The Break(18)

“Are you really up for another bar?” I ask, the way a parent would: like it’s not the best idea. I’m stalling, wanting to go back to Sean’s place but not wanting to be the one to say it.



We linger in the warm air. A dogwood tree arcs, catching fading orange sunlight between its white flowers. Different languages prick my ears and a woman laughs. Spring in New York is as magical as everyone says it is. It doesn’t really matter that I’m sleeping on a pullout couch, or that my roommate is so concerned I’m bringing germs inside that she makes me leave my shoes outside the door and wash my hands with hospital-grade antibacterial soap before I even say hello. Rules of the house! she always says, but not in that appealing, self-deprecating way some people have about their flaws. She’s my brother Jed’s friend from college, and she rents the couch to me for two hundred bucks per week on the unspoken promise that I’ll be out of there as soon as possible. I think she was once in love with Jed, so I guess now I’m the beneficiary of that love, even if it maybe makes her a little sick to have me there. You look just like him, she said when I arrived with my mom’s old flowered suitcase. And then she doused me with hand sanitizer and showed me the couch and told me to keep my things in a slim closet by the door. She’s doing me and my brother a favor, but I need to find a real place to live, stat.

“Let’s go to your place,” I finally say to Sean with a burst of bravery. “I wanna see it.”

Sean looks dubious. I can’t figure him out, sexuality wise. I think he’s straight, mostly because we met on Bumble, but he doesn’t seem that interested in hooking up with me—we haven’t even kissed. I know he has an extra bedroom, because he mentioned it last week when we were surrounded by Bengal tigers at the Bronx Zoo. One was sleeping in a tree, looking like he was about to fall out, when Sean said, “Sometimes I sleepwalk. It makes me worried about having a roommate, but I do need to get one at some point.”

And then I wondered for the rest of the Bronx Zoo tour if he was considering me as a potential person to room with. I’ve been out with him three times total (this night makes four) and I feel like I could do it—I could live with him. So now I need to figure out the best course of action: Do I hook up with him (if he even wants that) or do I steer us toward something platonic and hope he wants a roommate who chips in with rent?

I can’t mess this up.

We head down Attorney Street and I feel the flutter of excitement again, wanting his apartment to be glamorous, but also wanting it to be crummy enough that I could see myself living there. I haven’t even found a job—I’m working off savings I earned waitressing second semester senior year while living with my parents—and as of this morning my savings account has eight hundred dollars in it.

“That’s my building on the right,” Sean says.

It’s gray brick and kind of dull, but who cares? “It’s a cool vibe here,” I say as we get closer, and I can see him puff up with pride. “Is that an elementary school?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. Rainbow-colored cones are set up in a circle on the basketball court. Near the free throw line is forgotten chalk in a heap next to a Ziploc bag and a duffel.

Sean puts his key into the first door, and then the second. We’re in. And there’s no doorman, which usually makes apartments way more affordable. My heart picks up speed. This could work; I could maybe pay for something like this. And I need a roommate—I’d be way too scared to live alone—and Sean is the only person I know living in the city, because barely anyone from my college came here. And most importantly, Sean seems to get nicer the more I get to know him.

I swallow down the feeling that I don’t know him well enough—it’s what my dad would say if he knew I was trying to live with someone I barely knew, and he’d be right: I don’t even know the basics about where he grew up. But people have sex with people they just met, and is this really that much worse? Don’t you just have to go with your gut sometimes? I know some things, like how Sean went to Georgia Tech and knows a brother of one of my friends from high school (so he isn’t making the whole thing up, because I checked); I know he’s smart and that he does something with computers from home. He doesn’t even go to an office or get out of his workout clothes, which he says is the best part about being a freelancer.

The lobby floor is grimy, and the building itself a little decrepit, but not too bad so far. We pass silver mailboxes and a man in navy pants and a matching shirt that I think is a uniform. “Hey, Paulie,” Sean says, and the man smiles at us both. Sean doesn’t introduce me.

“I’m on the fourth floor,” Sean says as we get on the elevator. We ride in silence, and it’s kind of awkward. Sean is a terrific conversationalist when he wants to be, when he’s on a topic he cares about. But good luck guessing what that might be, and if you don’t get it right, he acts half-bored. Or maybe I’m boring him, but I don’t think so. When people complain about me, it’s not usually because I’m dull.

“This way,” Sean says in a singsong voice when the elevator doors open. It looks like there are only four apartments per floor, which gives it a homey vibe. The apartment across from Sean has a pair of beat-up Nikes outside, but Sean’s welcome mat is clean. He opens the door to 4D and we step inside.

I suck in a breath—and, okay, so it’s not glamorous. Sean said it was a two bedroom, but it’s clearly a one bedroom with a makeshift wall sectioning off half of the living room. Not that I’m complaining—I’m not fancy, I just need somewhere to live.