Chapter 14 #2
The room goes eerily quiet. No soft pattering of Ghost on the counter when he shouldn’t be, or the sound of rain drops on a window. Only ringing in my ears and the echoes of Locke’s words. Stern, assured, quick.
I sputter, “Well, in STEM it is.”
“No it’s not.”
“It is.” I can hear the uncertainty in my own voice. I’d been convinced of this one fact for so many years, I rule my life by it. But the resounding conviction of Locke’s words are making me second guess myself. “No one takes me seriously if I’m too emotional.”
“That’s ridiculous. Who told you that?”
My waterlines are flooding again. For once, I don’t feel the need to force them into a drought. In front of him, at least, I think being like this is okay. “Everyone tells me that.”
“I disagree. Emotions are fine. I’ve cried at my father’s office before.”
“In front of him?”
“Well-” His voice sputtering, and mine begins to gain confidence.
“It’s different for us. It’s different for me.”
“I haven’t cried in front of my father, no. But his colleagues have seen it before.”
“It’s still different, Locke.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It’s different.” I spit out through gritted teeth. The frustrated, angry words he’s not understanding get caught between the spaces.
“It’s not that different, Rosie.”
“I’m a woman.” The chilly autumn air slipping through the cracks of our windows shift.
Thick tension takes over and the first angry tear falls off my cheek.
“Everything is different. Other people can speak out of turn, and it’s not an issue.
But me? I need to know my place. I need to stay composed.
I get upset once, and it turns into an entire ordeal.
I’m no longer mature enough to handle high-pressure situations, or I’m expected to pull twice as much weight to prove myself.
Maybe you can be caught crying by some colleagues, but if I cry once out of frustration after a bad midterm, I’m told I’m not cut out for this. ”
Tears are pooling on the scratched wood of our dining room table.
I don’t know if everything I’m saying is coming out clear.
Both in sound, through the sniffles and hiccups, and through meaning, because frustrations are being spoken before I can consider them.
But I keep going. It’s nice to say it comfortably. To have someone listen.
“I have the best grades in the entire cohort. I work three times as hard as every man in my major, and the only things my peers have to say about it is that my outfits are too sexy and that I’d be better off leaving a man’s job to a man.
” I grit my teeth and swallow down every word that’s ever stopped me from speaking the truth.
“If I were a man, I wouldn’t have to fight for respect. I’d already have it.
“And if I were a man, the boys in my cohort wouldn’t feel so threatened by me. They’d praise me, and fight to be my friend, and wouldn’t ridicule me just because they can. But I’m not a man, so none of that happens for me. It’s different.”
Saying it aloud heals something in me, at least the tiniest bit. It patches up a hole I’ve had in my heart for far too long. After letting the emotions spill out, I can breathe easier. I can talk more clearly, having expressed myself for the first time in a long time.
“That’s why I was so emotional. The guys in classes were being…
” I sigh. “Especially difficult. I was busting my ass during lecture and they kept messing around. And still, our professor thought it was me who should be scolded in the middle of the lesson, not them. It was really frustrating today. It set me off.”
“Was it Jeremiah?”
“And his friends.”
Locke crosses his arms and sits upright, white t-shirt pulling tight against his biceps. His large frame looms over the table, jaw sharp. “He’s so jealous and threatened by you.”
“He should be.” I pick up the napkin to dab against my nose. “I’m better than him in everything. I know I am. The Xion Group internship should be mine as is.”
If I were a man.
My roommate seems to know the words, even if I don’t say them. His shoulders shrug and he looks down.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve known better when you said things were different for you. Of course they are. Unfairly so.”
I pull my lips together into a small but strained smile. The heaviness of it all doesn’t go away, but there is relief. The irritation caused by today’s events is subsiding. “That’s not for you to apologize for. Don’t worry too much.”
“I am worried. It’s wrong. You deserve better.
” He’s not saying anything I haven’t heard from Liliana before, and nothing I haven’t tried to tell myself.
But there’s a layer of satisfaction hearing it come from a deep voice, one I know could command an entire room of our classmates if he wanted to.
“It never occurred to me that other people might not see you the way I do. I’m sorry. ”
“The way you do?”
The red flush that must’ve creeped onto my own face makes its way to his. Reaching into his cheeks and the tips of his ears before he answers.
“Yes.”
Short. Shy.
I press my fingertips into my thigh and try not to get ahead of myself.
“How do you see me, then?”
It’s loaded. My foot accidentally hits against Locke’s under the table and I struggle to keep a straight face. He’s squinting his eyes in question.
I’m playing with fire.
After what feels like decades of shallow breaths and drying tears, Locke clears his throat.
“You’re unbelievable. You’re outstandingly smart and passionate. You put all of yourself into what you do, and that’s what makes you the best. Because you’re yourself, wholeheartedly. Unapologetically. There’s no one like you in the world. There’s only you, Rosie.”
His final sentence slips into a whisper, but it echoes. Across the walls of our shared dorm, in the depths of my mind when Locke’s hands softly land on the dining room table. Open and inches away from mine.
I sit there, stunned into a warmth that overtakes my senses.
A mantra of “There’s only you, Rosie,” digs itself into my subconscious, and Locke glances around.
At the ceilings and the walls and the floor, like we haven’t made ourselves familiar with every inch of this apartment in the last two months.
I’m still overflowing with emotions—shock and bliss and affection—when his soft-spoken voice asks, “Are you done with dinner?”
“Oh!” I barely snap out of it to take one last bite.
Both our dishes are cleaned up quickly. His long legs have moved to the sink by the time I stand.
“I’ll do the dishes.”
“You should sit. I’ll do them.”
His back is turned to me and I frown. Half-heartedly.
My mouth isn’t physically able to downturn too much with wisps of “There’s only you, Rosie,” still playing in my head.
“The person cooking dinner shouldn’t be washing the dishes.”
“You had a bad day. Let me take care of it.”
You.
For a second, I swore I heard, “Let me take care of you.”
It felt like he said that.
I wait. For what, I don’t know, but a minute passes before I decide to let Locke take care of it, and I head to the couch.
There are interview questions I should be studying. A guide on what and how I handle the second interview when it comes around and I’m expected to impress them twice as much as Jeremiah, with half as much effort.
Really, I should dedicate my time to that tonight.
As soon I make contact with the couch cushion, though, I can’t bring myself to think so responsibly. Today’s struggles melt away, down my arms and into the fabric I swear didn’t used to feel so soft and comforting when we first moved in.
Ghost appears, almost out of nowhere, and hops from the floor onto the couch.
Instead of taking his usual position, laying out against the sofa’s back, he crawls into my lap and rolls into a white loaf of fur.
It’s decided for me. Tonight isn’t for an internship committee that will undoubtedly expect more from me than everyone else they’re interviewing.
Tonight is for me, Ghost, and the man who thinks I’m unbelievable.
When the sink’s faucet cuts off, I reach for the remote control and project my voice to ask, “What do you want to watch tonight?”