I step into the hall, my fingers reflexively finding my phone in my pocket. It’s instinct to worry how Mom’s doing, even though I only texted her twenty minutes ago. It’d be different if she weren’t on her own in the house, if she and my dad hadn’t divorced. But he decided to pack up for Canada when Lewis was in high school, before Mom took the test. The test that changed our lives forever.
Forcing my nerves to calm, I knock on the door of room 2303. I’m guessing Lewis is back now. It ended up taking three hours to get from Tilton to Boston and onto the MBTA bus, not counting the delay of returning home after my original departure. I don’t think college exams extend this late into the evening, though I guess I’d have no idea if they did.
The door opens. Instead of Lewis or one of his roommates, it’s a girl.
Wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt.
I blink. I know I’m blushing, and for a moment I wonder if I went to the wrong room. Or if I dozed off before my bus careened into the river, and heaven is a Boston University dorm populated with hot girls.
“You’re not Becky,” she says, betraying no consciousness of the series of complex emotions sending my blood roaring in my ears. “You didn’t happen to see a short blonde girl with a physics book, did you? I am seriously screwed for the exam if—” She stops, something like recognition entering her eyes. “Fitz?”
None of the unique words in my vocabulary is helping me form a coherent sentence. Now I feel like the girl definitely notices, because her lips begin to curve upward. Her criminally pouty lips. I might be socially inept, but I’m not blind. And I am a teenage boy. I force my eyes not to glance down to her smooth brown thighs peeking out from under the shirt’s hem.
Instead, I focus on her face and realize she looks familiar. I know her from Lewis’s Instagram. It’s the purple-stone nose piercing that helps me make the connection. Hers is the face in the selfie from Lewis’s summer trip to Miami and in the photo from a couple months ago Lewis captioned, “Regatta.”
“Wait,” I hear myself say before I’ve thought it through, “you’re Lewis’s ex.” For a horrible moment, I wonder if she’s gotten with one of his roommates in the weeks since Lewis called home and mentioned the breakup.
The girl only laughs, throwing her long black hair behind her back. It’s as stupidly perfect a laugh as everything about her. She’s objectively gorgeous, with her black nail polish, her wrist tattoo, the stone in her piercing glittering in the light.
“Did Lewis tell you we broke up?” she asks. She speaks with the hint of an Indian accent, unlike Lewis, who was adopted from Bengaluru before he could talk. When he got to college, he got involved in Indian and South Asian clubs and organizations, or so I gathered from his Facebook. I think he mentioned Prisha running one of them.
I open my mouth, unsure what to say.
“To be fair, we did break up,” I hear my brother’s voice from inside. The girl opens the door wider, revealing Lewis walking into the room. He’s wearing only jeans and pulling a T-shirt over his head. I flush when I realize what I obviously just interrupted, feeling very much like the younger brother.
The girl walks into the room Lewis just came out of and returns with a pair of leggings. I try not to watch her pull them up. “Then we un-broke up,” she says. “I know it’s only for a couple more months, but you could have told your brother we’re still together, Lewis.” She playfully swats him.
“Fine.” Lewis sighs. “Fitz, this is Prisha, my girlfriend until spring break. Prisha, this is my brother, Fitzgerald. Happy now?”
Prisha gives Lewis a quick kiss on the cheek on her way to the door. “Very. Have a good trip, you two. Fitz, college is great. What I learned when I visited BU was to hang out with the students. Stay away from anywhere you find guys like Lewis.” She winks at him, steps into a pair of boots, and walks—sashays, really—out the door.
Lewis nods in my direction. “Come on in. I have to send a couple of emails before dinner.” He waves me in. I’m shocked he waited this late to eat with me. I wonder if he got pressured by Mom, or maybe nine p.m. is a perfectly normal time to have dinner in college. Realistically, he was probably too distracted by Prisha to notice the hour.
I follow and can’t help pausing to admire the room. It’s like an apartment—a nice, well-furnished apartment, with colorful chairs and a wooden coffee table overlooking the nearly floor-to-ceiling window opposite the door. There’s even a kitchen table, and on the TV stand sits the widescreen Dad bought Lewis when he began his freshman year. Lewis and his three roommates, of course, have done their best to worsen their living conditions. Beer bottles line the windowsills. Open on the coffee table is a jar of peanut butter with a knife stuck inside. The room smells like socks and sweat.
But nothing can detract from the view. Right out the window, the frozen river winds through the city, with trees on both banks and a small bridge reaching between them. In the distance, the Boston skyline glitters brightly. The glow reflects dimly on the ice of the Charles.
It takes my breath away.
Lewis sits down at the kitchen table and opens his laptop. I notice stickers for Khatarnak and India Club on the case. Since going to college, he’s been learning about and embracing his cultural heritage. It’s a reminder of how, while we’re both adopted, I can never completely understand his experience of being adopted from Indian biological parents into a white American family.
“Good trip down?” he asks after a beat. We both know what happened on my way down—I’m certain Mom texted him the reason for the delay. He doesn’t glance up from his computer, and I don’t know if he’s consciously avoiding my eyes.
I know Lewis considers me not just a younger brother, but a baby brother. When he was going to parties in high school, I was reading and playing computer games. When he was bringing girls home, I was reading and playing computer games. It’s not that I don’t have a life. I just don’t think Lewis thinks I have a life. Admittedly, I’m no future prom king, and I volunteer at the library every Friday and have B horror movie marathons with my friends. But while Lewis is planning spring break with his frat brothers, I’m home with Mom, worrying. Worrying is my primary recreational activity.
I nod, saying nothing more. Uncomfortable, we both wait for the other to speak. Finally, I do. “Why’s Prisha only your girlfriend until spring break?”
Lewis shrugs with half a laugh. “She got a job in San Francisco, and I want to be in New York. Neither of us wants to do long-distance since nothing’s going to change geographically in probably three years or so. We picked a date to end it, and we’re just hanging until then.”
I watch Lewis as he works on his emails. He doesn’t appear bothered by this in the least. But that’s Lewis. He got his even temper—equanimity—from our dad’s parenting. The day Lewis dumped his high-school girlfriend, the day he brought home a C in chemistry, the parties he threw and the fights he picked with our parents, he couldn’t be bothered with guilt or concern.