Chapter 3
Marco
Brin and I arrive home to our two-bedroom apartment that we share with another woman, Bea.
About fourteen months ago, back when I’d been a regular at a bar down the street from William’s penthouse, I was downing whiskey neat, trying to forget the way I’d yelled at William’s nutritionist. It had been a glass-shattering moment, realizing that I was William’s attack dog, the fixer, the one who got their hands dirty so William could be the nice one.
My brother was right. I was an asshole.
Next to me, a woman had hoisted herself onto the empty barstool. She ordered a shot of bottom-shelf tequila and tossed it back, grimacing as it burned going down.
I winced in sympathy. Then she ordered another.
“Make it a Cutwater. I’ll take one too,” I said to the bartender. “On me,” I told the redhead when she looked at me, eyes wide. “I’ve had a shitty day, and a shot sounds perfect.”
“Yeah?” she huffed at me. “Did you just get fired? Did one of your roommates skip town without telling you, leaving you with two months of rent to pay and one last roommate who always has a creepy boyfriend hanging around?”
Her face had twisted into a fierce scowl, which was at odds with her accent. Tellin’ you.
“Shit,” I said.
We talked, and it became clear to me that she was a sweet young woman who didn’t know how to defend herself against jaded and overly practical New Yorkers. Just like my brother.
We switched to drinks instead of shots. She confessed that it was her name only on the lease, and her remaining roommate (and her creepy boyfriend) had refused to chip in to cover rent.
Oh you sweet summer child.
In a hushed whisper, she’d told me that a few months ago, she hadn’t washed her roommate’s dishes for four days, and she’d seen a rat in the kitchen before work that day. And a few weeks ago, the knob had mysteriously disappeared from the bathroom door.
She’d told me she’d been sleeping on a futon in the living room with a curtain for privacy. And she couldn’t afford better.
“You’d be better off sharing a room; at least you’d have a door,” I told her.
“Anything would be better than a place I can’t afford.”
At this point, I was tipsy, and this conversation had too many echoes of ones I’d had with my brother. I wasn’t going to be happy knowing Brin was out there without help. I wish someone had been there to look after my brother when he’d first come to the city.
“You should come stay with me until you find some place better,” I threw out.
Brin looked at me, her eyes bright. I probably shouldn’t be proposing this while we’d been drinking, but Brin was still working on the gin and tonic she’d ordered after those two shots .
. . which, once I thought about it, had been two hours ago.
I explained to her that my roommate had a new partner and he wasn’t around much.
One late-night call and I’d gotten permission to let Brin stay in his bedroom.
“Wouldn’t it be weird to share an apartment with a woman?” she asked.
“Why?”
She thought about it. “I guess because there’s a potential for sex?”
A sizzle went through me, but I tamped it down. Brin did not need that, and I wouldn’t be yet another person to take advantage of her. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m bi, so any roommate I have could, hypothetically, be my type.”
“Oh,” she said. Was me being queer a deal breaker? She swallowed the last of her drink. “Okay, but I’m not a charity case. I’ll stay a week, tops.”
“How about if you haven’t found a place within a week, you start paying me rent?” That way she would be safe.
“Deal.” We shook on it. After we left the bar, we housed dollar pizza slices to soak up the booze, and I walked her home, helped her pack what we could carry, and moved her in, giving her my bed while I slept on the couch.
The next day, Greg and I brought her futon back to my place while she was at work.
The same futon she sleeps on now in our room.
I definitely didn’t think that I would end up sharing a room with her, but when Brin started paying me rent, it was obvious she couldn’t afford much.
And then the lease was up, and when my former roommate officially moved in with his partner, we started looking for a new place.
We wasted a lot of time trying to find an apartment we could afford on Brin’s budget that wasn’t awful, and we were both getting discouraged.
I knew Bea from a networking event, and when she said she was looking for a roommate, I jumped on it even though it was a two-bedroom, suggesting that Brin share a room with me. I knew I could trust Bea as a roommate and it was a really safe, nice building.
It meant she had a safe place to stay with someone she trusted, and we worked out a rent that was cheap enough for her to afford without feeling like I was treating her like a charity case.
Now, Brin is my best friend. And when I’d seen that the SHiNY teams are made up of two people, I immediately thought of her.
This is just the type of thing she would love.
I’ve lost track of the number of times we’ve had to stop to look at a window display or the times I’ve caught her gawking at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
Last year, I could tell she wasn’t excited to go home for the holidays, and she isn’t even bothering to fly home this year.
Maybe this event is exactly what Brin needs.
Bea’s already asleep in her room, so Brin and I carefully tiptoe around our nighttime routines. We don’t do this often, having different work schedules, but I love moving around the room we share together.
Our room has a queen-sized bed on one side (mine) and a futon on the other (Brin’s). Her side of the bedroom has been lightly decorated for Christmas. Last year, Brin went to her parent’s for the holidays, so I had the whole place to myself.
I did not decorate, and neither did anyone else. What would have been the point? They were gone, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to celebrate the shittiest time of year.
This year, though, Brin is home. I’ve just come from William’s extravagant holiday party, one where the garland was real and the decor was expensive and color-coordinated. William had gone with a pearl-and-gold theme, and everything had glimmered and shone.
Here, Brin’s decorated on a budget that was probably one percent of William’s decor expenses, if that.
Next to her bed is a fat red candle circled by fake garland, the leaves of which have been rubbed bare on one side, which Brin tactfully turned away from the door so only she can see it.
In a nod to her Catholic upbringing, there’s a nativity scene on the corner of her dresser.
Instead of camels, though, she’s got cheap plastic goats, her favorite animal.
Around the window, snowflake lights twinkle in blue.
She gets the shower first, so I gather my clothes for tonight and set aside an outfit for my run first thing in the morning.
I won’t set an alarm, since William is out of town, but I doubt I’ll be able to sleep much past my normal time.
I mix my overnight oats, and then, with nothing else to do, sit on my bed, scrolling my phone and trying to think about other things than a naked Brin on the other side of the wall.
One reason Brin and I are able to share a bedroom so well is that she’s always working. Sixty hours at the restaurant most weeks, plus a few odd jobs dog walking for the neighbors or babysitting for the single mom two floors up.
I don’t know where all the money goes. Brin lives an austere life.
I would give anything to be able to slip Brin a hundred dollars and tell her she could only use it for something fun, but she already worries about being a charity case.
The bedroom door opens and Brin shuffles in, yawning.
She’s wearing candy cane pajama pants that trail on the floor at her feet and a black tank top—no bra.
Both her nipples point through the ribbed fabric and I avert my eyes.
Her red hair is up in the microfiber turban that she often leaves hooked on the arm of the futon, the one she’s replaced the elastic on about a dozen times.
My eyes are drawn back to her when she gasps.
“Look! The lights are working again!” Brin grew up in rural Tennessee, so she drawls everything, especially when she’s excited.
Working is workin’ and again sounds like agin.
Brin kneels on her futon, which she keeps in couch mode.
She claims it’s cozier to sleep on it like this, but I think she doesn’t want to take up too much space in our room.
She inspects the colored light strands that twine through the futon frame.
There are three strands, and a couple days ago one of them went out. They were basic multicolored lights, none of them matching perfectly.
Hopefully she doesn’t notice that the strand that was out this morning is slightly more symmetrically wound around the frame than the other two, or that the wire is black instead of green.
My chest goes warm just looking at her. Most people might think I don’t get the “true meaning of Christmas” because I don’t celebrate and hate the holiday. But that’s not true. I do get the true meaning of Christmas.
It’s not the hypocrisy of so many Christians that casts out their vulnerable people while simultaneously preaching about a child born in a manger out of necessity.
It’s not about people like my boss, who take lavish vacations and seek validation from others by throwing expensive, exclusive parties.
What it is about is the joy that Brin gets on her face, the simple pleasures of having a space that’s your own, and a warmth in your heart.
After all the loss in my life I never expected to feel that again. But as Brin hums a melody—“Happy Xmas (War is Over),” by John Lennon, I think—I snatch up my clothes and go to take my shower.
A cold shower.
Because my thoughts have wandered to what it would be like to kiss her, to pull off that tank top and give her so much pleasure she can’t stand it. But the last thing Brin needs is someone making her uncomfortable in her own home.
Again.