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That was strange, too. Sometimes Pop wasn’t home because he was doing shit for the club, which wasn’t often, but it wasn’t rare either—but if he was home, he always went to bed with Nana.
“Twilight Zone,” I said, making a face at Bird.
“Tell me about it,” he said with a huff. “You go to Rumi’s party after work?”
“How do you know about Rumi’s party?”
“I’m eleven, not four.” He rolled his eyes.
“Are you sure? I thought you were eight?”
“Fuck off.”
“Firebird!” I gasped theatrically, still whispering. “Do you kiss your nana with that mouth?”
“If the people you hang with are kissing their nanas, you need to find a different crowd,” he shot back, closing the door.
I grinned, feeling a little better as I went into my room. Bird had that effect. He’d driven me crazy when he was little, but now I liked his particular brand of crazy. If my mom had given us one thing, it had to have been intelligent dads because me and Bird had always been smart and I knew it hadn’t come from her. My book smarts had gotten me a scholarship to a private school that we would’ve never been able to afford, but Bird was even more advanced than I had been. He’d skipped a couple of grades and went to a charter school that catered to super smart kids.
As he’d grown, his wildness hadn’t gone away—he was still a complete daredevil—but he’d also developed a quick-as-shit sarcastic sense of humor that I loved. Sometimes I gave him shit just to see what would come out of his mouth after I’d pissed him off.
I put my bag down by the bed and gathered up the clothes that I’d thrown around the room in my haste to shower and get to work. I’d always kept things really organized, so my room was rarely a mess—but I barely had any space. I’d never say it out loud, but I was jealous of Rumi’s house. He was the only nineteen-year-old that I’d ever met who owned their own home, but there were extenuating circumstances. Rumi’s dad flipped houses and because of that, he had a good relationship with the realtors in the area that were trying to offload pieces of shit. Rumi’s place had been one of those pieces of shit and his dad Tommy had bought it for practically nothing. I didn’t know all the particulars, but I was pretty sure that Rum just paid his mortgage to Tommy every month and spent whatever extra he had fixing the place up.
He had an extra bedroom and at first I’d thought he would ask me to move in, but he never had. I wasn’t sure why.
As I stubbed my toe on a plastic dresser that held all of my sweatshirts, I cursed under my breath. Some day I was going to have a huge ass bedroom, and I’d be able to keep all my clothes in a fucking closet where they belonged.
I wasn’t willing to risk facing Pop again, so I changed into my pajamas and climbed into bed without washing my face or brushing my teeth. As I curled up under the comforter I’d had since I’d moved in with Nana and Pop, my mind started to race like it always did.
I was unsettled by what I’d come home to. It was such a small thing that Pop had snapped at me and hadn’t gone to bed with Nana like always, but it just feltwrong. I hadn’t had that particular feeling since I was thirteen, the day my mom had dropped me and Bird off with Nana. Every year we’d spend a couple of weeks with Nana while the school daycare was closed and every year Mom would bring us over, stay for dinner and then take off again, leaving us behind. The year she’d left us for good she hadn’t stayed for dinner and I’d immediately noticed how wrong it all felt—it wasn’t until weeks later when I’d realized that it had been wrong because she’d had no intention of coming back for us.
I rolled to my back and stared at the old glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. Maybe I was just being oversensitive because I was so mixed up about the sleeping with Rumi situation. I shivered, imagining how he’d smiled down at me before flipping me onto my stomach. I’d always thought he was attractive and my belly had done that little swoop thing when I saw him so many times that I’d learned to ignore it, but looking into his eyes when he was turned on was that feeling times a million. It was impossible to ignore. My best friend was hot. Smokin’ hot. Put him in a porno and collect your millions hot. His easygoing smile morphed into something concentrated and mind melting, and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to resist him.
I now knew why he always had ex-girlfriends showing up wherever we were, smiling and joking and flirting and pleading and crying and yelling to get him back. They ran the gamut, but the intention was always the same. Once they’d had him they were loath to give him up and it was suddenly crystal clear to me why that was. Rumi was an awesome friend to have, loyal and funny and kind… as a lover, he was attentive and thorough and intense. The combination was lethal.
The memories of those girlfriends were a proverbial tub of ice water poured over my head. Rumi had so many ex-girlfriends because he didn’t stick around. Not ever. And a part of me had always wondered if I’d somehow gravitated toward him when we were kids because I’d subconsciously recognized in him a trait that I was familiar with. Mom had so many boyfriends, tall ones and short ones, nice ones and violent ones, but they’d all been the same in one specific way—they were there for a good time, not a long time.
If I wanted to keep Rumi in any capacity, I had to make sure that our relationship didn’t start to slide into something romantic no matter how appealing it was. We’d been friends for six years, through girlfriends and boyfriends and separate schools and multiple jobs and zero time to hang out but I was pretty sure that if I let it, this would be the thing that finally separated us. If I wanted six more years, I had to squash any feelings I had and keep things simple.
“Can I sleep in here?” Bird asked, barely opening my door so he could slide inside. He dragged a sleeping bag in behind him.
“If you can make room,” I said, rolling over to face him. “Just push stuff out of the way.”
“We can switch rooms, you know,” he said as he got on his knees, pushing the plastic bins and various baskets out of his way. “My room is bigger and you have more stuff.”
“I like this room,” I lied. We’d had the same conversation a hundred times but I didn’t want to switch. We were still in the same rooms that we’d always used when we came to Nana’s and there was something comforting in that.
“I’m not scared of the dark,” Bird whispered as he crawled into his sleeping bag and got comfortable. “Just saying.”
“Of course not.”
“Logically, I know that there’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there in the light.”
“Right.”
“I just prefer your floor.”
I tossed him an extra pillow from my bed and he stuffed it under his head. This routine was familiar.
