Undecided(90)

“You’re going over there?” Kellan finishes the cereal and stands. And, apparently, reads minds.

“I have to try. I mean, I know that news had to come as a shock, but it was last year. We didn’t even know each other. Maybe now that he’s slept on it, he’ll…it’ll just…”

Kellan looks unconvinced, but shrugs anyway. “I’ll come with you.”

“I don’t think seeing us together is going to help.”

A long gap of silence grows as the words sink in.

Kellan clears his throat uncomfortably. “You’re right.”

“I should go alone. I’ll bike over now, then head to the library to study before my exam. If he’s at the Frat Farm I’ll text you.”

He nods. “Fine.”



*



He’s not there, of course. My knocking wakes up Dane, who is, for some reason, sleeping in a hammock strung up at the bottom of the stairs, and he confirms that Crosbie didn’t come home last night. He’s a little perplexed to learn that I don’t know where my boyfriend is, but I hurry away before he can wake up enough to ask questions.

Last spring I’d nearly flunked out of Burnham, had sex in a closet with Kellan, streaked down Main Street, and gotten arrested. If I learned anything from the experience, it’s how not to compound my mistakes. So even though what I’d really like to do is cry myself to sleep and bike all the way to Chatterly wailing “Crosbie, talk to me!” what I actually do is head to the library, crack open my books, and control the one thing that’s actually within my power.

By the time I get home that evening, the apartment smells like fried chicken, Kellan’s second favorite food.

“Hey,” I say, finding him in the living room, eating straight out of the bucket and watching a hockey game.

“Hey.”

“How’d your exam go?”

“I think it went well. Yours?”

“Pretty good.”

I grab a microwave dinner out of the freezer and nuke it for two minutes, then sit at the dining room table to eat.

“I guess you didn’t find Crosbie this morning,” Kellan remarks when the game goes to commercial.

“Dane said he didn’t come home last night.”

“Figured.”

“Did you hear from him?”

“No. You?”

I shake my head. “Not a word.”

Kellan takes a deep breath and sets the bucket on the coffee table. I watch him turn and steeple his fingers under his chin, deeply serious. “We should talk.”

“We are talking.”

“About…this.” He gestures around the room.

I follow his arm and just see the apartment. “Okay.”

He exhales heavily. “I really like you, Nora. You’re a good roommate and a nice person and…yeah.”

There’s a pause, as though I’m supposed to return the compliment somehow, but I’m not about to offer him anything when I know there’s a “but” coming.

“But,” Kellan continues when I don’t chime in, “Crosbie is my best friend. I don’t know what’s going to happen from here on out, but the one thing I do know is that there’s no way he’s going to keep being my best friend if you’re living here.”

My brows shoot up, and not just from the surprise of learning I’m being evicted. For once, Kellan’s actually making a good point, and I’m a little alarmed I didn’t think of it first. I open my mouth to reply but he plows ahead.

“It would just be weird,” he adds. “And uncomfortable for everybody. And while I hope you and I will stay friends, I have to do whatever it takes to fix things with Crosbie. Bros before ho—roommates. Ahem. Roommates.”

And there’s the Kellan we know and love.

“Fine,” I say, even as I’m wondering where the hell I’ll go. It’s not like Christmas is prime apartment-hunting season. “I’ll look for something else.”

He looks relieved, as though there’d been a chance I’d throw a fit. “Great. Okay. Good.”

I eat the last limp piece of pasta from the cardboard container. “Great.”

“I’m sorry, Nora,” he adds, when I stand up to throw away my trash and head for my room. “For everything.”

“Me too,” I say.



*



“He threw you out?” Marcela looks like she’s utterly confounded by the news.

“Not ‘threw out,’ exactly,” I clarify, wiping down a table. “But the ‘sooner the better’ part was pretty strongly implied. The worst part is, I should have been the one to initiate the conversation. Obviously I should leave. I never should have moved in.”

“There’s no way you could have predicted how this would play out,” she argues. “Was it your best idea to move in with Kellan McVey? No, of course not. But how were you to know you’d fall for Crosbie and that stupid little May Madness mistake would come back to bite you in the ass?”

I shrug. “Life’s not fair.” And it’s really not. How is it that I hook up with five guys and one of them winds up being my future boyfriend’s best friend and I end up the villain? How is it that Kellan can have sex with sixty-two women, catch an STI, and have his problems cured with a week’s worth of antibiotics? Crosbie literally covered up his regrets with a coat of blue paint; I tried to keep mine under the radar but that blew up in spectacular fashion. It’s the whole balance thing, all over again. In my effort to make up for being invisible in high school, I’d raced from the Nora Bora end of the spectrum right over to the Red Corset side. And for all my trouble to see and be seen, the only person who’d spotted me at all last year was a middle-aged peace officer with a flashlight and a frown.