The tyres hum against the road. The silence stretches, thin and waiting.
Finally, I open my mouth. “Will I live in his room too?” And then, “Iwantto live in his room.”
It’s a lie, and it’s not.
I don’t want to live in dead Ika’s childhood room. I want a room Trent avoids. A room that gives me reprieve from him, from this strange, tangled pull between us. This will do it, I think. He’ll hate it too.
The thought of him snapping, of a sharphow dare you, curls my lip. It’s unprofessional; I should be acting through this unease. But there’s a charge in the air, something pressing all my buttons. I want him to lash out.
I don’t want to be the only one off kilter.
I swallow hard, fold my arms, and wait.
We’re already in the street below the path leading to Grandpa’s. The truck rolls to an easy stop.
Trent’s hands stay on the wheel, thumbs rubbing once, briefly, over the leather. A slow exhale. But there’s no snap. No lashing out.
He shifts. Unbuckles his seatbelt. Turns his head.
Shadows shift over his face. He reaches forward to unbuckle my seatbelt, and his thumb pauses there as his eyes shift up to mine. “Are you sure you want to share a room with me?”
Trent-the-Flooder’s words live up to his name, coming in a flash, knocking me off balance.
I stare at him. He slowly releases my seatbelt. Only then shifts his gaze from mine, moving on to opening the door.
My seatbelt stops its slow slide over my chest the same time it hits me.
He lives in his dead brother’s room.
My stomach lurches. A hollowed-out pull at my centre.
What type of impenetrable bottle is he?
We leave my stuff in the car. Trent says he’ll smuggle it inside later.
Smuggle.
Like I’m something illegal, something wrong that shouldn’t be here. So, on some level, he knows that too.
A prickle climbs the back of my neck as I follow him down the hall. Just an act. A way to keep the improv studio. The kids can keep their moemoea. Holly can keep her scholarship. I clamp a hand over the prickles, only dropping my arm once I passthatwall of beaches.
My first sight of Grandpa is of a ball-capped elder in a Led Zeppelin 1973 tour t-shirt, hunched over the dining table cursing at a deck of large-print cards.
Trent lifts Grandpa’s cap and sets it on him back-to-front. “Hard enough for you to see as it is.”
“I can see they’re all shit. Bloody buggering hell.”
“We don’t say that anymore.”
“Damn king won’t move. This game is a stairway to bollocksville.”
Trent sighs. “Having fun, I see.”
“If I was having fun, there’d be whiskey beside me, not this organic whatever-it-is you brewed me.” For all Grandpa’s words, he heartily gulps the organic whatever-it-is.
Grandpa squints at me. He flips a card. “Dammit.”
Then his finger rolls in the air, summoning me forward.
