Chapter 5
THE ROOMMATE ARRANGEMENT
I waited a healthy five hours to respond to Barry’s texts (which he sent at the top of the hour, each hour), and feigned a migraine. I’d never had a migraine, but Kate got them sometimes, so I thought I could claim them.
He texted back immediately asking what he could bring, if I’d had enough water, and if I’d taken medicine.
Talk later, I texted back, and then, Tomorrow?
I sort of felt bad for lying, so I sent a couple of the ultrasound pictures, one labeled FEET, the other her side profile with the little curve of her nose and lips. I didn’t know what this would do for him, but it was a sort of peace offering.
Tomorrow, I texted again, and he said okay.
When tomorrow came, though, I felt like I was going to throw up just thinking about talking to him.
Not morning sickness, just an anxious sickness.
I’ve always hated confrontation, and talking with Barry seemed an unavoidable discomfort.
I wish he’d just email me a list of his thoughts on the baby matter; a conversation felt way too intimate.
Kate wouldn’t cover my shift, though she did offer to go with me so she could see Barry in person instead of just on his out-of-date Instagram.
I told her no and decided to try to finish work early, hoping to miss him in case he was coming in before nine again.
I wouldn’t sleep on the lounge couch, and I’d miss burger breakfast if I had to.
I could talk to him later. A few more hours probably wouldn’t hurt him. I think.
When I got to the lounge, I couldn’t see the space the same.
It was the exact room I’d left yesterday, but now it was also his room.
Barry would sit here with the other athletes and coaching staff; he would know what it is they do with the massive TVs and eat free food that’s prepared by the team’s chefs and nutritionist.
When I wheeled the cart into the locker room this morning, I had the genius idea to do some snooping.
Couldn’t help myself. This was my right, I was carrying his baby.
It wasn’t hard to find his locker stall.
The team staff had already gotten his name printed on a plastic badge that said 33 WRIGHT above his cubby.
It was spare compared to some of the others, but there was various hockey gear and a printed photo of what I assumed was his family.
I recognized his comedian brother Scotty, and what looked like a couple more too, and a sister.
Two of the brothers had partners and next to one of them was a toddler with red hair kind of like mine and another little boy much the same.
The thought of Barry as an uncle made me feel off-balance, I could hardly think about him holding a baby.
In the center of the photo stood two people who had to be Barry’s mom and dad, because Barry looked just like them.
All the siblings looked similar, very clearly related, and most of them tall but none as tall as Barry.
They had these sparkling white smiles, strong noses, soft-looking clothes.
I bet his parents had never been divorced, and good for them!
Good for all his siblings having role models of a stable relationship.
I returned the photo of his family where I found it and slowly opened his cabinet, peering inside. I first saw at least five bags of dark chocolate peanut M&M’s and grabbed one.
“Find anything good?” a voice asked from behind me. I yelped, dropping the bag I was tearing open, spilling candy across the rubber flooring at our feet.
My feet and Barry’s.
“Shit,” I said, and immediately got on the ground to start picking up the pieces. Barry helped, too, crouching down and popping a few of the floor M&M’s into his mouth while I dutifully avoided his gaze.
“Gross,” I muttered with a laugh.
“Don’t worry, I know the janitor. She’s good.”
I rolled my eyes but was begrudgingly charmed by his easy response and easier grin. It wasn’t even 6:00 in the morning and he was already on his charm A-game like this?
“Good morning, by the way,” he said.
“Yeah, morning.”
I didn’t try to explain the snooping in his locker, I had absolutely zero excuse. I hoped he would just pretend it hadn’t happened.
“Find what you were looking for?”
I looked up at his face then, crouched in front of me. He wore a big duffle across his chest, his hair looked like it was still wet from a shower. Under his jacket, today’s shirt was emerald green with “COLUMBUS” across the chest.
I pointed to it. “I think you were supposed to burn all the Columbus stuff when you got traded.”
“But green looks so nice on me.” He smirked. “How else could I get you to appreciate my hazel eyes?”
“I think they’re more brown than hazel.” I tossed my handful of M&M’s into the trash. “But I was looking in your locker only because I hoped you might have six bags of M&M’s I could take. Cravings, you know.”
Barry nodded, then looked down at me, so intense, boring into me basically, and I tried to look anywhere else.
I wasn’t used to standing next to people as big as him.
I may work in the practice facility most of the time, but I seldom actually saw the players.
Sometimes when I was leaving they were coming in, and sometimes the nice ones said hi to me, but for the most part we were like ships in the night (or, well, morning).
“Do you have practice?” I asked.
“No,” Barry said. “Well, yeah, but nothing until eleven today.”
“Oh.” I left the so why are you here now? unspoken and stepped backward to increase the distance between us.
“I want to help.”
“With what?” I asked, because I thought “with the baby?” might be too presumptuous.
“You know, the cleaning.”
“The janitorial? In this building?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d like to.”
“That’s not your job.” I didn’t understand his game here.
Was he trying to get on my good side? For what purpose?
I could recognize that I had been kind of a bitch to him since running into him yesterday, but I was just trying to protect myself from any funny business.
And yes, avoiding difficult conversations.
I couldn’t decide if this was the funny business I’d been trying to avoid.
Barry just shrugged and crossed his massive arms in front of his massive chest. Again, I do not know why I thought he was just like a normal dude with a normal job when he looked like this.
“Okay,” I finally said. Barry looked ready to go, though also still like he just walked in. I cracked a smile. “Do you want to put your bag down?”
Barry looked at the bag like it had betrayed him by still being on before he dropped it and his jacket in his stall.
He slid the sleeves of his shirt up both arms and I don’t know why this made me stressed, seeing his forearms. I had at one time seen lots of his body, and I wasn’t freaking out then. Or, I was, but in a fun and horny way.
I coughed and averted my focus to the task ahead of me: cleaning. I tossed him a microfiber cloth and a bottle of our multi-surface spray from the cart.
“What are we doing with these today?” he asked.
“Right.” I sprayed some of the blue liquid onto my cloth and ran it over the bench in front of the stall. “You do the benches and then the ledges sometimes get dusty, so do that too. Go ahead and move the stuff there but try to put them back just how you found them so they don’t get mad at me.”
“They won’t get mad at you,” Barry said.
I rolled my eyes, but he didn’t see—he was very focused on cleaning the bench in front of him.
“You can do all the doorknobs and light switches when you’re done there,” I told him.
“You do this every day?” Barry asked.
I attached the dry mophead and started wiping the rubber floor. “Yeah, two of us work in the morning and a few days a week someone comes to do the pools, and then two come in at night for the public spaces,” I said. I didn’t add that I am often one of the ones who comes in at night, too.
He and I worked in silence for a little while, just the breathing of the air vents, the swiping of the mop, and our light steps on the floor.
Before he was done with half of the lockers, I had moved on to the damp mop.
I could tell he was using more spray than he needed, but I wasn’t going to correct him.
Even though he was slower than me, we were getting through faster than I would’ve alone, which was something.
If he was going to ask questions, though, I wanted him to just ask them. The silence was giving me sweaty armpits, I didn’t know what to do with it.
“You look tired,” Barry said once he finished the doorknobs. There was a crease between his eyebrows.
“It’s 5:40,” I said. “Tired seems reasonable.”
I turned my attention back to my clipboard, initialing what we’d finished. I stepped up into the shower area where I wiped the metal knobs first. Barry followed suit for the stalls on the opposite wall.
“And you clean every day?”
“Weekdays, yeah.”
“Do you work at any other buildings or just this one?”
“Usually just mornings here, and a full day every other Sunday, but I fill in on afternoon shifts a couple times a week.” I pushed the cart toward the bathroom, but Barry intercepted me, shouldering me away and moving it along himself.
I gave him a brief rundown of the bathroom tasks when we got there, and he set about spraying all the surfaces while I reloaded the paper goods.
“Have you eaten?” Barry asked. He was feigning this casualness that was really off-putting. I almost told him to just get on with it.
“I had a banana,” I said slowly.
“Just a banana?”
“Well, I’ll have a hamburger in an hour.”
“Every day?” Barry asked.
My eyebrows certainly shot up at this as I looked at him through the mirror in the men’s room where he scrubbed the urinals. The secret with mirrors was that you didn’t usually need Windex, just some cold water.