“You’re actually starting to scare me. Are you in denial?”
“What would I be denying, exactly?”
“Oh my god, he’s hopeless!”
“Woah.” Rosalie’s sweet voice suddenly appears behind us, and it’s like a weight is lifted off my shoulders. “I wouldn’t call your brother hopeless.”
“Thank you.”
“Heishopeless.”
Billie ignores the glares I send her, choosing instead to focus her attention on Rosalie. Through the motions of my roommate returning to her seat, explaining there was a line for the bathroom, and apologizing for taking so long, my sister doesn’t break her stare once.
“Rosie, what’s your type?”
The back of my chair digs into my spine again. Head hanging, legs uncomfortably sprawling out under the table while I slide down into my seat.
Of all the sisters in the world, I got this one.
Rosie chuckles, although it’s off-cadence and different than the ones I’m used to.
“What do you mean?”
“What you look for in a partner. Loud? Quiet? Funny? Tall? Good at math- Ow!”
My hand doesn’t make full contact with Billie’s leg. Half of it clips the edge of her chair, and the force of my mishit makes my pinkie throb, but it’s worth it. For those few satisfactory seconds breaking through my humiliation.
I don’t see their faces, but I can hear Liliana and Grant laughing from the other side of the table.
“Um.” Rosie does that off-beat giggle again. “I don’t think I have a specific type. Just a few things I like in a guy.”
“Go on.”
I know Billie is trying to get a kick out of me. I want this conversation to end.
I’m leaning slightly to my left. The board game café is starting to fill with patrons, and the volume of the room is raising by the minute, and I’m making an effort to find Rosie’s voice. To listen to what she has to say.
I want this conversation to end, I swear. In two minutes. I’ll give it two more minutes before I cut it off.
“They’re silly. Nothing to be taken seriously.”
“Humor me.”
A minute and thirty seconds.
Rosalie coughs, and I decide not to count that towards my mental timer. “I like guys who take care of themselves. Who seem put together.”
By pure coincidence, my hand finds the wrinkle at the hem of my baby blue button down, and I smooth it out.
“And I like sweet guys. I’m not really into those brooding, alpha male sort of men.”
“Guys who are soft-spoken, then?”
There’s a pause. I stop my mental timer. Just to be safe. To be fair.
“Soft-spoken is great, yeah.”
I’ve traced over the wooden pattern of this table at least fifty times. I have the lines of it memorized. I can’t bring myself to look anywhere else. I don’t have much courage to begin with. Most of it was used to whisper with Rosie when no one else was looking, and to hand over a snack I know would make her smile.
