Every Other Weekend(81)

A tear splashed onto my cheek.

I could go anywhere, do anything.

Another tear, another splash.

It was my birthday and I was free.

And I cried.



* * *



The hallway made my eyeballs crawl. It had to have been designed intentionally ugly. The carpeting on the lower floors had been replaced during the past month, but Adam’s dad hadn’t gotten to our floor yet. It had the old forest green carpeting with tiny burgundy swirls everywhere. And it looked dirty. The carpet was packed with so many years of accumulated filth that it no longer matched the paint on the walls. And I’d been sitting on it for hours, even knowing that my dad would most likely never show up. Maybe especially knowing that he would never show up. He probably had a different place, a nicer place where he actually lived.

I turned my head with an indifference I didn’t have to fake when I heard footsteps dragging up the stairs.

It wasn’t Dad or Shelly or anyone I knew. It was a guy in his thirties with thinning blond hair and pale blue eyes. I vaguely remembered him from months ago when I’d been waiting for Adam so that we could build a snowman. He carried a bag of groceries in one arm and a bicycle helmet in the other.

I didn’t scramble to my feet and try to rush past him. I didn’t move at all.

“Hey,” he said with slightly narrowed eyes. He’d stopped with one foot on the top step, the other still down behind him.

I didn’t reply.

“Forget your keys?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” I turned back to the wall in front of me, staring at the ugly paint.

He finally fully ascended the stairs and walked toward a door one down and across from Adam’s. He kept glancing at me as he shifted his helmet up under his arm and dug keys from his pocket. “You call somebody?”

“Nobody with keys is coming here.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I’m sitting.”

He shook his head before he unlocked his door and let himself in. He was back a second later, sans bag and helmet. This time he walked right up to me. “Hey, so I’m thinking I need to call somebody to come get you. Whose apartment is this anyway? Ex-boyfriend?”

I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply through my nose. “Sorry, guy, but I don’t know you, so I’m not going to talk to you right now.” I pulled out my phone and my shiny new car key and held them up for him to see. “I’m not stranded or anything, so feel free to go inside your apartment.”

“It sounds like you know me.”

“What?”

“My name,” he said. “It’s Guy. You just called me guy, and we met once before right in this hallway, so...”

I stared at him with my snottiest teenager face, but he didn’t back away.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s your name?”

I didn’t answer, but I saw his eyes flick to the number on the door above me and then back with a different question in his eyes. And I knew. “You’ve met Shelly.”

His silence was answer enough.

I let my head tilt backward until it was resting against the door. “Great,” I said. “Then you probably know that my mom’s a bitch, I’m an ungrateful brat, and my dad is the long-suffering saint who tirelessly puts up with us. Did she read you the full transcripts from the divorce hearing, or is she saving that for when she knows you better, so, like, the second time she sees you?”

“Whoa,” he said, holding up a hand. “I haven’t been here much since I moved in. I’ve spoken to... What was her name? Shelly? I’ve talked to her maybe a couple times passing in the halls, but I don’t know anything about anything.”

It was impossible to tell if he was lying or not, but it was just another thing that didn’t matter. “Whatever. Look, I don’t really care what you think of me.” He still didn’t move. He was just standing there a few feet from me. “Are you going to leave or what?”

“Are you?”

“No. I’m fine. I like being exactly where I am. When I want to leave, I’ll get into my car and go.”

“And when is that going be?”

I scowled at him. “What, are you planning a party out here? Go back into your apartment and quit hulking over me.”

“Sorry,” he said. “But you’re depressing the hell out of me sitting here. Why don’t you come inside with me until you feel like going somewhere that isn’t the hallway?”

“Pass,” I said. “You’re starting to sound super creepy, Guy. In fact, I’m pretty sure Shelly referred to you as the creepy guy from down the hall. And anyway, what are you, thirty-five? Today is my sixteenth birthday. I’m so illegal it’s not funny.”

He laughed like I hadn’t just insinuated that he was a pedo. “For the record, I’m twenty-eight. But good to know I look midthirties.”

I didn’t apologize.

After a good thirty seconds of silence, he left. He walked into his apartment without closing the door, and a second later he was back, leaning against the frame with a carton of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other. I watched him eat several bites, and he watched me watch him.

“Want some?”