On Rotation(51)

“Too close!” she accused.

I stared at her in disbelief, feeling rather than seeing Ricky sit up beside me. Deux ex Ajumma* coming in with the save. I watched, mystified, as the woman tossed her head haughtily and swept off to go break apart other young lovebirds. Next to me, Ricky was holding on to his head and cackling, his shoulders shaking with mirth.

“So,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes, “you down for the Ice Room now?”





Fifteen




“Nia, I don’t know what to do,” I groaned. I sat at our dining room table, my face pressed against the cherrywood paneling. “Please, oh wise one. Give me guidance.”

Nia looked at me askance, squaring up her papers with a thud. Having completed her lesson plans for her tutees, she was now finishing her grading, and did not seem all that invested in my current romantic debacle.

“Easy,” she said. “You talk to him. Like an adult.”

I buried myself further in the shadow of my arms, shaking my head furiously. For the last week, I had felt like I was losing my mind, and my usual remedies weren’t working.* I had kissed Ricky, and he hadn’t kissed me back. Instead, he’d pretended like nothing had happened—though, to be fair, I hadn’t given him much of a choice. The moment our Peeping Ajumma stomped out of the meditation room, I filled every available second with chatter, reading every sign in front of every sauna, giving him an overly detailed description of a C-section I attended the week prior, encouraging him to pick up on the story he’d started on the drive in about his least favorite coworker’s inexcusable love for clip art. To my immense relief, Ricky played along, turning up the music on the drive back while I tried not to asphyxiate on my anxiety in his passenger’s seat. It wasn’t until we pulled up in front of my apartment that he turned to look at me, biting that bottom lip that I had kissed, oh my god,* as he said, “Listen, Ange—”

“Thanks for the ride!” I said brightly, tossing my backpack over my shoulders and throwing the car door open. “I’ve got an early morning tomorrow. See you later!”

“Wait—” he said, but instead I slammed the door shut. I didn’t want to stick around to hear what he had to say next. Angie, I’m flattered, but . . . No. I could still see the look on his face, saturated with red light, his eyes wide with panic. I didn’t need the gentle letdown. The “I just really value our friendship” speech. It was better to forget that anything had happened at all.

“. . . I think I’m going to try it,” Nia was saying.

I sat up straight, wagging away my thoughts. I hadn’t even realized that Nia was still talking. I bit my lip, embarrassed to be caught so obviously in the middle of a daydream.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I missed that.”

Nia gave me an exasperated look.

“Unbelievable,” she muttered under her breath. Then she fixed me with a stony stare. “Girl, you probably just surprised him,” she said. She thumbed through her sheets. “Want me to save us all some grief and tell Shae to ask him?”

“If you ask Shae, they’ll know that I wanted you to ask, and then it’ll become this big deal,” I whined.

“It already sounds like it’s a big deal to you,” Nia said. Then, unceremoniously, she gathered her papers and stalked silently into her bedroom. I watched her go, flinching against her slammed door. I chewed at my inner cheek. Something was clearly wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. There certainly wasn’t trouble in paradise, judging by the compromising position I’d caught Nia and her boo-thing in yesterday when I returned home after my shift. And I didn’t think it had to do with work; this block’s group of tutees hadn’t tried to bribe Nia into writing their essays for them even once. Maybe it was me? I shook that thought away—I’d hardly been around enough to get under Nia’s skin, and besides, if I did, she would tell me.

Right?

“Yo, is Nia mad at me?” I asked Markus over the phone as I power walked through the hospital halls.

“How am I supposed to know?” Markus said. “Hundreds of miles away, remember?”

I groaned; Markus was a darling 99 percent of the time, but the other 1 percent he could be the annoying little brother I never asked for.

“Has she said anything,” I clarified.

“Bruh, you’re the one who lives with her,” Markus grumbled. At any other time, I would’ve felt bad about interrogating him; the Sanity Circle was an uncommonly peaceful bunch, and we were so rarely in conflict with one another that it felt awkward when we were. But we weren’t in college anymore, and I didn’t have time for sleuthing. Besides, Nia was rarely home nowadays; I didn’t want to waste what precious moments we had together in a confrontation.

“Come on, Markus . . . ,” I said. I stopped in my tracks at the entrance to the academic hospitalist’s office space, scuffing my shoes against the slippery hospital tile.

“Nope,” Markus said. “I haven’t heard anything, and even if I had, I would stay out of it. Just talk to her, Angie, like you always do.” He whistled. “Anyway, you have two minutes until your meeting. I know how you like to be late, but you should probably get to that.”

“I’ll have you know that I’m standing right outside!” I said, feigning indignance.