home. By the time I was back from work, he was in bed. But evidence of our odd cohabitation came in the form of our pissing match over the windows and the air freshener. After work, I would fling open the windows in the living room and kitchen. When I stumbled to the kitchen in the morning for coffee, they’d already be closed. I started to think that Riley was sneaking out of his room like a window ninja minutes after I opened them to close them again because the house always felt stale, a permanent odor that reminded me of the area in front of the airport parking garage elevator. The yuck factor was high.
Maybe if he didn’t keep hiding the air freshener the results would have been more positive. But after realizing it was gone I found the stupid thing in the coat closet, and then tucked away in the bathroom vanity, so while he was at work I put it back in the living room, front and center on the coffee table. And he always re-hid it. The second morning I woke up because he opened my door and crept in, mister in hand, unholy grin on his face. Through slitted eyes, I watched him tiptoe barefoot across the room toward me, unaware I had woken up when he turned the doorknob. Closing my eyes quickly, I heard him deposit the air freshener next to my cell phone on the chair next to the bed so that it would clearly spray me when I reached for my phone first thing.
Jerk-off.
An entertaining jerk-off.
It was hard not to smile, but I managed to keep it together until he left. Then I rolled toward the chair and pulled the sheet closer around me, totally amused. Next he’d be tying my shoelaces together or putting itching powder in my T-shirts. Or conducting a panty raid, like we were at sixth grade summer camp. Though speaking of panties, it struck me as ironic that I was well aware that I was only in my panties and a tank top as he had crept into my room, and he could clearly care less. He hadn’t even looked at me. In my experience, if you flirted, it wasn’t exactly hard to get a guy to want to at least hook up with you, but Riley didn’t seem to find me all that attractive. Sure, he’d complimented me, said I was hot, had a good bod. But he’d said it in the way you say your sister is pretty, not in the way you talk about a girl you want to bang.
It had been a long time since I’d felt unbangable.
Maybe that was a good thing.
Maybe, for the first time ever in the history of my post-puberty life, I could actually be friends with a guy.
Doubtful. But hey, stranger things had happened.
It wasn’t like my brother and I were friends—totally the opposite. Paxton had practically made it his life’s work to get me in trouble. If I was my mother’s disappointment, the daughter who could never quite be the perfect (in her opinion, anyway) woman she was, my brother was her precious perfect son. It was what it was, but it totally didn’t give us the kind of sibling relationship you saw on TV. I avoided him, and he posted asshole comments on my Facebook page. That was the extent of our interaction.
So I was going to try to enjoy the weird dynamic with Riley and stop analyzing it.
I didn’t have to work, so I read outside on the back deck, and after an hour of glancing up from my book to the ashtray posing as a yard I couldn’t take it any more. I didn’t think of myself as OCD or anything, but that was just seriously gross. Going into the garage, which was even hotter than outside and smelled like motor oil, I found a pathetic old broom and a dustpan. Sweeping like it was my job, I managed to collect about a hundred cigarette butts into a pile and push them on the dustpan. Then I tossed them into the garbage can, feeling a whole lot better about my view. There were still random butts scattered here and there but short of a fire hose or picking them up by hand, there was no way to get them all. Hey, it was an improvement.
Then, because I was nosy, I decided I was too hot to sit in the sun anymore, and I went into the house and started opening kitchen cabinets. There was an assortment of plastic tableware, gas station soft drink tumblers, and chipped coffee mugs. I had already discovered that the flatware was in a drawer next to the sink and that the spoons I used to eat my yogurt would bend if you were even at all aggressive with your scooping. I figured this was definitely an education in how to live on the cheap, and I might actually need the knowledge someday.
Welcome to the real word, Jessica Sweet.
Though I couldn’t claim that seeing how real people make ends meet had anything to do with my going down the hall and peeking in to Riley’s bedroom. That was just pure curiosity. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Porn scattered all around? Some sort of visual insight into Riley Mann? All I saw was a dark room with a towel draped over the window, the bed frame an eighties black lacquer monstrosity that looked like all the members of a hair band should be sprawled on it in leather pants making metal horns. It so didn’t look like anything that Riley would actually buy, and it was borderline creepy. But then I spotted the framed picture on the dresser, an eighties prom portrait, the aqua blue dress with poofy sleeves swallowing the petite brunette with the balloon arch behind her, and I realized this must have been Riley’s mom’s room.
Feeling guilty for spying, I retreated, heart pounding in fear that I would get caught and something else I couldn’t quite interpret.
There were lighter squares on the paint down the hallway, showing that at one time pictures had hung on the walls, and I wondered what it had been like in the house twenty-some years ago, when Riley’s parents had been young and in love, wanting a place to raise their family. What had happened? Or were they ever in love? Were my parents in love? Did love even exist?
I wasn’t sure. It just seemed like lust led to love, which led to unhappiness.
Unable to be alone anymore in a space that wasn’t my own, I texted Bill.
Then I immediately hated myself for poking. What was so hard about being in my own thoughts? And why did I need reassurance that Bill still liked me even though he didn’t want me to stay in his apartment?
It also reminded me that Riley was actually being pretty damn nice to let me stay with him.
I decided I needed to do something to say thanks. There wasn’t a lot I could offer him that he would accept. If I offered money, he would say no. He was too proud for that. If I offered him payment in beer, he might say yes, but that was a guy gift. I wanted to do something that was girly, that he would remember had come from me. And okay, maybe it was just a compulsion to improve the grossness of the house, but I wanted to de-gross it. Or at least one room. The living room looked a little overwhelming since there was no way I could replace the dirty furniture or the carpet. But a peek under the corner of the carpet showed hardwood floors under there. The kitchen seemed easier to tackle. It basically just needed some paint and accessories. A nice masculine update. Fresh paint alone would kill some of the smoke smell.
The kitchen table was an old oak rectangle, and I had noticed on day one that at some point, the boys had started writing on it with a Sharpie. There were random notes to each other like “Buy milk,” and brotherly slurs such as “Tyler sucks dick.” There were doodles of faces and animals, and there was even a recipe for cheesecake, written in Rory’s handwriting. I envied her for belonging here with them, a weird little camaraderie, and I envied them for having the freedom to write on a piece of furniture in permanent marker if they wanted to. Not that they hadn’t paid the price for it—I knew that. But there was something about their brotherhood that made me feel left out.
Made me want to put a big old “Jessica was here” across the room.
I texted my friend Robin, the only one of our girlfriends who was spending the summer in Cincy.
I snorted.
An hour later we were strolling down the aisles of the hardware store, looking very out of place among the shuffling elderly couples and workmen dressed in grubby clothes eyeing us with naked curiosity. It might have been Robin’s skintight bright blue tube dress. It didn’t exactly scream home improvement. Personally I felt like I should be wearing steel-toed boots instead of flip-flops, but I was going to make the best of it. I just wanted paint samples for the kitchen and a brush to test them on the wall.
“So why are you doing this exactly?” Robin asked, her earrings jingling as she leaned over to pull a hot-pink paint chip card out of the shelf.
“I just want to do something nice for Riley since he’s letting me stay there.”
“You could have sex with him. It would be easier and more fun.”
I had no doubt of that. “It would also put me right on the edge of being a whore. Sex should never be as a favor or a thank-you. I have to draw the line somewhere.”
