Chapter 5 #2
She gave me a sly smile. “Your beloved Christmas music, then?”
I couldn’t believe I had to pretend I was this into Christmas. All because I didn’t know how else to explain away Christmas porn set dressings. “Well, tis the season,” I said, settling in, and we drove off to the serenade of Mariah Carey’s damn voice.
But aside from the near-death experience in the car, it was fun—we had my one and only Christmas tradition, which was hitting up the mall for the Cinnabon stand, and meandering through shops while we were there, mostly just taking in the decorations.
Victoria matched my pace while I gushed about cute outfits or home goods, and we strolled through the bookshop too, where she seemed more drawn to the nonfiction side, unsurprisingly.
We split up for a bit, and I found her flipping through a book on art history, and I sidled up next to her.
“A little Mark Rothko, huh?”
She flicked a smile my way. “A fan of the arts, then.”
“I just know the basics. I’m not surprised you are. It suits you.”
“Oh, because I’m so erudite and refined, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. Thank god I was finally able to talk to her normally again. Coming my brains out last night had been a good idea after all.
“Rothko, I think, either speaks to you or not,” she said, showing me the book. I nodded.
“Those are… colors, yep. That’s a finished painting?”
“Abstract Expressionism. More a study of how the colors make you feel. You lose some of the impact seeing it in a book… in person, the paintings are huge, and the paint is thick, heavy, and the brushstrokes are raw and powerful. The color contrasts stand out more for it. They’re…
uglier, in person. The colors are jarring. ”
“But it’s, like, supposed to be ugly.”
She flipped to the next page, presenting another painting, even though painting was a generous term for it—a big black square.
“Oh, yes, my favorite,” I said. “Shadows on a black surface at night.”
“These are probably the most contentious,” she laughed, and she added in a small voice, looking at the book almost tenderly, “I like them.”
“Do you feel the same emotion looking at a black painted wall?”
“It’s probably the presentation that matters.
There’s something about it… the massive field of darkness, coarse and chaotic, that triggers something primal in you.
Standing in front of it, you feel small, vulnerable…
lonely,” she said, the last word slipping out in just a breath.
It hung there in the quiet of the shop, before she shut the book and slid it back onto the shelf. “I’m just saying words.”
“Do you feel lonely?” I said, even though I shouldn’t have, and she paused, her fingertips lingering on the spine of the book, not looking at me.
“I don’t mean to run my mouth.”
“I’m asking.”
She sighed, dropping her hand. “Let’s look at something more cheerful. Like a nice, cheerful murder mystery.”
I knew it.
I gave her the space, and she opened up when we got to the coffee shop near the entrance, sitting under a big mirror draped with garland, and we sat together with our lattes, hers with oat milk, and she said, “I’ve never been the best at… making friends.”
“Well, you made friends with me.”
She raised her eyebrows, giving me a look of faint surprise. “I’m surprised you aren’t too bored of me.”
“What are you on about? We have dinner together every night and breakfast together most mornings, and you always have something to talk about.”
“Sure, about work.”
“You have your things you’re passionate about. I don’t mind listening to you talk about it.”
She gave me the most meltingly sweet smile, and I died a little bit on the inside. I couldn’t believe I had a crush on my roommate. I was ready to die. “Thank you, Bridget,” she said, her voice soft. “What about you? You have online friends, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah, child of the internet and all that. I don’t know, I’ve just always enjoyed this. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.”
“Do you have family?” She shook her head, frowning. “I’m sorry, that’s a weird question. It’s just been on my mind that you never mention them, that you don’t seem to do anything with them for Christmas…”
I shrugged. “We don’t talk. Things didn’t end well between me and them. It happens. It’s been long enough ago that honestly, the concept of having family feels like the odd one.”
She laughed wryly. “I guess it is simpler that way. I’m sorry for bringing strange family dynamics back into your life.”
“Hey, I’m invested in things going well for you.”
“What are your friends like?” she said brightly, and I blanked.
“Uh.” Horny. Well, then there was Linda, who was an adult content creator like the rest of us, but was the most blasé person about it, treating it like it was just another nine-to-five.
She was so professional and unbothered about it that it almost felt more kinky than being horny.
I genuinely had nothing decent I could say. “They’re pretty weird.”
She laughed. “Sounds like true friendship,” she said. “How’d you meet?”
“Ah, we all do the same stuff, you know, like… content, media marketing, all that. We run in the same circles. Work with the same people. Sometimes for each other.”
“That’s fun,” she said, eyes sparkling. She had no idea. “Have you told them about your boring new roommate moving in looking for work?”
“Not quite in those words, but I’ve, uh, I’ve mentioned you, yeah.” I was gonna die.
She flashed a grin at me. “What’d you say?”
“Well…” I blanked. “That you compulsively sweep the floors.”
“Hey. I’ll be tidy if I want to.”
“I’m just saying, I’m not that filthy that it needs scrubbing every day. You just keep needing to be working.”
She laughed. “I’ll take it, I suppose. Hardly the worst descriptor of me.”
Hardly the worst descriptor I could have given her. And it was true because I had mentioned it to Gina at one point. Technically true was the best I was getting right now.
We got our cinnamon rolls, and we headed out, taking my car back home, and I was so enjoying the little rhythm of chitchat Victoria and I had found that I let my guard down too much, and I brazenly checked my mail on the way back into the house, just about having a heart attack at the sight of a small cardboard box addressed to my online creator name.
I grabbed it a little too quickly, holding it up against me in a way that I hoped read as casual while hiding the shipping label.
“More keepsakes?” Victoria laughed, and I died a little bit.
This wasn’t the time to remember she’d found one of my vibrators that I’d lost in the back of a drawer.
I didn’t even remember why I’d shoved it into the back of a drawer in the first place.
God knows how long it had been sitting in there.
I had too many toys to keep track of them all, my blog popular enough that companies sent me free ones to test out and review. Normally a good problem to have.
“You could say that,” I said with a forced laugh, and I took her back into the elevator, which, for some reason, was crowded right now, a bunch of college kids coming up from the underground garage, and I was about to just wait for the next one, but when Victoria squeezed in, I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t about to press up against Victoria while holding this box, so…
I pressed up against Victoria while holding the box.
To say I was hyperconscious of what was in it was an understatement.
The only distraction was being uncomfortably—or maybe too comfortably—aware of Victoria’s chest against my back as we squeezed in, and I stood like a statue, not even daring to breathe, until we stepped out on my floor, and I was a tangled mess with spaghetti in my stomach by the time we got back into the apartment.
“Just gonna toss this in my room and then be right back for cinnamon rolls,” I said with a practiced casual air. Maybe too practiced. She smiled knowingly.
“Seal it off in your little lair of secrets.”
“S-secrets?” That sounded cool. I didn’t stutter.
“I’m still curious about what types of content you make. You keep it very secret. Are you writing malware?”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” I laughed nervously. “Yeah, you know, the occasional malware, hacking into bank servers, spreading propaganda on behalf of foreign dictators. You should see what those friends of mine in the industry do.”
“Oh, I believe it,” she said, her voice loaded, and I thought I’d die.
I think she was just having fun with how awkward I got, and not that she actually knew anything.
She gave me a playful push on the shoulder, and I saw stars when her fingers lingered there a second too long.
“All right, evil instigator, get a move on, then. If I’m having special non-Christmas-morning cinnamon rolls, I want them while they’re still warm. ”
Right. So no stopping to use my new product, then. Or maybe I could, because it’d probably take me about thirty seconds. “You and me both,” I said. “Be back in a minute.”
I ran off to my room and hyperventilated.