“My roommates are fighting,” I explained. They had gotten into a screaming match that morning about the excessive sex noise, and apparently, this had been Kaya’s answer to Morgan’s complaints. “It’s too bad. We were all friends in high school, but this current living situation isn’t going to work.”
“Naw, I wouldn’t want to live with someone who did that to my stuff,” César said. “But I’m impressed with how high it went,” he went on, turning back to look up at the bike. She had managed to yank it almost to the top.
“Yeah, Kaya is really strong.”
“Me, too,” he told me, and flexed. He laughed when I stuck out my tongue at him. “I mean that I’ll be able to carry all your boxes. I don’t want you picking up anything heavy. Are you sure we don’t need to rent a truck?”
“No, I don’t have a ton.” Soleil and I had moved around a lot when I was a kid, house to house to house, and I never had gotten to hang on to a lot of stuff. My room at Kaya’s cottage had always been fairly empty, but lately, I had made some improvements to it. I had painted it a blue I loved, and made curtains that hadn’t turned out terribly.
Denny and Kaya were making out in the living room, grinding and slurping. “We can go through the kitchen,” I told César, and we edged through the furniture there and back to my bedroom.
“This is it?” he asked, glancing around the small bedroom. “I had more in my old rental condo, and I didn’t even live there permanently.”
“This is it,” I confirmed, and bent to grab a bag.
“No,” he said, and put his hand out to stop me. “I said that I don’t want you to carry stuff. I’ll get it.”
“I’m not supposed to do anything?”
César handed me a pillow from my bed. “That’s your style. Go.”
I found Morgan in the yard, trying to figure out a way to get his bike down. He stared sadly at the pillow and quilt in my arms. “Are you leaving?” he asked. “You’re seriously leaving me with her? And him?”
I put the bedding into my car. “I’m assuming they won’t be able to keep up the pace of last night, but you should go too, Morgs.”
“Yeah. I’ll die if I have to hear that stuff about his Eiffel Tower again. I’ll never be able to go to Paris now,” he said glumly. “And she’s also taking out all her aggressions on my bike.” He fruitlessly kicked the flagpole. César came out of the front door carrying about 75 percent of my belongings with one strong arm. “Wait, is that one of the Woodsmen?” Morgan asked me excitedly. “Isn’t that César Hidalgo?”
I nodded. “He and I are going to be roommates.”
“I didn’t know you were with somebody new.”
“I’m not! I just said that we’re roommates, and that’s it.”
“Really.” Morgan stared at César. “I guess he’s not your usual style.”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t look like you could boss him around, like Lincoln and your other boyfriends.”
“I don’t do that!” I protested. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And Lincoln wasn’t my boyfriend.”
“Whatever.” Morgan pulled at the chain that held the bike in the air, rattling it against the pole. “Fuck! What am I supposed to do, involve the fire department?”
“I’ll help you get that down,” César called over, and I went back into the house as the two of them struggled to lower the bike. César did manage to remove it from the pole, and he carried out three more enormous loads of my belongings while telling me to take it easy.
I took a last look around my bedroom before waving goodbye to Morgan, who just stared at me sadly as I followed César’s big car down the road. The windows of his SUV were so dark that you couldn’t see him inside, which made sense. Probably people went crazy around him, like they had done to Warren Wilde when he had been the Woodsmen quarterback. I had liked it, when I was a kid, because I pretended that they were actually after me, and that I was the celebrity. I wondered if César liked that kind of attention. It hadn’t been on the questionnaire and was just another thing I didn’t know about him. Another thing I didn’t know yet, I thought, but I would find out a lot soon, just like he would find out about me.
Maybe moving in with him wasn’t a good idea. I briefly considered turning my car around and taking off, but he did have all my bags of stuff.
César did just the same thing when we got to his house: he quickly and efficiently carried everything while telling me to sit there and watch. I waited at the top of the stairs, resting my chin in my hands as he went up and down. “I thought you’d want this room,” he told me, and put my bags inside a bedroom door. “After I bring everything in, we should eat. Have you had dinner yet?”
“No, and I’m starving.” I thought about marshmallows suddenly. No, I wanted a s’more. I wanted a s’more with pancakes instead of graham crackers, and also some tomatoes on the side. “Do you have any chocolate?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Chocolate? No, of course not. Is that what you were planning to have for a meal? I left your nutritional plan on the kitchen counter. It’s really detailed.” He looked at my face and frowned. “Actually, you look exhausted. You should lie down.”
“I am exhausted. You try to sleep with someone screaming ‘pump it harder, never stop’ and all that stuff about monuments through a wall that’s apparently made of cardboard,” I said crankily. But I already didn’t like how things were going here either, with the way César was directing me. I didn’t
