"I wanted to create music that was so different from what my mother could tell from anyone else."
Les Paul
––––––––
"I still don’t understand why the fuck I agreed to this," Maggie mutters as we push the coffee table to clear a space in the middle of the living room.
We set it down, then move the sofa back so the TV faces our makeshift dance floor. When she turns to head for the fridge, I grab her from behind.
"Because you love me sooo much?"
She stiffens for a beat, then exhales and lets herself melt against me.
"Unfortunately. I was actually going to lock myself in my room and crochet, but since you care so much, I’ll stay."
Maggie turns, wrapping me in her pale arms. My smile widens as I hug her back. She almost never initiates hugs—and when she does, it usually means something’s weighing on her that she won’t say out loud.
"So you’re only doing this out of generosity? Because you’re such a noble soul?" I tease, stroking her long blond hair.
She just nods. Taller than me, she always looks more like my mother than my roommate when we embrace. In some ways, that’s exactly what she is. Maggie’s a year older than me, as is Steven. We met my freshman year of college, when I was nineteen and she was twenty.
Back then, I couldn’t afford my own apartment and had no luck finding roommates, so I stayed in the dorms near USF, using my trust fund to pay rent and working part-time at a laundromat. My job was simple: sweep floors, check the machines.
One day a blond girl with a laundry basket walked in, looking like she hated both life and laundry. I asked if she needed help. Her reply? “Fuck you, hippie.”
I laughed and went back to eating a strawberry tart behind the counter, while watching her wrestle with the machines. That routine lasted weeks: her swearing at me, me offering help, her inventing new insults each time.
Until the day I decided to flip the script.
Maggie was like clockwork, always showing up twice a week. I intercepted her again with my usual question, but before she could call me something new, I pulled a crumpled list out of my pocket. Steven and I had stayed up until two a.m. drafting it. It was a list of creative insults she could use on me.
I read them aloud one by one while she stood with folded arms, unimpressed. When I finished, she smirked, an actual amused smile, and finally let me help with the washer.
I’d expected her to tell me to douse myself in gasoline and light a match, like she’d once told a guy who tried to hit on her. Instead, that was the start of everything.
That girl with sharp words and sharper walls eventually became my roommate, and one of the most important people in my life. She’d moved to San Francisco to teach at a dance school after graduating with honors from the Paris Opera.
If I hadn’t been stubborn back then, Margaret Torres wouldn’t be in my life now. And I honestly don’t know what my days would look like without her.
Maggie has taken care of me like a mother ever since I helped her wash her leotards and I owe her everything.
She clears her throat, her subtle way of saying she’s done hugging, so I let go and trail her into the kitchen.
She swings open the fridge. "I’ll punch that prick in the mouth if he tries anything. I’m warning you."
I perch on a stool at the counter, propping my chin in my hands with an amused smile on my face. "He likes you a lot."
She rolls her eyes, pulling out a juice bottle. "I don’t give a fuck. He’s insufferable and he’s always talking. And when you tell him to shut up, he just smirks. Why all the morons in this town are friends with you?”
I burst out laughing. "Are you sure you don’t like him at all?”
She shoots me a look like I just said the sky is green with polka dots.
Setting the bottle down, she silently asks if the flavor she picked is okay. I nod, and she sighs before fixing me with her signature expression — the one I’ve dubbed‘I’m tired of mankind and your bullshit assumptions.’
"If I don’t bash his head in, it’s only because I pity him. Being rich doesn’t mean shit if your brain doesn’t work," she says flatly.
I grin. "You see? You like him!"
