Roomies by Christina Lauren

twelve

More often than not, it’s me pounding at the door of Robert and Jeff’s apartment with arms full of groceries. But Friday night—three days after the wedding—Uncle Jeff shows up loaded down with takeout.

Although he’s silently forwarded communications between us and Sam Dougherty, we haven’t spoken since the morning he left Robert’s office, fuming. Jeff and I have never gone this long in an anger-induced silence, and I’m so grateful to see him that I throw myself into his arms. More accurately, since he’s holding bags from Pure Thai Cookhouse, I hurl myself at him, pinning his free arm at his side with my non-casted one.

“I’m sorry,” I say, taking a step back and swiping at my eyes. Calvin is there to rescue us and slips in, taking the food from him with a smile. Jeff nods in thanks before pulling me into a genuine hug.

“You’re an idiot,” he says into my hair. “But I suppose you’re my idiot, and I’m pretty grateful for that.”

I press my face into his dress shirt, smearing tears and mascara onto the blue-and-white-checkered cotton. “So you’re okay with all this?”

“I’m definitely not okay.” He pulls back enough to swipe at my cheeks with his thumbs. “But I understand it a little better. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, either. Anyway,” he says, stepping back. “I come with an army.” He gives me a silent look of pleading.

Robert is, of course, at the theater, but it’s true that Jeff isn’t alone. Behind him, Lulu holds up two bottles of tequila, and behind her is Gene, Lulu’s . . . bed-friend, holding a bag of limes and sporting the world’s most enormous mustache.

I take the bag of limes from him. “Are you guessing my weight tonight?”

Jeff laughs in a loud bark before heading into the kitchen, but Gene does a bewildered double take. “What?”

“Do I get to shoot a water gun to knock down the ducks?”

I see the moment he gets it because his giant mustache twitches under his suppressed grin. “I’ll take my limes home if you’re going to be sassy, miss.”

“You look like an old-timey auction barker,” I say. “Or Yosemite Sam. I have this sudden urge to buy a few head of cattle.” Behind me, Calvin snickers.

“You wish you could grow a ’stache like this.”

I burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, I can’t even hear what you’re saying through that thing.”

“I told him it’s awful.” Lulu tugs at it and Gene leans away.

He smoothes it down proudly. “I’m so lazy, and this is much more low maintenance than shaving.”

I don’t need to look that closely to see he’s clearly waxed and styled it with a comb. It’s really not an afterthought mustache; it’s the kind that a person chooses from a book on various mustache styles—the perfect accessory for his very carefully crafted I don’t care enough to even glance in the mirror look (which Lulu tells me takes him a long time in front of the mirror).

Gene steps inside and Lulu stops in the open doorway. I don’t think I have to ask how she ended up coming along with Jeff tonight. “He called and yelled at you, didn’t he?”

She leans in, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “He sure did. But I appeased him by sending him all the photos. He said I did a great job with your hair.”

I laugh as she makes her way into the kitchen, and I close the door in time to see Jeff step up to Calvin.

“I don’t believe we were properly introduced.” My uncle extends his hand. “And I want to apologize for being rude. Holland is my youngest niece, and more like a daughter to me, so I’m very protective of her.”

“No, no.” Calvin balks at this, returning the handshake. “I completely understand.”

“And, congratulations.” Jeff smiles with a twinkle in his eye. “You’ve passed a three-step criminal background check.” He looks over at me. “Holland, I emailed you a copy.”

Calvin’s eyes go wide. “Honestly?”

With a laugh, Jeff walks into the kitchen to unpack all the food.

“Oh!” I pull Gene forward. “I’m so sorry, Calvin. This is Gene, he’s Lulu’s, um . . . friend?”

“Boyfriend,” Gene corrects.

“Fucktoy,” Lulu says with a smile, smooshing his face in her hand before walking away to help Jeff or—more likely—pour some alcohol.

Calvin and I exchange a look, and something giddy is born inside me at the way it feels like we have an unspoken language of snark.

Calvin extends his hand. “I’m the husband.”

“Not the fucktoy?” Gene says, throwing a bucket of ice-cold awkward over the conversation.

“Erm, no,” Calvin says, giving me a comical Eep face.

“Not yet!” Lulu calls from the kitchen.

“Lulu,” I call back, “you and Gene will be banned from this apartment if you continue to make tonight weird.”

“It’s already weird enough,” Jeff says.

Leaning in close enough that only I can hear, Calvin says, “I did find a sex toy in the couch.”

I smack his arm.

Lulu returns with four tequila gimlets and Gene asks us how our first week of marriage is going. Despite the mustache and obsession with looking like he doesn’t care about appearances, Gene is twenty-nine and, admittedly, pretty hot. But standing next to the God that is Calvin in his dark jeans and faded T-shirt, the boy doesn’t compare. For a couple of seconds, I catch Lulu looking at Calvin the way my old retriever used to eye my dinner plate, and I move a little closer to him.

I cup my hand around my mouth, calling out, “Jeff, there’s wine above the fridge!”

“Already got it,” he answers. “I’m just putting out the food.”

“A warning,” I stage-whisper to Calvin. “The drunker Jeff gets, the more honest he’ll be about how horrifying he finds this whole thing.”

Calvin glances across the room toward Jeff. “He’ll be more honest?”

“I can hear you, Holland,” Jeff says, choosing that exact moment to join us in the living room. “I just worry that this won’t end well. Not to mention I hate lying to my sister.”

“I guess we could tell Mom and Dad,” I say, and motion for everyone to head to grab some dinner. I’m totally lying, and have my fingers crossed in my pockets hoping that I’m calling Jeff’s bluff. “Mom’s pretty chill—she’s not going to disown me . . . It just . . . it didn’t feel official yet, maybe because we haven’t had the immigration interview. Why worry them?”

“I told my parents,” Calvin says casually.

I squint up at him. This surprises me, given how fast everything happened. “When?”

He sips his drink, lifting it in thanks to Lulu. “Before the wedding.”

“They were fine with it?” I ask.

He nods. “They were thrilled.”

“You told them why we got married?”

“No,” he says, setting his drink down so he can fill his plate. “I told them I met a girl. It’s true enough, innit?”

It is true enough . . . but not a surprise to them how fast it happened? I study him for a second longer, at his easy calm, his constant smile. Maybe it’s that he’s a son instead of a daughter, or the oldest instead of the baby, or maybe he seems confident enough about every move that his family stopped questioning his decisions a long time ago.

The conversation shifts as we grab food and head back to the living room. I don’t have a dining table, let alone enough chairs, so we all find spots on the floor around the coffee table.

Everyone tucks in, and I get up to grab some supplies for the evening. The plan was for Jeff to be able to share information about me with Calvin, but since Lulu came along, I quickly devised a game based entirely on keeping Lulu from dominating the conversation: Lulu, Jeff, and Gene will each have a bag of poker chips. They have to bid to share a story in the category Calvin requests, and are free to outbid the others if they think their story is better. I haven’t known Gene that long, so I’m only giving him a bag of chips to be nice, but Lulu and Jeff have some pretty great—and some pretty terrible—stories about me, and they’re going to need to share the stage, so to speak.

After I explain the rules, we all look at Calvin.

He swallows a bite of dinner, wipes his mouth with his napkin, and then pulls a small notebook from his back pocket. “Can’t we start with some basics everyone can answer?” He pulls the cap off his pen with his teeth.

“I guess so.” I point to Lulu. “But you are limited to a minute per answer.”

She flops dramatically back onto the throw pillow behind her.

“So, first,” Calvin says, “I want to know what you admire most about Holland.”

“Besides her rack?” Lulu calls from the floor.

Jeff groans; Calvin grins, and then, without any subtlety whatsoever, checks out my chest. “All right, yeah. But besides that.”

My pulse riots in my throat.

“Her backbone.” Lulu pushes up onto an elbow to look at me. “She does what she says she’ll do, and doesn’t do things she doesn’t want to do.”

“Cheers. Good answer.” Calvin jots it down before turning to Gene, who shrugs.

“I mean, she’s a really good cook?”

Calvin laughs. “Are you asking me, or telling me?”

Jeff clears his throat and then coughs into his fist, looking at me. “That’s going to be hard. I admire so many things.”

“Aww, Jeffie.” I lean over and kiss him on the cheek.

“I think I admire that she, more than anyone I know, tries to be circumspect about her successes and failures, and who she is. She tries to see herself clearly—both kindly and critically—and I think she’s generally pretty spot-on.”

It’s one of the best, most unexpected compliments of my life, and I’m left momentarily speechless.

“She’s also pretty funny,” Jeff adds, and Lulu is already protesting.

“You only get one,” she says, but Calvin is quick to interject.

“Yeah, but she’s class,” he says with a cheeky smile in my direction. “So I’ll let that infraction slide.”

Calvin asks a couple more general ones—what’s their favorite thing to do with me, what sort of music do I listen to, what sort of movies do I hate, what do I always order at restaurants—before ending with “What bothers you about Holland?”

“Hey!” I protest.

He takes my hand, squeezing. “Come on. I think this is really interesting.”

Damn him. It’s impossible to deny him when think comes out as tink.

“She won’t take risks,” Lulu answers immediately.

“Hello?” I point to Calvin. “Risk, right here.”

She snorts. “I dunno. That’s a pretty fine-looking risk.”

Calvin leans a little closer to me.

Gene thinks for a minute before giving yet another shrug. “She, um, I don’t know, won’t ever call me Lulu’s boyfriend?”

“To be fair,” I argue, “Lulu doesn’t call you her boyfriend.”

Gene laughs. “True. Why won’t you call me your boyfriend, Lu?”

“Because we’re not sixteen? Would you be happier if I called you my manfriend?”

“Yeah, actually.”

While they’re bantering, I look at Jeff, unsure whether I want to hear his answer. He’s already doing that thing where he licks his lips in preparation for saying something difficult.

“What I said before was true,” he says quietly, as if he’s speaking only to me, “about how Holland tries to see herself clearly and seems to end up in a pretty good place. But I also think she sees herself as a supporting character, even in her own life story.”

Just as I was thrown by his compliment, I am equally—and conversely—thrown by his criticism. It lands with a resonating bong. Has Jeff just hit on the truth behind my biggest roadblock? For nearly a year I’ve been trying to come up with an idea for my first novel, and nothing is there. Is it because books aren’t about side characters, and those are the only voices in my head?

The room has gone quiet.

I lift my drink, finishing it and holding it out to Lulu to refill. “I feel like an insect under a microscope now.” With Lulu and Gene here, this is way more uncomfortable than I’d anticipated. “Let’s get the fun part going.”

The bidding begins. Calvin starts out easy—what’s Holland’s favorite movie?

Even Gene knows this one—we saw it down at the Beekman together a few weeks ago. At Lulu’s pointed stare from across the room, he tosses in a chip. “Is it Blues Brothers?”

“Correct,” I say.

“A time Holland cried,” Calvin prompts.

Jeff throws in a chip, but Lulu throws in two, and he gives her this one. Instead of saying something heartfelt, she tells the story of the time I got wasted and slipped while crossing Madison and Fifty-Ninth, and started sobbing because I couldn’t find the sunglasses that were on my head.

“Thanks for that, Lulu. And for what it’s worth, they were pink and limited edition. It was more about frugality than feelings.”

She salutes me.

Calvin takes another bite of dinner and swallows before asking, “Something Holland is sentimental about?”

Without throwing in any chips, Jeff and Lulu call out, “Gladys” in unison, and Jeff explains: “She has a stuffed dog named Gladys that she’s had since she was three. It was a birthday present from Robert, who, you will learn, is Holland’s favorite person alive.”

“It’s true,” I agree. “I’m not really sentimental otherwise.”

“Your most embarrassing story?” Calvin asks.

Lulu throws in a chip and starts speaking before Jeff has a chance to bid: “Oh, I got this one. She had sex with a guy one night and there was a ton of air in her—”

I smack my hand down on the coffee table. “OH MY GOD, LULU.”

Everyone goes deathly silent, and it might be because we’ve killed them all with the horror of this visual. Lulu looks around as if she’s only now registering the audience.

“I can live a thousand years,” Jeff says, “and never hear the rest of this story.”

“Why do I ever confide in you?” I ask her, genuinely annoyed.

She sounds surprisingly contrite. “Because my stories are always worse?”

“I was thinking less about ‘Holland with a boyfriend’ type of scundered,” Calvin says, “and more inebriated hijinks.”

I look over at the sound of his voice—sort of tight and thin—and catch his peeved expression. I’m starting to sense that Calvin doesn’t care for Lulu’s brand of crazy.

And I’m not sure I like it tonight, either; she’s dialed up to eleven.

“Well,” I say, putting my hand on his arm, “there was the time my grandmother didn’t recognize me because I’d gained the freshman fifteen.” Jeff coughs, and I amend, “Freshman twenty-five.”

Calvin looks at me gratefully—“That’s brutal”—and bends to write it down in his notebook.

We drink more, tell more stories—about what sports I played (volleyball, briefly), what books I love (many), where I’ve gone on vacation (fewer places than I’d like)—and Calvin shares a few of his own: He used to fish on a lake with his father every Friday morning for Friday dinner; his youngest sister, Molly, has cerebral palsy; he saw Possessed seven times because he was lucky in the lottery twice, and has a truly generous former professor who took him five other times; he doesn’t understand the appeal of sitcoms—particularly Friends; his favorite movie is The Godfather Part II—and I love that this makes him sort of average in at least one way; he doesn’t eat lamb and thinks it’s an abomination to mix anything with whiskey. He also used to help his mom out a lot when he was younger and is apparently quite the knitter.

“You knit?”

He nods slowly, relaxed by the food and the alcohol and the company. “Could knit you a scarf and a cap to go with it.”

It could feel like we are taking in information in giant gulps—like one might drink from a fire hose—but the way the stories unwind with tangents and jokes and side stories also makes me realize we truly are getting to know each other, in the intense way that happens when people are cooped up together, like at summer camp.

Jeff stands, beckoning Lulu and Gene to leave when he does, and I appreciate my uncle’s ability to be frank without being rude: “Let them get some sleep. Imagine how exhausting this is.”

He gives Calvin a wary smile before hugging me tightly.

Lulu grabs the remaining full tequila bottle, and Gene sends air kisses on their way out.

When the door closes behind them, Calvin exhales heavily. “Wow. I feel full.” He taps his temple, indicating his meaning. But if the way he looked gratefully at Jeff is any indication, I think he also feels full of social interaction.

“I bet.”

Together, we pick up the plates and clean the kitchen. He washes the dishes; I pack up the food and clean the counters.

This feels so easy. Hanging out with my people with Calvin there, cleaning up afterward. Is it because we know how fake it all is, and there are no pretenses? Or is it something more, some matching chemistry?

See, Holland, this is where you’ll get in trouble.

He grabs a beer and moves to the couch, dropping onto the cushion, and I flop down on the opposite end.

“Did you have a good time?” he asks.

I rub my forehead, counting out the four gimlets I drank over three hours. “Yeah. It was fun. I’m tipsy, though.”

His laugh is light, like he finds this charming. “Your nose is all pink.”

And then, unexpectedly, he shifts so that he’s lying down and he carefully lowers his head into my lap. “This okay?”

“Sure.” Tentatively, I lift my hand, brushing his hair off his forehead.

He hums at the contact, and his eyes fall closed. “What a crazy week.”

“Yeah.”

This moment is so surreal I actually bite my bottom lip to make sure I’m not imagining it. I wonder if it will feel more or less like real life when he goes to rehearsals and I’m back at work, and we come home together every night.

One year. A voice inside warns me to cocoon my heart and expectations in bubble wrap.

“I had enough drink to be comfortably sleepy,” he says. “Maybe loose-lipped.”

“That’s a good thing. Let me go get my list of deeply personal questions.”

He laughs, looking up at me. “I learned a lot about you tonight. You can tell a lot about a person by what their loved ones say.”

I groan, remembering. “Lulu was a beast. Clearly that does not reflect well on my character.”

“I was going to ask about that.” He lets his eyes fall closed again as I comb my fingers through the front of his hair. “She seemed okay at the wedding but was acting the maggot tonight. Is she always so crude?”

“Yeah, Lulu’s emotions can be all over the place, but tonight it felt almost aggressive, like she was trying to out-drama me.”

“What we’ve done is pretty dramatic. From the outside it seems to me that Lulu is used to being the wild one.”

“It’s true.” I look down at his face, enjoying being able to study it without him noticing. His nose is straight and narrow, lips full but not feminine. I love the shape of his eyes. I don’t know how to describe them other than roman, mildly hooded. His lashes are thick but not distractingly long. His stubble grows in darker than his hair, which is light brown, but in the sun it’s cut with red. And, at the back, I know there is a surprising streak of silver there, like crystal forking through dark stone.

He reaches for his phone, typing something quickly before saying, “We should probably talk about the things that new lovers always discuss first.”

“You mean such as past lovers? Do you need to get your notebook?”

Calvin waves this off with a smile. “Jeff made passing reference to a lad named Bradley earlier.” He crosses one ankle over the other. “So I assume he was long term.”

I blink, trying to figure out when—and why—Jeff and Calvin would have been discussing my relationship résumé tonight. But my phone buzzes on the table. I reach over him and read the text that has just arrived . . . from Calvin.

Are you ready for me?

I stare at the screen, bewildered, before I realize what he’s doing. Adding to our normal-couple sexting. Playing the game. I reply with a warm blush.

If by ready for you, you mean naked, then yes.

“You were telling me about Bradley,” he prompts when I put my phone on the couch next to me.

“Right.” I clear my throat, looking down at him. He’s suspiciously pink, too. “We were together just under three years.”

“Did you ever think you’d marry him?”

It’s such an obvious question, so there’s no excuse for the way it catches me off guard. “No, not really. He was nice, but . . . we were boring in similar ways.”

He narrows his eyes at me when I say this, and I wonder what he’s thinking. “So what about others?”

Others. So much mediocrity there.

“You first,” I deflect. “How many women have you been with?”

He sucks in a quiet breath when he glances at my text, quickly typing something else, and then sets his phone on his stomach, facing away so I can’t see.

“Like, relationships?” he asks. “Two.” Calvin scratches his leg. He’s taken off his socks, and has nice feet; they aren’t calloused or knobby. Just smooth and tanned, nails trimmed.

My phone buzzes.

I want to feel the heat of you next to me when I go to bed tonight.

These words detonate in my blood. My crazy brain finds this . . . applicable to our situation.

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.