I came here as a probationary hire, with the promise that my wealthy-ass brother would help me out while I study for my boards. “Did he…there’s no bedroom?”
Bernard shakes his head. “I thought he got you a hotel room or something.”
I don’t say anything else as we drive north, toward a giant brick building with an old HEINZ sign on the roof. Bernard parks his SUV in silence and walks around to the back to get my bag. I climb down and follow him to the lobby of a very fancy building, with exposed brick and round windows. A ketchup factory reimagined as luxury condos.
I cling to a small kernel of hope that my brother rented me an entire apartment above his or something, that he doesn’t expect me to spend multiple months sleeping on his couch while he and Bernard come in and out at all hours from their infamous orgies.
I stare at the floor in the elevator, follow Bernard down the hallway, and pause inside the doorway as he yells, “Yo, Rookie. We’re here.” At the echoing silence, Bernard sighs. He rolls my bag to the corner, props it against the wall, and then starts pounding on a door down the hall while I take in the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.
The guys have no curtains or anything, and the morning light streams through. I take in the white leather sofa, which seems comfortable enough for a night, but faces the river, where even on New Year’s Day, a fleet of barges and tugboats blasts horns as they push coal west toward my hometown. Toward a place that really has no better options for me than this.
My brother emerges half-clothed, clearly hungover. “Ellie belly!” He sees me and spreads his arms for a hug. I frown. “What? No love for your bro-bro? Come here, kid.”
He starts to walk toward me, and I hold out a palm to stop him. “You told me I could stay here while I pass my boards.”
He leans on the wall next to me. “Yeah. Welcome home. You know the rules.” He winks at this, like it’s funny.
Thankfully, he reads the room and his face shifts. “Look, Ella, this is a ten-thousand-dollar couch. It’s not like we have an air mattress for you. What’s the issue?”
I gesture toward the window. “Where am I supposed to change? Where do I put things? You don’t even have shelves.”
He shrugs, as if all of this is minor. “You can change in the bathroom. What’s the big deal?”
I look at the couch. No blankets. I glance down the hall, where there’s just one other door, presumably to Bernard’s room. “So am I showering in your bathroom? When you’re in there with a puck bunny?”
His face shifts. “Of course not. You’ll use…” My brother’s words freeze on his tongue as he finally grasps that he is sending me to the edges of his lifelong cardinal rule. Every team he’s played for, every elite roster I had to observe as a passenger in the background of his life, has been serenaded with the famous Rookie Rules:
Don’t wear my gear, don’t eat my food, don’t touch my sister.
I stare at my brother’s bloodshot eyes, willing myself not to cry. I will not cry in front of him. The last time I did that—when I got my first period in the bleachers of his hockey tryout and bled through my pants, and he threw a fit about lending me clothes—he was unbearable afterward for months. He treated me like I was a baby with brittle bones and demanded I keep a bag of necessities in the car at all times. Of course, the hatch was filled to the brim with his gear and Bernard’s, so that bag and all my homework and on-the-go meals had to be wedged by my feet, which were already smooshed from Bernard’s manspreading in the back seat.
No.
I am not going to cry right now.
“She can have my room,” a voice utters—Bernard’s.
“What?” My brother and I turn in unison to stare.
He shrugs. “She needs privacy. She can sleep in my room. I’ll knock before I hit the head.”
I close my eyes, not sure what to do with the gratitude I feel for this small kindness. When I gather my wits, I smile at my new roommate. “Thank you, Bernard. I will find someplace else to stay as soon as I can.”
Jason rumbles some sort of noise. “Suit yourselves,” he says, and turns on his heel back into his own room.
Bernard lifts my suitcase and pushes it through the other door. “I’ll just grab one of the pillows and let you get situated,” he says.
He pauses at the foot of the massive bed that takes up most of the room. “I’ll change the sheets, too. We have laundry in the kitchen.”
I duck into the bathroom as he yanks on the linens, closing the door and staring at myself in the mirror. I’m a ball of test anxiety, who barely passed my coursework, with a provisional job in the emergency department at the trauma center where my brother’s face shines down from a billboard onto my place of employment.
I’m squatting in another man’s bedroom, standing in his bathroom that still carries the faint scent of body wash, the air still damp from the shower he clearly took before coming to get me at the airport.
I don’t want to think of Bernard as a hero. But I’m feeling something unfamiliar as I stare at his bath towel hanging neatly on the hook. Maybe a nap will bring me some clarity.
When I open the bathroom door, I’m alone in the bedroom, which has been made up with fresh sheets, the comforter tossed neatly over the one remaining pillow in the center of the bed. I collapse onto it face down and fall asleep, worried about these confusing feelings I’m having toward my brother’s best friend.
Chapter 3
