“It’s my house!”
“It is not.”
“Well…I’m living here.”
Her mouth purses into a thin line. “Then you should’ve just come into the kitchen instead of loitering like a creeper.”
“I was not loitering.”
“Then you were just standing by the door?”
I pull myself up to my full height, which is a good head taller than she is, but she has her hands on her hips as if I’m the short one. Which is not endearing. Not at all. And no, I am not afraid of her. Not even a little.
…Perhaps a little.
“I can stand wherever I please,” I finally reply nobly. “What did your father want?”
She takes me by the arm. “C’mon, let’s stop the bleeding before you get any on the books,” she says, and guides me into the kitchen, where I run my face underneath the faucet in the sink, and hiss as the cold water hits the cut on my nose. She didn’t break it, apparently, just sliced it open.
I’m not sure which is worse.
Elias finds the first-aid kit and tells me to take a seat on a barstool. Rosie comes into the kitchen, her arms folded over her chest, and watches as Elias applies ointment and a Band-Aid on it. “Will I have a scar?” I ask Elias courageously.
He snorts at my bravado, which deflates me quite a bit. “Not likely.”
“That’s sad. Chicks dig scars,” Rosie adds woefully.
Elias finishes placing the Band-Aid and sighs. “Dios mío, this is exhausting.”
“I agree,” I agree.
“Both of you,” he replies pointedly, and puts the first-aid kit back underneath the sink. “Please try to get along this weekend.”
I give him a strange look. “This weekend?”
Rosie becomes suspiciously fixated on a brown spot on the ceiling.
Elias informs, “Yes, this weekend. Rosie and her father’s apartment had a small fire, which is why he called, and since we have so many vacant rooms I figured we could offer them both a little hospitality.”
“All weekend,” I repeat. My brain is short-circuiting.
“Yes, all weekend. So please try not to kill each other. I need to go out for some groceries—how do you feel about spaghetti tonight, Rosie? Will your father be joining us?”
She hesitates. “I don’t think so—he’ll be here later tonight, though.”
“Perfect! I’ll go pick up some supplies and start cooking,” he says brightly, and then gives me a meaningful look.
I stiffen. Me? I don’t want anything to do with that girl. She almost broke my nose! And she had the audacity to try to blame me! I answer with a shrug, which suffices for Elias, because he grabs his wallet and keys from the counter and leaves through the garage.
When Elias is gone, Rosie says quietly, “Sorry, I didn’t know who else to ask.”
“Like Elias said, we have plenty of rooms,” I reply, even though I want to ask if her personal things are okay, if anything is ruined.
She breathes out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s something.”
I show her to a room upstairs. It’s one of the bedrooms that neither Elias nor I have really been into, so the windows need to be opened and the sheets need to be changed because it’s so musty, but she doesn’t seem to mind, especially when Sansa comes in and curls up right at the foot of the bed. Rosie scratches her behind the ears, and when I leave her alone to go into my room, Sansa doesn’t follow.
So much for loyalty.
THE DOORBELL RINGS. “That must be my dad,” I say as I get up to go answer it.
It is, laden with two suitcases full of clothes—our latest laundry load. He rolls them both in and wipes sweat from his forehead. He must’ve changed out of his work clothes at the apartment, because he’s wearing his old band T-shirt and jeans with those God-awful flip-flops I wish I had burned years ago. Mr. Rodriguez rounds out of the kitchen with an outstretched hand to meet him.
“Thank you so much for the hospitality,” Dad says, grasping Mr. Rodriguez’s hand tightly. “Honestly, it means a lot.”
“It’s no trouble at all. We’ve grown really fond of Rosie.”
“It’s hard not to,” Dad agrees, and I notice that their hands linger a little longer than necessary in the handshake. I glance up at the two men, trying to read the air between them, but they’re just smiling and I don’t understand it at all.
Weird.
Very weird.
“Mr. Rodriguez has food ready,” I pipe in, leaving the suitcases by the door and herding Dad toward the dining room. Mr. Rodriguez already has the table set, a large plate of pasta in the middle like in those family-style restaurants. Vance squirms a little in his seat as Dad comes in, but then he forces himself to his feet and outstretches a hand.
“Sir,” he says, clasping Dad’s hand tightly.
“Nice to see you again,” Dad replies.
* * *
—
THAT EVENING, I eat my weight in Mr. Rodriguez’s spaghetti and meatballs. Over dinner, we talk about nothing—the weather, the movies coming out, and Darien Freeman’s lip-sync battle, which has, by now, been retweeted over half a million times.
Vance doesn’t say much of anything throughout the dinner. He just sits and listens and bats his meatballs around the plate, trying not to meet Dad’s gaze, and aside from that it sort of feels…strange. Not in a bad way, but in a way I’m not very used to. There isn’t an empty plate at the dinner table, and there isn’t an empty seat where someone once sat.
It feels…whole.
“So, what are your plans after high school?” Mr. Rodriguez asks me after a while.
Oh, the dreaded question. I wipe my mouth, hesitating on what to say. Sorry, I’m a failure and I can’t even complete one essay so I’ll just live as a hermit in my room for the rest of my life reading Starfield novels and eating jerky.
Ugh, that sounds depressing.
Dad gives me a patient look from across the table, as if to tell me that it’s okay if I don’t know. He knows I’ve been struggling with the essay portion for a few weeks now, and time certainly is winding down to turn that in. “Well…my mom always wanted me to go to NYU because she went there as an undergrad—that’s where she met Dad.”
“My wife was an accounting major,” Dad fills in.
“So I want to go there, too—except for English, not accounting—but the essay prompt is horrid.”