Accidental Roommate

by Jolie Day

  “Oh, Maya.” I moved toward her, trying to take her face in my hands and smooth my thumbs over her cheeks. “It wasn’t like that at all, babe, I promise. There are things you don’t understand about that night and what happened after—”

  She pulled her face out of my grasp, squeezing her eyes shut to hide the fat tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “Then help me understand! Why did you leave?”

  “I got a job, I told you. I got a good job with an investor in New York who was willing to show me the ropes, so I left.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, narrowing her eyes. “Yes, but there has to be more to the story than that.”

  I felt like my head was being pressed between a vise grip, and that at any moment, it would explode from the pressure. There was no good way to get through this conversation. “I’m not going to lie to you by saying no, but—”

  “No more buts!”

  Maya snatched her cell phone up off the kitchen charger port and scrubbed the tears off her face with the sleeve of her sweater. She looked miserable, and my stomach was in knots from the pain I’d obviously caused her, but I knew that if I tried to comfort her, she would just push me away again. Shame and anger tangled together in my stomach, battling for dominance, but the only feeling that won out was nausea. I was sick over this fight, the things I’d said. Sick over everything that had been happening between us, and I didn’t know what to do to fix it, or if it could be fixed.

  “I’m going to stay at Kelly and Juan’s tonight,” she said. Announced, really, in a way that told me no number of kisses or persuading could tempt her into my bed tonight. “I’m not leaving the apartment… I just… I just need to breathe. Please don’t call me. I’ll be back tomorrow after my double shift at work, and we can talk then.”

  I slumped against the countertop, the unfamiliar feeling of defeat coursing through me like a cold wave.

  “That’s it then?”

  “That’s it. I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this with you any more right now. We can try again tomorrow, but right now, I just need—”

  “Space,” I finished coldly. “I get it.”

  “Goodbye,” she rasped, already turning toward the door and hurried out. Probably so I wouldn’t see her cry.

  I didn’t know what to say. I just watched her leave, my usual active mind numbed at the sudden feeling of loss.

  12

  Maya

  After bitching about Ethan, my job, and the overall shape of my life to my friends over Chinese takeout, I felt a bit better.

  Kelly and Juan were fantastic as usual, nodding sympathetically and offering to pour me another Rosé if I needed it. Soon they got me to laugh and unwind, and even their cat, Yuki, hopped on my lap to give me some soothing snuggles. The four of us had a nice evening watching game shows together until I passed out on their futon, but the thought of Ethan alone in the house fighting mad at me, didn’t sit well in my stomach. Or maybe he wasn’t alone at all. Maybe he’d gone out to one of those upscale bars (where he fit right in) and found himself a stunning executive to take home for the night. The thought brought tears to my eyes, but I scolded myself for getting so emotional as I lay in the dark on that lumpy futon I knew all too well from my days of couch-surfing. Ethan and I weren’t dating. We weren’t even a “thing,” so he had the right to sleep with anyone else he wanted to, if he chose to do so. It was casual, it was low stress, it was easier this way. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself as I tried not to cry myself to sleep.

  Getting ready for work the next morning was a chore. I woke up with a kink in my neck an hour earlier than usual to accommodate the fact that Kelly and Juan’s apartment was much further away from the Met than Ethan’s was. I had to hustle down to the metro without enough time to grab so much as a shake for breakfast and walked into my shift wearing a black T-shirt of Kelly’s and the jeans I’d fallen asleep in the night before. Not my best moment, but I hadn’t exactly been thinking about preparing for the workday when I’d rushed out of Ethan’s apartment last night. I just needed to get away, to escape the erotic dance we’d become trapped in, always attached at the hip, always keeping each other at arm’s length. Ugh. It was becoming exhausting.

  The café was already swarming with people when I arrived eight minutes late, and of course, my supervisor was there tapping her foot, waiting for me.

  “Seriously, Maya?” she groaned as I tugged on my apron. She sounded like I’d just gambled away her life savings, not arrived a little late to a barista shift. “You’re killing me.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll get right on it. I missed my train.”

  She tapped out the spent espresso from the portafilter handle into a trash can.

  “Take an earlier train next time. And please, put a little bit more effort into your appearance. I know you were running late, but you look like you just walk-of-shamed it out of some guys bedroom. A little lipstick goes a long way.”

  Inwardly, I seethed, and swore to myself for the third time this month that I was going to quit for a job where I wasn’t constantly criticized.

  “Got it, sorry.”

  “Good. There’s a family of five at the table there on the end who looks ready to place a dessert order. Go sort things out with them and then circle back around to me. There’s silverware that needs wrapping. And then coffee orders to fill after that.”

  The day dragged on from there. By the time the sun was starting to set outside the high windows of the Metropolitan Museum, my spirit was broken, and my feet were killing me. My supervisor had stepped away for one of her extended smoke breaks, leaving me to clean up after the few older patrons still nibbling at their dinner plates in the dim light of the café lamps.

  I people-watched as I wiped down tables, one of my favorite pastimes to indulge in when I could spare a moment. A father walked by with his infant strapped to his chest, narrating about the sculpture gallery in animated French. A small group of high school girls posed in front of a painting of Aphrodite with their selfie sticks, and then another, smaller group of museum staff rushed past, in the middle of an irritated conversation.

  “What do you mean, Ginger called out sick?” the woman with huge breasts snapped. “She has a tour group in ten minutes!”

  “I know,” another man fussed, mopping at his brow with a cloth handkerchief. “But we’ve called in a replacement.”

  “Well, I don’t see her. If she isn’t here in the next five minutes, we’re going to have to call off our tour or find ourselves in a mad dash, shuttling them around to another tour group. That’s it.”

  My ears perked up during this conversation, and my wiping slowed to a stop without my meaning to.

  “She said she would meet us here.”

  “Well, she’s not here. You go wait for her in the entry hall. I’ll run damage control with the tour group here.”

  My muscles tensed up, and I cast my eyes around the room for this replacement. No tour guide arrived as the male employee strode across the marble and out of sight. It was like that awful, tense moment in a romantic movie right before someone bursts in to put a stop to the loveless wedding—only no one came running down the corridor to save the day and secure the happy ending.

  A few moments later, a group of eager tourists clutching cameras appeared underneath one of the grand archways of the museum, and the big-breasted woman who’d been so irritated moments before, began apologizing to them profusely. They glanced around the sculpture gallery with looks of confusion on their faces, some of them checking their watches and shifting in discomfort.

  I realized that this was a magic moment, a tiny window of possibility that I could either let pass me by or reach out and take hold of. I knew this was my chance to get my foot in the door. I knew what my parents would want me to do, and what Ricky would tell me to do. I knew what Ethan would do. The question was, was I willing to do it?

  I glanced around the café quickly, ensuring that no customers needed tending to and that the barista
working the register was still at her post, and then I shimmied out of my apron. I balled it up and threw it behind the counter, not missing a beat when the other barista ducked and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. I nearly jogged over to the tour group, smoothing the hairs flying out of my braid and straightening my imitation diamond earrings as I went.

  “… so sorry for the delay,” the woman was saying, lacing her fingers together so tightly her knuckles turned white. “There’s just a bit of a mix-up regarding which of our guides will be leading you today…”

  Summoning up every ounce of courage in my body, I tapped on the woman’s shoulder. I hoped I looked convincing enough to play the part of a guide in my dark jeans and black boat-neck shirt. Guides generally dressed somewhere along the lines of “business casual,” but the more casual end of business attire would have to serve my purposes today.

  The woman wheeled on me and arched a severely groomed eyebrow.

  “Yes?”

  That single word told me that if I didn’t explain myself adequately in the next five seconds, I was likely to be removed from the premises by security.

  “I’m here to lead the tour,” I blurted, feeling my face flush red as I lied. Realizing that I may have sounded impertinent, I weakly tacked on, “ma’am.”

  “You’re Ginger?”

  “No, I’m the replacement.”

  “Ah, you’re Emily then.” She sounded a little skeptical, but relieved, nonetheless. I hoped it was enough.

  “That’s right,” I lied with my best customer service smile. “I’m Emily. So sorry for running late.”

  “It’s all right, we’re glad you could make it over on such short notice.”

  The woman was already ushering me toward the tour group with a magnanimous arm, as though she were presenting them with a fitting sacrifice to compensate for their lost vacation time. I smiled sheepishly, suddenly feeling a lot less sure of myself as I stared into the unimpressed faces of a huge group of people. There were toddlers here alongside teenagers, and an elderly couple standing nearby a large family speaking among themselves in rapid-fire German. A cross section of every age, ethnicity, and nationality to cross the threshold of the Met on any given day was standing before me, expecting to be educated and entertained, and all in a timely fashion.

  I had planned on applying for one of the coveted Met tour guide positions after their entry window reopened in the fall, and I knew that applicants who were accepted had to go through an extensive and rigorous training program to get them up to snuff on the contents of the Museum. I had no such training, but I’d been shown through the galleries by a well-trained guide many a time, and I did have a degree in the subject, for goodness sake. That had to be worth something.

  Just treat it like a job interview, I urged myself as a Taiwanese teenager gave my outfit an unimpressed cursory glance. Just do your best and don’t forget to smile.

  I raised my head. I stood tall. I found my smile before I found my voice, but soon after grinning warmly at the museum patrons and clasping my hands in front of me, I heard myself say: “Welcome to the Metropolitan Museum! We are so very glad you are here with us today, and I am thrilled to be able to help you experience the museum’s many offerings more in-depth. If you’ll please follow me right through those doors, we’ll be starting with furniture and sculpture in the neoclassical style.”

  I turned on my heel, trying to summon up the kind of confidence Ethan exuded when he exited a room, knowing that his audience would follow. Sure enough, as I moved toward the appropriate artifacts, the great mob of humanity behind me began to shuffle along as well, snapping pictures and craning their necks to see all the way up to the ceiling. With my back turned to them, and all sorts of historical details welling up inside me just bursting to be shared, I couldn’t help but smile. Fear was still stuck to me, thickening the air I was breathing like a perfume I couldn’t wash off, but joy was beginning to creep in as well.

  As I stopped by a gloriously decorated vase that I knew for a fact had been owned by Catherine the Great, I found I didn’t need my sales-y barista smile anymore. A genuine smile all my own was shining through, lit up from within by the pure pleasure of doing what I was born to do.

  “Let’s begin with this stunning piece,” I said, and the rest fell right into place.

  The tour seemed to fly by, although I realized near the outset that I wasn’t exactly sure how long these things lasted or where I was supposed to end. Making a loop through all the galleries that could be spied in a reasonable amount of time and then stopping right back where we started, next to the Catherine the Great vase, seemed like a good idea as any. It came to me halfway through my tour that if any of these folks were museum regulars, they would probably see right through my ruse, but everyone seemed engaged by what I had to tell them.

  I made them laugh, I shared saucy historical scandals and little tidbits of information that you wouldn’t find in any guidebook, and they loved it. Even the surly teenager let out an impressed whistle when we stepped foot into a room that had come from a French manor estate which had been disassembled piece by piece and reassembled in the United States. When they asked me questions, I usually had something intelligent to respond with, or at least gave them an honest “I don’t know,” wrapped up in an interesting, “but did you know…” I felt lighter than a feather, untouchable, like this was my golden-ticket day and absolutely nothing could go wrong.

  Then, the tour ended.

  I left the patchwork group back over in the sculpture hall and hurried over to the café, eyes glittering with elation. I did it! More than that, I nailed it!

  “What the hell were you thinking?” my supervisor suddenly hissed.

  It felt like she’d appeared out of nowhere. I’d ducked down behind the counter to pick up my apron, and when I stood back up, she was there, smelling of cigarette smoke and fuming rage. A vein stood out starkly on her forehead.

  “You must be insane,” she went on, almost too livid to speak.

  I shrank a few inches, wriggling into my apron and tying it tightly behind my back.

  “So sorry… I had to… take an important call, family emergency. But I’m back now! I’m happy to work past closing time if that’s what you need. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Important call? Spare me. I saw you, Maya, we both did!”

  I threw my eyes over to the girl working the register at the coffee stand. She shrugged, as if to say that all was fair in love and tattling so long as one person had thrown an apron at the other. I couldn’t blame her. This job made you bitter if you stayed in it too long… you started looking for ways to get back at people.

  I opened my mouth to explain myself to my supervisor, but she held up a rigid hand.

  “No, I don’t even want to hear it. Do you have any idea how long you were gone? People were asking for their checks—they were trying to order, and I had to come out here and do it all myself. Just… go. I can’t do this with you right now.”

  “What? No, I can work. Just let me finish my shift. I’m off in twenty minutes. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Apparently, we’re fine without you today, Maya, and it’s obvious that your head is off in statue-land and not on your job. Take the day. And don’t bother coming in tomorrow—we’re overstaffed anyway. I will discuss this with you next week, and we will decide where to go from there.”

  Angry, hot tears sprang to my eyes. “You can’t just fire me! I need this job!”

  “That decision is not yours to make. And, you are not acting like someone who really needs this job. I can’t believe you would deceive a tour group like that, if someone recognized you…” She made a frustrated noise, massaging her temples in her hands. “Just go, Maya. I told you already. I will call you next week.”

  I tried to pull together words to plead my case, but I realized with a sick feeling in my stomach that it wasn’t going to help me. I’d taken a stupid gamble, and it hadn’t paid off. I had abandoned my duties at my l
egitimate job as someone deserving of another one, and there was no justifying that. I’d messed up big time, and no amount of good feelings about having educated the general populace about rococo interiors could fix it.

  I turned away from my boss so she couldn’t see the tears welling up in my eyes and furiously untied the knot of my apron. I left it on the counter, snatched up my purse, and stormed out of the café. I didn’t nod at my regulars, despite my suspicion that this may be my last time setting foot in the establishment, and I didn’t try to get one last word in with my hellion of a boss. I just walked, and cried, and walked some more, until my feet were sore, and I was standing in the mammoth entry hall of the Metropolitan Museum. Hundreds of people swirled around me, going about their own busy and intricate lives while they gabbed on cell phones or peered over maps. They all seemed to have some kind of purpose here, and they moved toward it with the brisk speed of New Yorkers on foot, but I stood miserable under a stone arch, feeling like one of the world’s biggest failures. And I was.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I swiped the display screen and wasn’t surprised to find Ethan’s name there more than once. I ignored the notifications and instead opened up my most recent text message from Ricky.

  How’s work going? Miss you.

  I burst into tears all over again. I stood in one of the most iconic rooms in New York city, crying my eyes out and ruining the background of plenty of tourists’ nice family photos, and I felt sorry for myself for a good long time. The pity party lasted until I got the waterworks under control, which was about the same time people started looking at me and exchanging nervous glances with one another. I knew it was only a matter of time before a concerned but firm security guard walked over to ask me if everything was all right, and I couldn’t stand the thought. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about this, I just wanted to be left alone to wallow and try and figure out another way to make my rent money before it was due at the end of the month.