Chapter 4 #2
I spend enough time here and keep enough groceries here that I may as well be a full-time resident.
It isn’t like they haven’t offered, on more than one occasion, at that.
It’s always a tempting offer; cheap rent, roommates I know that I already like and don’t have to vet, a fully-stocked garage where I would be able to store and fix up my bikes.
The only caveat that comes with it is that I’d be living with a married couple.
No thanks. I’d rather not be involved in the fighting or the making up afterward.
I’d like to avoid becoming a tool to help fix what breaks during those fights.
I’ve seen that show already with an old pair of roommates, and I’d pay double my current rent to avoid ever having to deal with that mess again.
I shudder at the memory of them as I return to the living room, where Julia is attaching a guard to a set of clippers and Tripp’s face is twisted into something between confusion and horror as he looks at the screen of the laptop.
“Shifter? Knotting?” He asks. Pivoting in the chair, he turns to look at her with his face twisting into concern. “Baby, what the hell is knotting?”
“Don’t read the descriptions,” she tells him with an embarrassed giggle, waving him back toward the laptop in front of him. “Just click.”
“So he just sits there and what, buys you books while you tell him what to do?” I laugh, dropping onto the couch and leaning into the cushions as I take a sip from my beer. “You’re a princess.”
“The books are free,” she argues, “and any princess-ing I do is Tripp’s fault for treating me like one.”
Both of them laugh – an empty, hollow laugh, and Tripp’s finger hovers for a moment too long above the cursor before he finally presses down to click on something.
Julia’s clippers hang millimeters from Tripp’s head, just for a second before she sucks in a breath and swipes them through his hair to polish up the back of it.
My eyes move between them at the shift in the energy filling the room, then to Koda, who is watching from a safe distance as Drumstick climbs through the nooks and crannies of his cat tree in the corner of the room.
“Well, that got uncomfortable,” I comment, and Julia visibly deflates.
The energy in the room struggles to return to normal after that, even through frozen pizza and a few more beers.
The only brief moment of reprieve comes from Drumstick chasing Koda around the coffee table and subsequently up the stairs, more than likely with the intention of trapping him in the bathroom.
I think the little freak likes the acoustics in there when the dog cries.
“Koda,” I call up the stairs, and he comes trotting down after jumping over the cat, his clumsy baby-deer-like limbs nearly giving out on him as he lands.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Julia offers. “The couch is still just as comfy and we have plenty of extra blankets.”
A look passes between her and Tripp – a conversation without words.
Married couple stuff.
“I’m okay,” I say with a shake of my head. “It’s just a twenty minute walk, no big.”
Using his head to gesture toward Koda, Tripp says, “Will he fit in the Forester? I can drop you.”
“No you can’t, you’ve both been drinking,” Jules argues. As if worried that she’s somehow offended me, she perks up and moves to meet my gaze. “I can totally take you, though. I insist.”
I shrug my acceptance, and no more than five minutes later, we’re cruising down the road in an incredibly uncomfortable silence.
It isn’t that Julia and I aren’t close; she’s family to me in the same way that Tripp is. The amount of time we spend together without him joining us, however, is practically nonexistent. A few hours total, in the years we’ve known each other, and that’s only if I round up.
We’re just over halfway to my house when her grip tightens on the steering wheel and she shakes her head, like she can’t escape a thought that’s continuously bothering her.
“Are you guys okay?” I finally brave asking. “The vibe was weird tonight.”
“What, he doesn’t talk to you?”
“Not about this, apparently,” I shrug.
She deflates again. I’m not sure if I just gave her the wrong answer or the one that she was expecting to hear.
“Tripp’s been sleeping on the couch. I was using you to try to force his hand.” A wan laugh works its way out of her, her eyes flicking in my direction for just a beat before returning to the road ahead of us. “You really messed me up in there.”
“I knew things were rough; I didn’t know they were ‘sleeping on the couch’ rough,” I tell her.
“I didn’t either, until it started.”
Her eyes move back to me, just for a second, gauging if I’m the right person to talk to about this. Maybe gauging if I’m interested in their lives at all. I pivot my body just a few degrees to show her that I’m listening, even if there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to.
This isn’t a road I’d like to travel down again, but she’s asking me to listen to her. I can do that for a minute.
“We just can’t catch a break,” she says with a sigh. “I’m afraid that’s gonna break us.”
“Hey,” I say, “marriage is hard; that’s part of why I haven’t done it. That kid is absolutely crazy about you.”
A sad, empty smile works itself across her lips as she pulls onto my driveway, silently putting the car into park.
“He used to be,” she finally tells me. Koda whines from the back seat, forcing Jules to clear her throat and turn to face him. While she talks to him, she scratches at his ear and puts on a high-pitched baby-talk voice. “You be a good boy and go potty and go to bed so you can come play again.”
“He’s not a child,” I laugh.
“No, but he’s still a baby,” she argues.
I shake my head as I climb out of the car, and as Koda and I unload, I offer Jules a quick thank you before walking the dog back into my house.
One of my roommates is slumped backward on the couch, stuffing his face with a poorly-held pair of chopsticks while he eats directly from a take out container, and the other is likely already in bed. I pass the couch with a quick hello and head to my bedroom.
Somehow, I managed to secure the largest room in the house – which isn’t saying much. There are three of us sharing eleven hundred square feet and trying to stay out of each others’ ways. I’ve lived with these guys for a little while now, and I don’t know hardly anything about either one of them.
I think one of them has a brother and the other has an ex-wife somewhere in North Carolina, but I’m not sure which is which, so I never ask. Outside of accepting their rent payments and occasionally going in on a delivery order together, we don’t talk much, and I prefer it that way.
Roommates and I have historically not been a great mix.