“Hey,” Caroline says. “You’re going to be at dinner later, right? Mom keeps bugging me about making sure you come.”
“Yeah,” I say, pushing aside the little stab of guilt that hits somewhere around my navel. “I’ll be there.”
“She says you haven’t been to see them in like a month.”
I rub the back of my neck, feeling even more uncomfortable than I did when Juniper was informing me about my upcoming nuptials. “I don’t know if it’s been that long,” I say.
“Well, whatever,” Caroline says dismissively. “Just come tonight. Jeff and the girls will be there; you can see everyone. You shouldn’t be such a recluse when we live so close.”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll be there. Six?”
“Six,” she says. Then she hangs up.
I put my phone back on the bookshelf, picking up my book once more and doing my best not to think about what tomorrow might involve. But no matter how hard I concentrate on thewords, the only picture that forms in my mind is one of me and my pink-haired roommate.
My mother is not particularly impressedby my living situation—or more specifically, that my new roommate is a woman.
“So…you’re living together?” she says, peering at me with troubled eyes.
“Yes,” I say, rubbing my temples. I came to dinner this evening because I was feeling guilty about not visiting more often, but I think I’m already regretting it. Caroline’s twin daughters are running amok out in the family room, their loud, high-pitched voices the perfect decibel for drilling a hole into my skull. I love them, but they’re pure chaos. I don’t know how Caroline and Jeff keep up. “We’re technically living together. But?—”
“She’s the new tenant, Mom,” Caroline says, plunking a large head of lettuce down on the counter. “It’s not like they’re cohabitating in the traditional sense.”
“Still,” my mom says, wiping her hands on her apron and looking fretful. “I think I preferred it when you had that boy you never saw.”
“You and me both,” I mutter. Lorenzo was certainly easier to share the house with. He didn’t take up much physical space, and he took up even less mental space. He kept to himself.
Juniper does no such thing.
My mom pulls two knives from the knife block on the counter and passes one to Caroline, who takes it without speaking. She cuts the lettuce with deft hands, while my mom gets to work on several bell peppers that seem to have materialized out of nowhere. She speaks over her shoulder as shechops, though.
“Well, at least tell me about her,” she says. “Tell me about this new roommate.”
“They havehistory,” Caroline says before I can answer my mother’s request. “She was the high school student he tutored when he was doing his undergrad.”
“Oh, my,” my mother says, her hand freezing halfway through dicing a vibrant red pepper. She sets the knife down and spins to face me, her eyes wide. “She’s that young?”
“I mean, she’s five years younger than me,” I say. I rub the back of my neck, threatening Caroline with my gaze at the same time. “She’s obviously not in high school anymore.”
“Of course not,” my mom says quickly, and her shocked expression relaxes a bit. “Of course. Well,” she goes on, looking curiously at me. “Is she cute?”
“Mom,” Caroline says. She’s still chopping that lettuce with vigor. “Kittensare cute.Babiesare cute.”
“Women can be cute,” I say, my voice absent as I remember Juniper decked out in her Halloween outfit—the inside-out sweatshirt and the ghost leggings and the pumpkin headband. “But Juniper mostly isn’t.”
“So she’s not pretty,” my mother says, sounding relieved. A second later, the sound of her knife starts up again; she seems to have found reassurance where none was meant.
“She’s definitely pretty,” Caroline says. “A little unconventional, but still very pretty. You can be pretty and not cute, Mom. You could be hot and not pretty or cute. They’re all different.”
“Well, then, what is she?” my mom says, throwing her hands up in the air.
“Mom,knife!” Caroline and I say at the same time.
The knife clatters to the cutting board as my mom drops it. She once again wipes her hands on her apron and turns to face me. “Tell me, then. Do you like her?”
“She’s a good roommate,” I say, my answer reluctant, my fingers drumming impatiently on the countertop. “But she drives me crazy.”
Now Caroline stops chopping too, turning around and giving me her full attention. She looks so much like Mom, the two of them standing there next to each other, that I have to fight my smile.
