I was in no state to be living in close proximity with another human being.
Especially one so invested in anintentionalliving space.
There wasn’t a single thing about me that was intentional. There was never a more passive bit of flotsam in the grand river of fate than Yours Truly. The thought of meeting this conscientious person thrummed across my shoulders as a swath of gooseflesh and rose in my throat as a burgeoning lump.
An unfavorable chemical reaction would likely take place should our intensely different lifestyles collide. I wasn’t fit for human consumption and I hadn’t been for nearly a year now, since my newfound teetotaling existence. I’d set some specific sobriety-related lines for myself, at the start of my torrid romance with Drake House, and so far had managed to abide by them. I was much healthier now, allegedly, but also much less pleasant to be around.
Participating in the outside world without a hearty dose of social lubricant was not exactly my forte. A few get-togethers a month with my couch-owning mates Sam and Craig, and the occasional check-in from my agent Lakshmi, my sponsor Karim, or my father The Arsehole—this had been the extent of my human interaction over the past year. The world had been nicely split in two:insidemy bubble of solitude andoutsideof it. How was I supposed to adapt to an entire personinsidemy—
“Knock knock!”
I jumped. “What!”
“It’s me, Robin, out on the porch! Luncheon, remember?”
What sort of person saidknock knockinstead of knocking? I smoothed damp strands of hair back and out of my face, then barked at the door, “A mo, Titch!”
“A what,who?”
I ignored him and hurried into the other room to dress. Potentially judgmental flatmate or no, there was stilloutsideto worry about.
July 16th
Armand opened the door and made it down the stairs to Camille, where I had to make it clear that there would be no smoking in my car, thank you very much.
I’d thought his strikingly scruffy appearance the other day had been a result of the long flight, but apparently this was just ... him. Even though he was clearly clean and well-rested, his hair was damp and hanging in shiny un-styled clumps, his clothes were still faded and scuffed, and it appeared that shaving had not been on the agenda this morning.
Once he’d put his cigarette out, I let him in Camille and rolled the windows all the way down. We’d left the parking lot and started toward the Norse-U campus when I turned to grin at him. “Excited?”
He glanced at me sideways, seemed to contemplate the question for a few seconds, then shrugged.
I revised my approach: “Nervous?”
This time it was a glare.
But instead of a shrug, I got a soft and grumbly “Yes,” only about five minutes after the question had been asked.
“Well, you shouldn’t be.” I patted his knee. “You’re gonna do great!”
After that, he stopped responding to me, until I’d parked in front of the arts building and walked him toward the lobby. He stopped by the main entrance.
“That’ll do, Titch,” he rumbled.
I blinked up at him. “You don’t want me to come in with you?” God only knew if he could find his way to the right room.
“I’ll be all right. You go do ... whatever it is you do.” He clenched a hand in his hair and looked up at the building, squinting in the sunlight. I was very aware of the fact that he was almost a foot taller than me, about a decade older, and obviously much more worldly and experienced than I was, but he looked so lost and alone I wanted to hug him. “Are you sure? I can—”
“I’ll see you in class.” He fidgeted for a moment. “Later this evening?”
I nodded. “And I’m supposed to drive you home.”
“See you then, Titch.” He smiled at me, actually smiled, and headed inside.
What the hell didTitcheven mean?
I took a deep breath and looked out over campus, trying to figure out what to do with the hours I hadn’t expected to have free. Eventually, I decided to cut toward the theater building, see if there was anyone there and if they wanted to hang out. I needed to start doing more to maintain relationships now that I was officially a prima donna, lest I lose all my friends to the green-eyed monster.
After spending my entire freshman year in the chorus, I’d finally won out over sixteen other hopeful and starry-eyed auditionees. I’d proved myself the starry-eyed-est! I was going to play Peter Pan inThe Shadow of Never—aPeter Panretelling penned by Visiting Scholar Someone Or Other in Norsemen’s very own English Department. It was a dark, raw,whimsicalreimagining of Neverland where Captain Hook was a disillusioned, thirties-something barista with a failed startup; Wendy Darling was a beautiful young Zumba instructor; and Peter Pan wasactuallyHook’s younger self who’d traveled through time to try to convince himself to never grow up. Or something. I’d read the script a bunch of times now, and I still wasn’t entirely sure what was going on.
