engineering track and the math in that program was no joke. I might not be able to contribute fifty percent toward the rent, but I did attempt to contribute equally to our dysfunctional little household by tutoring Trina, doing more than my share of the housework, and cooking.

  “Let’s focus on the positives. You kissed Ryan, and I assume that means he’ll be joining us tonight. Did you think at all about what you want to do for your birthday?” Trina asked as we turned the corner and took in the massive law enforcement presence that had engulfed out little apartment complex. They were everywhere.

  All of a sudden, focusing on the positive seemed extremely important.

  “Yeah,” I replied distantly, watching a man wearing what looked like a clean suit carrying out a bunch of potted pot plants. Then someone else walked by carrying my bedroom lamp in an evidence bag. Not a grow la
mp. My lamp! I liked my lamp. We watched the spectacle with matching expressions of dismay. I saw Ryan standing next to his car, waving us over. My heart gave a little excited flip-flop. “How do you feel about bowling?”

  18

  Ryan

  I was wearing clown shoes. Borrowed clown shoes. The last time I went bowling was probably in elementary school, and in all these years since, I hadn’t missed it. Not once in all that time had I woken up and thought to myself, you know what would be fun? Renting some weird, old ugly shoes and rolling a heavy ball down a waxed lane over and over again. And then paying money for the pleasure.

  Rosie giggled at my bleak expression. “I’m sorry,” she said when I arched an eyebrow at her. “You obviously hate this already. Why didn’t you tell me you hated bowling?”

  I shook my head at her. “I don’t hate bowling.”

  I hated the very concept of bowling. But now that I was actually here in the bowling alley next to Rosie, it was hard to hate the experience of bowling. Getting a prostate exam might be a pleasant experience if Rosie was there (although, on second thought, probably not). She cocked her head to the side and I could tell she was trying to decide if she believed me.

  Giving her time to figure me out was a bad idea, so I distracted her the best way I could think of: I kissed her. Not the sort of passionate, impulsive, invasive kiss that I’d given her this morning in my bedroom. Just a swift press of my lips on hers, but it did the trick. She flushed scarlet and gaped at me in an extremely satisfying way. Rosie’s roommate giggled at us both.

  “Get a room,” Trina chirped.

  Is that an option? I asked silently. Because it sounds a lot better than bowling.