12. Kieran #2
“King-sized,” I say immediately. What’s the point of moving out of your tiny childhood bedroom with a cramped twin bed if you can’t have something better?
Maybe all my choices will prove ridiculous. But at least they’re mine.
He gives me a brief education on mattress pricing, because I know nothing. And we settle on a couple of lower-range choices. “You need sheets?” he asks me.
“I need everything.”
He laughs, but it’s true.
After we hang up, I lead-foot it to Colebury to pick up a few things at CVS. I need toilet paper, soap, shampoo, paper towels. Dish soap. Laundry soap.
I’ve spent eight hundred dollars in the last hour, and it’s terrifying. I’d better post a listing for a roommate immediately.
Driving out of the CVS, I still have a half hour until the mattress company is due to show up. So I roll slowly toward central Colebury, where the commercial strip gives way to my new neighborhood on the village green.
It’s quiet now, because it’s a weeknight, and the temperature is plunging. As I roll past the yarn shop, there’s a familiar car that’s visible only for a moment as the road bends.
A blue Volkswagen Beetle. And if I’m not mistaken, there was a light’s soft glow inside it again.
I finish the route home, feeling unsettled. Roderick wouldn’t be sleeping in his car, right? He said he was staying with his parents.
It’s not really my problem either way. It’s got nothing to do with me.
The Colebury diner comes into view, its too-bright lights cheerful in the dark, and beyond it, the town green. It’s one-way around the green, so I follow the streets alongside it until I get to my house.
Mine. What a crazy concept.
I pull into my empty driveway and park as close to the garage door as possible. Then I hop out of my truck, feeling like a kid on Christmas. The backdoor opens onto the driveway, and I unlock it in a hurry.
It’s quiet inside, and cold, too. Zara has the thermostat turned low. The place is perfectly empty, and I walk through every echoing room with a smile on my face. There’s a downstairs bedroom next to a bathroom with a big tub in it. That’s the room I’ll rent out.
Upstairs there’re two more bedrooms. One will be my room, and the other will be my studio. I’ll find someone to help me carry the desk upstairs, and I’ll put it near a window.
Then I’ll paint again for the first time in years.
As promised, the delivery guys drive up to the house at eight thirty. I’m waiting on the porch, watching snowflakes fall—something that was not in the forecast.
“Are you Kieran?” the driver asks, hopping out. “Let’s do this.”
Although I feel ridiculous lying down on a plastic-covered mattress on the back of a truck, I shop carefully. Ten minutes later I’ve chosen the firmest of the three mattresses he brought.
It takes all three of us to struggle the thing upstairs and into the back bedroom of the dark house.
“Better turn the heat up, dude.” The driver chuckles as we flop the mattress onto the bare floor. “It’s gonna snow tonight.”
My first thought is that I hope the rest of the oats don’t get too wet.
My second thought is that my desk is getting snowed on in the back of the truck. I’ll have to pull into the garage to keep it dry until I can get someone to help me carry it inside.
“Thanks for your help, guys.” I tip them fifty bucks.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” they say on their way out.
And then I’m completely alone in my own pad, with my brand new king-sized mattress. It takes me a while to put the new mattress pad and sheets on it. But eventually I’m lying there under my sleeping-bag-as-duvet, enjoying the silence.
Although I know it will be difficult to fall asleep. I wish Rexie was here. I wonder whose room he’s chosen to sleep in tonight. Kyle’s probably. That traitor.
I’m not really drowsy, so I open my laptop and take a peek at the real estate on Craig’s List. There’s a section for “rooms available,” and I need to know what kinds of things people put in their listings.
I read through them, and then make the mistake of glancing under the “looking for housing” heading.
Right away, the newest listing catches my eye.
Single guy looking to rent a room, hopefully close to Colebury.
New in town, but with references. Employed full time with an early morning job.
(But I will leave silently.) Clean and quiet.
Gay AF. Available as soon as my first paycheck clears next Friday .
Roderick. It has to be him. He’d told us that he had a place to stay. But it’s not true, is it? Ten bucks says that right now he’s sitting in his Volkswagen behind the yarn store.
I close my laptop and put it on the floor. My new bedroom is at the back of the house, away from the streetlights, but the darkness won’t help me sleep tonight, not now that I suspect Roderick is sleeping in his car. It’s snowing, for fuck’s sake.
He’s homeless. And, damn, I’m an asshole. I could have cost him his good, full-time job at the Busy Bean, just because I was uncomfortable with something I’d done in high school.
I roll over. My bed is comfortable, but the house is too quiet. Every creak of the roof and tick of the heating system seems to echo inside my head. I always wanted to live alone, where I’d have space to breathe. I thought it would be easier to be myself.
There’s plenty of space here now, isn’t there? And yet I’m the same screwed up person I was when I was living in the cramped little room in my parents’ house.
Go figure.