52. Chapter Fifty-Two #2
“Yeah. Rewards. Credit card.” He says it like I’m slow.
“I’ve been running every bill in this house through my card since sophomore year.
Electric, gas, internet, the cable nobody watches, groceries, all of it.
You, clowns, Venmo me back on the first, and I keep the points.
That’s the arrangement. That’s been the arrangement for two years, and none of you ever asked why I volunteered. ”
Rowan slowly lifts his head off the counter. “You’ve been farming us.”
“I’ve been stewarding you.”
“How many points do you have?”
“That’s between me and the card.” He turns back to me and jabs a finger at my chest. “The point is the rooms are booked, they’re non-refundable, and they’re paid for with money that isn’t money.
If you don’t come, that bed sits empty, and it’s wasted, and then you’ve cost me.
So really, if you think about it, you coming is you doing me a favor. ”
“You said there are four beds.”
He points at Rowan. “He’s single. He’s sleeping on the couch.”
Rowan nods at me.
Stanley continues, “We’re already driving. Gas isn’t an issue. Lift tickets.” He sits back. “You’re tagging along. That’s it. You’re a stowaway. You cost nothing.”
I glare at him.
He holds my eyes. He doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t smirk. For one long second, Stanley Ermington looks like a completely different person, a person who has thought this through in detail, in advance, on my behalf, with the goal of not making me feel like a charity case.
“Also, I got you a beanie.”
“I don’t need a beanie.”
“It’s got a pom.” He gestures on top of his head.
Benson says, “We all get one.”
Later, he starts loading the bags back up. Wine glasses, rhinestones, glue guns, shirts, all of it back into the plastic, and he carries it out to the living room and stacks it against the wall by the stairs, and the black bag goes on top, still knotted, still unexplained.
“Alright, Pers. It’s set aside. Let us know what she says when you talk to her.”
Then he pulls out his phone.
They all do. I stand in the kitchen doorway and look at my house — Benson on the couch with his thumbs going, Stanley tapping away in the armchair, Blue standing in the middle of the room looking down at his screen with his eyebrows pulled together — and I know exactly what they’re doing.
They’re all texting their girlfriends, physically here but mentally miles away.
Rowan comes over and puts both hands on my shoulders and digs his thumbs in hard enough to hurt. “You’re next, buddy.”
That night I sit on the edge of my bed with my phone in both hands and sweat comes up under my shirt.
Her name is right there. Two taps. I’ve done it a thousand times.
I can’t make my thumb move.
I sit there long enough that the screen goes black. I light it up again, and it goes black again, and the third time, I throw the phone across the bed, grab my coat, and I’m out the side door to clear my head.
It’s the kind of cold that gets in your teeth. There’s old snow ridged up along the curbs, gray and refrozen, and my breath hangs and hangs and won’t go anywhere.
I don’t decide to go to Linden Street. My feet just know the way. Fifteen minutes, past the closed bagel place, past the church lot, past the corner where she once made me stop so she could pet a dog.
I reach her building and look up.
It’s dark.
Of course, it’s dark. It’s the middle of the night. I feel like an insane person, standing on a sidewalk in December staring up at a window with no light in it.
But what plants me is the thought that she’s asleep up there.
Right in those walls, she’s lying in her bed with her eyes closed, breathing, warm, with her hair everywhere on the pillow because she never ties it up.
And there’s a piece of me that hopes she’s thinking of me, dreaming of me.
I hope she knows that I want her more than anything in this world.
I sit down on the bench in front of her building. The slats are so cold they burn through my jeans, but I don’t care. I just stare at the window, remembering the time when I could walk in there and have her.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t go back to the fight and try to change it.
I wouldn’t go back to fix it or say it better or make things right.
I would go back just to live in it. I’d go back to a Tuesday when she came over after my shift and stole my hoodie off the hook without asking, the gray one.
She got up on my kitchen counter with her heels knocking against the cabinet door, and she ate dry cereal out of the box with her fingers, and she was telling me a long story about a girl in her studio who kept getting the lines wrong, so she helped her.
Then I made love to her, and after, in my bed, she whispered, “I wish every Tuesday could feel like this.”
“Like what?” I had asked after a moment. I already knew what she meant, I just wanted to hear it from her.
She smiled at me, ruffling my hair. “Important. Not ordinary.” She paused. “Whenever I’m with you, my days are good.”
I pulled her closer and said, “So are mine.” And she had no idea how right she was because without her, my days are no longer good.