Cheese was supposed to be off-limits according to every diet I’d been on since I was eleven, but it never stopped me from buying it and putting it in my fridge. “Don’t let anyone body shame you,” I said, remembering that I was the older one and I should probably be teaching her a lesson. “It sticks with you forever and it’s impossible to get rid of.”
“Have you ever seen Adele?” Tess countered, pulling food from my fridge. “Or Meghan Trainor? Kelly Clarkson? Lizzo? You’re bootylicious, which you’d know if you’d listened to any music since Bing Crosby or whatever.”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. She was so snotty, and it was funny. “Are you really making grilled cheese?”
“Someone has to,” Tess said, digging my pan out from my stove drawer. “I’m starving.”
“We’ll have grilled cheese and popcorn, both.”
And that was how I made friends with the fourteen-year-old down the hall. I didn’t know how it happened, really. It just did.
Tess made really great grilled cheese, as it turned out. “How long are you visiting your sister for?” I asked as I took a gooey half and inhaled it.
She shrugged, checking her phone. She’d texted her sister to tell her where she was so she wouldn’t worry, but she hadn’t heard back. “Until my parents say I can come home, I guess.”
I paused. “They kicked you out?”
“Not exactly. I keep fighting with my mom and it’s driving everyone crazy, so I’m staying with my sister until we all cool down.”
“What are you fighting with your mom about?”
Tess chewed for a second, then decided to tell me. “She had an affair, and then my dad took her back. How messed up is that?”
“Shit,” I said in shock. Then I added, “Don’t swear, it’s bad.”
Tess ignored my lame attempt at advice. “Anyway, I guess I’m still mad about the whole thing. I don’t think I am, but then my mom and I start screaming at each other and I realize I probably am. The trip from Long Island isn’t far, and I can take the train by myself. My sister said I could stay with her, but she and her husband work a lot.” She looked at her phone again. “It’s fine, I don’t need them to babysit me. They can just give me a key and I’ll take care of myself for a while.”
Take care of herself in New York City. At fourteen. “What about school?”
“Got out last week.” Tess put the last bite of grilled cheese in her mouth. “I get straight A’s,” she said past a mouthful of sandwich.
“Of course you do.”
She smiled a cheesy—literally—smile at me, and then her phone pinged with a text. She pulled the phone out of her pocket. “She’s home,” she said. “Finally. Thanks for the sandwich.”
“You’re welcome.” I dug through the small glass bowl on my end table and held out a key.
“What’s this?” Tess asked as she stood up and grabbed her bag.
“A key to my place. In case you get locked out again.”
She looked unsure. “You shouldn’t give your key to strangers. I could steal all of your stuff.”
“You’re not a stranger, you’re a kid alone on the streets of New York. And unless you have a weird fondness for Ikea furniture, there’s nothing here to steal. I’m the brokest person you’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t think brokest is a word.”
“It is now. Take the key.”
She did, sliding it into her back pocket. “See ya, Dracula girl,” she said, and walked out the door.
Five
Mina
Ten minutes later, there was another knock on my door. I had popcorn by then. I figured Tess had come back to ask for some, so I brought the bowl with me to my door and flung it open. “Popcorn?” I said.
It wasn’t Tess in the hallway. It was Holden Whittaker.
He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt that said “EMT Crew” on it. His dark hair was slightly mussed and he had his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets. “Hi,” he said.
I stared at him, popcorn bowl in hand. “Oh, Jesus,” I said.
Holden looked me over, his eyes moving swiftly. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.
“How do you know where I live?”
“I was just here the other day getting you out of an elevator, remember?”
“Yes, but you didn’t know my apartment number.”
“I might have looked it up.”
“Oh, God.” I looked down at myself. T-shirt, yoga pants, huge bowl of popcorn. I was a single girl cliché.
“Listen, Mina, can I come in?” Holden said. “We really need to talk.”
I looked back up at him. He sounded sincere, and those eyes of vivid blue were fixed on me. He looked good in a T-shirt, which showed off his really nice arms. He smelled good. He was Holden Whittaker, my nightmare from prom in Wisconsin. This sucked.
“Okay, fine,” I said, taking a step back. “Come in.”
He came into my apartment, his hands still in his pockets. As I put down the bowl of popcorn, he looked around. “This is a really nice place,” he said.
The apartment made me look like I made a lot more money than I did. “It isn’t really mine,” I said. “I have it because of Theda’s Polish aunt and Starlight Express.”
Holden blinked at me, bemused. “Starlight Express, the musical? The one about trains?”
“That’s the one. Actually it’s about trains that want to have sex.” His eyes went wide, and I said, “That really is the plot, honestly. You can look it up.”
“You have this apartment because you were in Starlight Express?” Holden asked me.
“God, no. I can’t skate. I have it because my roommate is in it. Right now she’s on the road.”
“Huh,” he said thoughtfully, looking around again. His arms really were nice in that T-shirt. I’d never had a man in here, and his testosterone seemed to fill up the room, pushing out my estrogen waves.
He looked like the Holden I remembered, perfect and charming and handsome. But he also looked different. I hadn’t been wrong about that. His face was a bit thinner, a bit older, and that definitely was the edge of a tattoo under one sleeve. The trim beard on his jaw made him look rugged, less clean-cut.
The silence stretched on too long, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Holden, what do you want?”
“I came to apologize,” Holden said. “I hope that’s okay. I know I just kind of showed up.”
“Why wouldn’t it be okay?”
“Maybe you don’t want a guy around right now.”
What was he talking about? Then I remembered. I looked down at myself. When I’d changed after work, I’d put on the only clean T-shirt I had. On the front was a cartoon fist surrounded by jagged shards. The words beneath it said: Smash the Patriarchy!
I liked this shirt, but I only wore it at home. It was a little… strident, maybe.
The silence between me and Holden stretched out again. “You haven’t apologized,” I said, because I couldn’t just look at him. It was too much.