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Twenty-six
AFTER A FEW MINUTES OF silence, music begins to play from the kitchen.
I know the song. I sit up, not ready to get out of bed, but impressed that Nora knows Kevin Garrett, too. This is one of my favorites.
Ironically, the lyrics speak to me more now than ever before. I hear the humming of Nora’s voice in my kitchen and imagine her moving her body to the slow beat, singing the words, gliding effortlessly around my kitchen.
I lie back on the bed again, this time with my back against the metal headboard. This bed took hours to put together yet still creaks when I move. The day I got it, Tessa and I spent the entire afternoon at IKEA—and it was absolute hell. The store was crowded and way too big. As we tried to follow the map, Tessa kept going on about a red ladle in some book she was reading about a murderous stalker guy who, for some weird reason, she was in love with. She literally told me that Beck (the main woman, aka his prey) “doesn’t deserve him.” I rolled my eyes and told her she needs to get out more, but when I googled the book, a lot of people seemed to have the same reaction. It’s fascinating the way a narrator can have you questioning what you think you know about the world.
No matter how great the book was, or how many red ladles IKEA sells because of it, I would be perfectly fine if I never have to go there again. They have these small pencils so you can write the numbers down of the items you want, and after walking through the entire showroom, we wanted everything. So when we got home we had a million items that were hell to carry upstairs and even worse to put together. To top it off, we were missing a bundle of screws and I waited on hold with customer service for forty minutes before I hung up and decided to just go to the hardware store down the street. And all that was after having to hire and haggle with a guy with a van to take us to the store and haul our stuff back. All that created another place to avoid: Craigslist’s odd-jobs listings.
Nora’s hum-singing grows louder and I grab my laptop from the desk and switch the light on. I need to keep myself occupied and distracted. I really shouldn’t go out there.
But I’m beginning to feel all rebellious because the more I focus on why I shouldn’t go back into the kitchen, the more I want to. Being friends with Nora is fine and dandy. It’s not like Dakota’s going to burst back in here now.
We can be friendly when Tessa is around, but there’s something about Nora that screams danger, and I’m already in a mess as it is. I know we would never date, or anything close to it, but if she kissed me again, or if I keep thinking about her kissing me, things will get awkward for Tessa . . .
Ugh. It’s not even easy inside my own home.
I press the power button on my laptop and try to remember my password. I keep having to change it because I can’t remember it, and the more times I change it, the more difficult Apple makes me make it. For example, the first password was LANDON123 and the last one I can remember was LaNdON123123!@#. I thought I saved it in my phone somewhere, but I don’t remember that either.
Finally, after four tries, I get in. My research paper for U.S. History 201 is still on the screen, even though I finished it. I have three windows open, my iTunes, my paper, and Yelp. Since I moved to Brooklyn, I use Yelp nearly every day . . . except when I did zero research on the bar Nora was taking me to, I suddenly realize. That’s weird; I normally check everything out first. It feels so long ago now, even though it hasn’t been long at all.
It’s hard to believe that Dakota left less than an hour ago. I feel like it’s been hours, days even. I’m going to wait until tomorrow to call her. I know that when she needs space, I should give it to her.
The next song starts in the kitchen, and it’s Kevin Garrett again. He’s singing about being pushed away and feeling alone, and I’ve loved him since I heard his cover of “Skinny Love,” but I’ve never related as much to him as I do now. Come to think of it, nearly every song on his EP describes what I’m going through right now with Dakota.
Nora’s voice is louder now as she sings along. Could it really be such a bad thing for me to go out there and just make casual conversation?
