Nothing More (11 page)

When the light changes, a woman in high heels struggles to cross the street before me. I don't understand why women put themselves through so much torture to look taller. The intersections here change quickly, usually giving pedestrians less than thirty seconds to cross. I type a quick response to my mom and promise to call her tonight. I shove my phone back in my pocket, deciding to read about the bar later.

I really want to go to Toronto, I always have, and a flight from here is only an hour, so maybe I can plan a trip over winter break. I'll most likely go alone, even though a wild part of me suddenly suggests that I take Nora—she would be fun to travel with, I bet. I have a feeling she's traveled more than I have. Even without knowing her, I see her as someone who's been a few places, or just knows more about the world in general than me. There's only so much a textbook can teach you. I'm proof of this. I would love to travel, and soon.

But why am I imagining Nora and me on some tropical beach somewhere, imagining her in a tiny bikini top, her full ass peeking out from the bottom? I barely know her, and yet I can't get her out of my head.

The deli just below my building is never crowded, and sometimes I feel bad for Ellen, the young Russian girl who works behind the counter. It worries me that she sits in there alone at night. The bell above the door rings as I enter, and Ellen pops her head up from a thick textbook and gives me a polite smile. Her short, wavy hair is tucked behind a thin headband that matches her red sweater with small white dots.

“Hi there,” she says to me as I scan the refrigerated section in the back for milk.

“Hey, Ellen,” I say, grabbing a container of milk; I check the dates because I've left here with expired products more than once. Then I search for a blue Gatorade, to grab for Nora the next time she comes over, but they don't have any. I have time, so I'll just walk down to the next-closest store after I leave here.

And for the second time today, I find I could have used one of the tote bags Tessa keeps a supply of near the door. She likes to discourage the use of plastic, and now every time I open the door, I hear her voice, reminding me of the damage plastic bags wreak on the environment. That woman watches way too many documentaries. Soon she's going to boycott wearing shoes or something.

Ellen closes her textbook as I approach. I grab a pack of gum from the shelf in front of the counter. She looks a little stressed, so now I really wish I had brought a tote, the one with a watermelon and a cantaloupe on it. Next to the watermelon is a text bubble that says,
We should run away and get married
and the cantaloupe replies,
I'm sorry
, and underneath that, the cantaloupe's face is larger and it's saying,
I CANTaloupe.

Ellen finds the fruit humor just as funny as I do, which makes her quality people. And maybe a joke would make her smile.

“How's it going?” I ask.

“Good, just studying.”

The old register beeps when Ellen types in the cost of the milk and gum. I pull my card out and swipe it.

“You're always studying,” I say. It's true: every time I come here she's alone behind the counter and is either reading from a textbook or filling out work sheets.

“I need to get into college.” She shrugs, and her brown eyes flash away from mine.

College?
She's in high school and works here this late, and this often? Even on the days when I don't stop in, I see her working through the window.

“How old are you?” I can't help but ask. It's none of my business, and I'm not much older than her, but if I were her parents, I would be a little worried about my teenage daughter working alone, at night, in a store in Brooklyn.

“I turn seventeen next week,” she says with a frown, which kind of runs counter to the typical teenage girl, who beams at the idea of getting another year closer to the golden age of eighteen.

“Nice,” I tell her as she hands me the receipt to sign.

She's still frowning when she hands me a red pen tied to a small clipboard with a dirty brown string. I sign it and give it back to her. She apologizes profusely when the printer machine jams before my copy of the receipt comes out. She pops the top off and I tell her that it's fine.

“I'm not in a rush,” I tell her. I don't have anywhere to be except home to study for Geology. Oh, and my date with Nora that I'm pretty damn nervous about. No big deal.

She rips the jammed paper roll out and tosses it into a trash can behind the counter.

Thinking about her, I realize that Ellen has never really seemed as carefree as a seventeen-year-old should be. Often I forget that most people in the world don't have a mom like mine—heck, most kids I knew growing up didn't. I didn't have a father figure growing up, but it never bothered me much, honestly. I had my mom. Everyone reacts to things differently based on their own personal experience and how they're built. Hardin, for example . . . his experiences had different effects on him than mine had on me, and he had to take a different path to understand them. It doesn't matter why; what matters is that he's taken responsibility for them and is busting his ass to understand his past and shape his future.

When I was twelve, I began to count down the years and months leading to my eighteenth birthday—even though I wouldn't be going anywhere right away, my eighteenth birthday being right at the beginning of my senior year. Because of the enrollment cutoff, I was always older than everyone else in my grade. I hadn't planned on leaving my mom's house until after college, but that was before Dakota started mentioning me moving to New York with her during
her
senior year. After I spent months applying for a transfer, applying for FAFSA at NYU, finding an apartment for the two of us that was easily accessible to the campus using the subway, coming to peace with leaving behind my best friends, my pregnant mom, and my stepdad, Dakota's life took a change and she forgot to tell me.

I'm still happy that I moved, happy that I'm becoming an actual man who's socially aware, with responsibilities and plans for the future. I'm not perfect—I can barely do my own laundry, and I'm still getting the hang of paying my own bills—but I'm learning at a pace that I can keep up with and having a good time doing it. Tessa helps a lot. Tessa likes to keep things much tidier than a normal person, but we both clean and do an equal share of the chores. I've never left a dirty pair of socks in the living room, or forgotten to pick my damp, dirty clothes off of the bathroom floor after a shower. I'm conscious that I share an apartment with a woman who I'm not intimate with, so I never leave the toilet seat up or freak out if I see a tampon wrapper in the trash can. I make sure she's not home when I masturbate, and I always make sure to leave no evidence behind when I do.

Though perhaps yesterday disproves that last claim. My mind keeps going back there, to the encounter with Nora.

After turning the machine off and back on and changing the roll of paper twice, Ellen prints my copy of the receipt. I decide to linger just a little longer; I have a feeling that she doesn't get much interaction outside of the characters in her history books.

“Are you doing anything special for your birthday?” I ask her, genuinely curious.

She scoffs and her cheeks flare. Her pale skin turns red and she shakes her head. “Me? No, I have to work.”

Somehow I knew she didn't have plans outside of sitting in a stool behind the high counter.

“Well, birthdays are overrated anyway,” I say with the biggest smile I can manage. She half smiles, her eyes lighting up with just a touch of happiness.

Her back straightens slightly and her shoulders sag a little less. “Yeah, they are.”

I tell her to have a good night and she says she will. As I close the door behind me I tell her not to study too hard. Man, what it would be like to be seventeen and growing up in the city; I can't really imagine it.

During my walk to the store at the end of the block, I read about the bar my mom texted me about and call her. She tells me that Ken just got home from a conference in Portland, and he hops on the line so we can talk about the score of the last Giants game. With their loss, I won a little wager we had going, and I can't keep myself from bragging just a touch. We play quick catch-up and get off the phone so he and my mom can eat dinner.

I used to eat dinner with them nearly every night and talk about current events, school, sports, among other things. While I'm glad for the time I spent with my family before I moved, thinking about them only reminds me all the more that I've got to make some friends.

A
FTER FINDING NOT ONE
, but three red Gatorades, I head back to my apartment.

At my building, a loud delivery truck is idling in the middle of the street. The deli below the building has deliveries at all times of the night; the trash collectors come at around 3 a.m. nearly every night and the loud pounding of the bins being emptied into the metal truck used to wake me up all the time. I recently made the best purchase of my life and got one of those machines that play sounds of the sea, the rain forest, the night desert, and the only setting that I actually use: white noise.

I wait patiently for the elevator to reach the first floor and step inside. It's small, only suitable for two medium-sized people and one shopping bag. I usually don't mind taking the stairs, but my knee's started throbbing a little again.

As it lifts me up to the third floor, the elevator creaks and groans and those sounds, along with my anxiety about tonight, make me wonder when one of the old elevators in this city is finally going to trap me for hours. If it happened tonight, I wouldn't be able to go out with Nora—

No, tonight will be fun.

It will be so fun
, I tell myself as I put the milk away and the Gatorade in the fridge.

It's a normal thing to go out with a woman and her roommates, even if I don't know them
, I think as I feel the soothing hot water of the shower. An uneventful shower, during which no curtains or egos are hurt, and one that I very much enjoy.

Totally normal, and nothing to be nervous about.

But the moment I convince myself of this, a tiny, curly-haired wrench is tossed into my plans. Lying back on my bed, my hair still wet from the shower, I check my text messages. I scroll through two texts, one from Tessa about taking an extra shift. She says she will meet us out if she can and that Nora is going to text me soon with the information about tonight.

The other is from Dakota.

Hey what are you up to?
I read, then repeat it aloud, a little confused.

Staring at the screen, I wait a few moments before responding. I don't want to tell her that I have plans with someone else, especially not another woman. It's not that I want to lie; I would rather do anything than that. I just don't see anything good coming from telling her what I'm
actually
doing. I don't know if there's even a reason to tell her. We aren't dating. Nora and I are only friends, no matter how much time I spend thinking about her.

But I lie anyway.

Studying. You?

I close my eyes before I hit send and my memory guides my thumb to pull the trigger. I immediately feel guilty for lying, but know that it's too late to backtrack now.

I plug my phone into the charger and walk to my closet to begin getting ready for tonight. I grab a pair of dark blue jeans with rips in both knees from my closet. The jeans are tighter than I usually wear, but I like the way they look on me. Until two years ago, I would have never fit into these without looking like an overflowing cupcake. Not even a cupcake . . . a muffin. An ugly muffin.

I stare and stare at my closet, trying to locate any bit of fashion knowledge I may have stored somewhere inside my brain. There's nothing. I've got elves, wizards, hockey pucks, and plenty of warlocks inside my head, but no fashion tips. There's nothing in my closet except button-down shirts, plaid everything, and too many WCU hoodies. I walk over to my small dresser and open the top drawer. I'll wear gray briefs, one of the few pairs I have that don't have holes in them. My room is a little muggy, so I lean over and pull my window open.

The second drawer is filled with T-shirts, most of them with words printed on the front. Should I have gone shopping?

Where is Tessa when I need her?

Getting ready to go out for a night of partying is something I'm not even close to being familiar with. I usually wear plain T-shirts with jeans or slacks, and since I've moved to Brooklyn, I've added a few jackets to my wardrobe. I would say I'm right in the middle stages of being able to dress myself.

I don't know what type of place we're going to, or what Nora will be wearing. I don't know much about dates in general.

I reach for a gray shirt and toss it over my head. The sleeves are weirdly long, so I roll them up and pull my briefs over my legs.

My hair is getting long in the front; it curls down slightly on my forehead, but I can't decide if I want to cut it. I put some of Tessa's spray stuff in my hair and try to comb the unruly whiskers on my face. I like the scruffy look but really wish I didn't have the patches of skin at the bottom of my cheeks that refuse to grow hair.

By the time I'm dressed and my hair is somewhat tamed, I have a text from Nora.

The only thing written is the address with a heart emoji.

Which makes me excited . . . and a little more nervous.

And which is also when I realize what time it is and that I need to hurry the hell up or I'll be late. I push my feet into my brown boots while I put the address into Maps on my phone, relieved that I can walk there in around thirty minutes.

I use the walk to quiet my mind and try to think of interesting talking points to keep Nora and her friends somewhat entertained. God, I hope they're not into politics: discussions about that never end well.