Come As You Are (8 page)

Ian heard the noise before he turned the corner. And when he got to the house—his house—he found the street so packed with cars he was forced to park two blocks away.

As he walked toward the party he noted that all the windows were open and all the lights were on. The porch was packed with people, and he even spotted a cluster upstairs in what was Molly’s room. He rounded the house and found the same congestion in the backyard. He’d never seen so many hipsters and hippies in one place.

Inside it was body-to-body and about a hundred degrees. In the dining room a band was playing—two girls on electric guitars and a guy on drums while people watched and bobbed to the music.

He kept moving.

Couches and chairs overflowed with partiers holding disposable cups and smoking cigarettes and pot, the music too loud for conversation. Why did he get the feeling this party was not about having a party, but about getting back at him? About trashing the place he and Molly had worked together to create?

He squeezed past the mob sitting on the stairs in order to get to the second floor. Same chaos. Hallway packed, Molly’s room with several people standing around talking. Down to his room. Two girls sitting on his bed, legs crossed, smoking while another girl braided a guy’s hair and took pictures of him.

“Want me to braid your hair?” the girl asked when she spotted Ian standing in the doorway.

“I’m looking for Molly.”

“I saw her earlier.” The girl frowned as she concentrated on the braiding. “Maybe an hour ago. Outside.”

Under normal conditions he would have considered the party pretty mellow. Not the typical college campus party, and most probably weren’t students at the U. Just didn’t have that feel. But he was exhausted, and he knew what this was all about.

He finally spotted Molly downstairs in the kitchen. Wearing a floral dress, those black boots, a cute little sweater. She had a daisy clipped to her shiny hair, and her face was flushed, her lips full and red.

She was wasted. Maybe as wasted as the night they’d met.

“Where’ve you been?” She handed him her cup, sloshing beer on his arm. He shook it off.

“I drove to Chicago to visit a friend.”

“Male or female?”

“Female. We went to Berkeley together.” In fact, they’d lived together for a year before breaking up, but they’d stayed friends. Not easy to do.

“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back so I decided to throw you a going-away party.” She made a lazy sweep with one hand. “Post-departure party.”

He took a long drink of beer. “You know a lot of people.”

“Not really. Rose invited most of them.” She swayed. “Did you tell your friend about me?”

“No.”

“All for the best.” She pulled out her phone and took a picture of him, frowning as she checked it. “You look way too sober.”

He was beginning to think so too. Maybe that was the only way to be around Molly. Drunk. Oblivious.

“You know what day it is?” she asked.

“September twenty-fourth.”

“And?”

He knew it was her birthday. He’d even picked something up while he was in Chicago, but he wasn’t going to tell her. “I don’t know. I’m not good at dates.”

“Yeah, me either.”

He finished his beer just as people starting shouting about cops at the door. Before Ian could get there, some little dude answered it.

“We need to speak to the owner or person renting the property,” one of the cops said, hand on his belt in a way that was supposed to be intimidating. And it was.

“I’m the owner,” Ian said.

“You look awfully young.”

“I can’t help that.”

Beside him, Molly snickered into her hand.

“We’ve received three calls about noise,” the officer said. “Do you realize it’s after two o’clock? What do you say you wrap this up?”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

The cops looked past him to the group of people watching. “Anybody here underage?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Ian said.

The cop gave the faces another perusal. “Call it a night. If I get another noise complaint I’ll write you up.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

The officers walked back to their patrol car parked in the middle of the street, and Ian stood with his hand on the doorknob. People were already collecting their things, putting on shoes, grabbing packs of cigarettes, finishing off beers as they moved toward the door.

“Great party,” was repeated again and again as Ian and Molly stood there like a couple, telling the partygoers goodbye.

The band was the last to leave, carrying out amps and guitars and breaking down the drum kit. “You two are so cute together,” the singer said as she walked out the door. And then it was just Ian and Molly left with a house that smelled like beer and cigarettes.

Ian looked at the mess. He was too tired to deal with it now. “I’m going to bed.”

He closed and locked the front door, then headed upstairs to his room, shoving the makeshift ashtrays and empty cups aside, tugging down the covers, stripping to his boxer shorts, dropping into bed, and turning off the light.

He heard Molly moving around, closing windows, maybe picking up, then he was out.

A scream woke him. Heart pounding, he bolted upright in bed trying to orient himself, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.

“Oh my God!” Molly said from the direction of her room.

He ran—
to the rescue
—and found her staring in horror at her bed.

“What?”

She pointed. “Somebody threw up. And they threw up all over the floor too.” She pointed again.

Jesus.
He turned around, heart still slamming in his chest. “You can sleep in my room if you want.” He didn’t wait for her reply. He really didn’t care. He trudged back to where he’d started, tumbled into bed, and was asleep in minutes.

I woke up to the smell of coffee. Ian was sitting in the chair across from me, a steaming mug in his hand, watching me as he drank.

“You could have slept in my bed,” he said over the rim of his cup. “I would have slept on the couch.”

Why wasn’t I in my own room? Oh, yeah. The vomit.

“We need to talk.”

I pulled the blanket up to my chin and squinted my eyes against the glaring sunlight. “That seems to be a favorite line of yours.”

“I’m going to sign the house over to you.”

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s your childhood home.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t want it.”

“Take it and sell it. Do whatever you want with it. I’m going back to California.”

The last sentence caused my heart to fall. It really felt like it fell. “I don’t want the money. I don’t want anything from this house.”

He frowned and slumped back in his chair.

He feet were bare, and he was wearing faded jeans and a shirt with tails, this one a pale blue. “If you don’t want it, and if you don’t want the money, I’m going to sell it.”

“Fine. I’m moving out anyway. I found a house in Uptown near the café.” I tossed an arm over my eyes so I didn’t have to look at him.

“That works for me.”

I’ll bet it was the girl he went to see in Chicago. Something happened in Chicago.

I heard him shift in his chair. “I don’t understand you at all.”

“You aren’t supposed to.”

I heard him put the mug on the floor. “But I
wanted
to.”

“Past tense?”

“Yeah. Now I just want to get far away from you.”

“Maybe you should move to Australia then.”

“You are such a bitch.”

I tossed back the blanket and sat up, not realizing I was just wearing panties and a band T-shirt. But I was sure there was nothing interesting about me anymore, and I was sure I hadn’t removed my makeup last night because I never did after drinking—which would mean I had mascara all over my face. “Thank you.”

He was staring at me and I couldn’t read him. It made me think of the morning in the lawyer’s office when he’d sat there stone-faced.

I hadn’t wanted this to end so soon, and I hadn’t expected it to end so soon, and I hadn’t expected him to be the one doing the ending.

“I should never have come back here,” he said. “I mean after your dad died. I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I was thinking it might be interesting. I expected a headfuck, but not a headfuck like this.”

“
Or a heartfuck?”

He flinched.

Why had I said that? Like pointing out that he’d let himself get in too deep. Or had I been talking about me?

I went to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, then came back and plopped down on the couch. “I wish you hadn’t come to Minneapolis either.” It would have been better for both of us if we’d never met.

He stared at me for several beats. “I wonder who you would have fucked that night? The night we met?”

I tossed a pillow at his head. The pillow dropped to the floor, knocking over his coffee, splashing hot liquid on him. He let out a yelp and jumped from the chair, shaking a foot.

He wasn’t mean.
I
was mean. Not Ian. Ian was sweet and kind, but I’d hurt him. I’m turned him into someone not very nice. I did that to people. And he was right. I would have tried to fuck somebody, anybody.

I couldn’t sit there anymore because I felt such a sadness. I got up and went through the house, looking for my phone, finally finding it upstairs on the dresser with the round mirror. I stepped into the hallway to get away from the vomit, and I called the girl back about the house in Uptown.

“If the room’s still available I’ll take it,” I said when she answered.

“When do you want to move in?”

“As soon as possible. Today if that’s okay.”

“Works for me.”

I thanked her and disconnected.

The front door slammed, and I thought Ian had taken off again but he must have been getting something out of the van because he was back in a couple of minutes.

“I got you something in Chicago.” From the bottom of the steps he held up a wrapped package—a shape I easily recognized as an album. And the paper was birthday wrap. A few days ago I would have been impressed. “Want it?”

“Leave it on the couch. I’ll get it later.”

“I think you should open it now.”

What the hell.

I walked heavily down the stairs, grabbed the gift, and ripped off the paper. The Leonard Cohen album I’d broken. Well, not the same one but an identical one. “You ass.”

“Do whatever you want with it. Play it or toss it at a wall. I don’t care.”

I couldn’t destroy another album. And anyway, I wasn’t sure there was any escape this time. Smashing Nirvana’s
Nevermind
into a million pieces wouldn’t replace this pain. “I can help you bring the table inside,” I said, trying to move past the ugliness we’d become. This was nobody’s fault, I tried to reassure myself. We’d just burned too hot.

“Gave it to my friend in Chicago.”

“Right.”

“Want help moving?”

“I’ll ask somebody at work.” There was no way he was helping me move. I’d carry shit on my back if I had to.

“Fine with me.”

“Leave the key in the kitchen when you’re done. And lock the door when you leave.” So distant. So cold.

Rose helped me move. She borrowed her boyfriend Isaac’s band van and we got everything in three loads. Could have been less but I didn’t want to leave anything in my room. Closet empty, dresser gone, bed gone, poster gone. I was never here. This never happened.

Ian was nowhere around, so I left the key on the table and locked the door.

“I would have stayed,” Rose said as she drove onto the I-94 ramp. “It’s your house.” The van windows were down and the air smelled like exhaust fumes and fall. “And goddamn that guy is pretty.”

“Pretty guys can be assholes.”

“True.”

“I think it’s because they grow up getting everything they want,” I said. “People are always nice to them, and they don’t have to work as hard at anything.”

“Everybody needs to go through an ugly phase.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Is anybody in that lane? I hate driving this van.”

I checked the mirror and looked through the window. “You’re good.”

She took the Hennepin exit, and then we were flying around the weird clusterfuck of tight curves and lights that eventually shot us out onto Lyndale.

“I was fat,” Rose said, stopping at a red light.

“No.”

“Yeah. Really fat. Like third, fourth, fifth grades. When kids are so mean. So I guess that was good.” She looked over at me.

Her makeup was perfect and the sun was shining directly on her face. Her skin was flawless, her red hair piled on top of her head in a way that was supposed to look careless but had probably taken her a long time to perfect. Colored bangles on her arms. Beautiful tattoos of flowers. Like a garden. Looking at Rose was like looking at a flower garden.

“I’m not an ass, am I?” she asked.

She was the only person who’d stuck with me through all of this. That said as much about her as anything. “No.”

“I’ll bet you were never fat.”

Things might have been different if I had been.

The last load wasn’t much. Just some boxes and a lamp. Once we carried them upstairs to my new room, Rose turned and did something surprising. She gave me a hug. And I hugged her back. “Thanks,” I said.

“See you at work?”

“Yep.”

The house was a foursquare, which meant four rooms up and four down. It was really old and falling apart. My upstairs bedroom had a wooden floor that slanted toward the front of the house, and cloudy windows that hadn’t been washed in years. The first thing I did was find paper towels and try to clean the two windows in my room. It helped a little. Nobody else was home, and the girl, Shavon, told me two of my roommates were in bands and on tour so it was just Shavon and me for now. That was good. I could ease into it.

I thought she’d looked familiar when she showed me the house, and now, when she walked in carrying a violin case, I put it together. She was a street musician, and I’d seen her outside a café on the West Bank, not that far from the suicide bridge.

“I don’t have a regular job,” she told me when we settled into the cramped kitchen, mugs of steaming spiced tea curled in our hands. We sat on stools at an elevated table next to another murky window, a plant hanging above our heads.

“Do you make enough playing?”

“Some days are slack, but it all averages out.” Her golden hair was in dreads, and she had a colorful scarf around her head. No makeup, a piercing in her cheek, right where a dimple would be. Black chopped-off jogging pants, scuffed black boots, and brown tank top that matched her eyes. “Today I played for two hours and made twenty bucks,” she said. “I’ll probably go back out again tonight. Maybe hit one of the lightrail stations. I make pretty good money there, but the cops always chase me off.”

It seemed kind of awful and wonderful at the same time. I’d always thought of myself as daring and unconventional, but she was me times ten.

* * *

I didn’t quit school. I went back to Professor Scott’s class and even wrote the suicide paper. I took more hours at the café so I could pay rent, and I tried not to think about Ian. But every time a guy with curly dark hair showed up, my heart began to beat faster hoping it was him.

“Drive by my old house,” I told Rose one night when we’d gone out for drinks after our shift. It had been raining hard all day, and she was driving Isaac’s van since she hadn’t wanted to bike to work in a downpour.

We drove past the house. There was a real estate sign in the front yard.

“He’s selling it?” Rose stopped in the middle of the street. “Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell is wrong with that guy? Let’s go slash his tires or key his van or something.”

I’d already looked it up on the real estate app I’d downloaded last week. “I knew he was going to put it on the market.”

“And you aren’t pissed? If you aren’t, I’ll be pissed for you. I
am
pissed for you.”

“I’m glad he’s selling it.”

“I don’t get you. If my mom told me she was selling the house I grew up in I’d freak.”

This could have been the time to tell her my story, my secret. As I thought about sharing it my heart began to pound and I broke out in a cold sweat. I couldn’t do it. “I never liked the place,” was all I said.

Rose grabbed my arm, and her hand was like a claw. “There he is,” she whispered. “Walking up the sidewalk like he owns it. Ass.”

He was coming toward us clutching a bag of groceries. I dropped down in my seat. “Go! Go!”

She stepped on the gas and we roared down the street.

“I think he recognized me,” Rose said once we’d turned the corner and I was upright again.

My phone buzzed and vibrated. I pulled it out and checked the screen. A text from Ian.

I saw you.
I showed the text to Rose.

“Is he twelve?”

“Usually he seemed about sixty.”

We both laughed.

Another text:
You and Rose should stop by. Have a beer.

So it wasn’t groceries in that bag he’d been carrying unless beer was considered a major food group. Which maybe it was.

I didn’t respond to either text, but I kept thinking about them after Rose dropped me off at my new place. I’d been there a week and still hadn’t met the two guys. And Shavon was hardly ever home. Pretty sweet.

Middle of the night my phone started blowing up with text messages. All from Ian.

Come over.

Miss U bitch.

Come over.

What are you doin?

Where are you?

Come overr.

Why did we fite? Don’t remember.

We could be fiends. Friends. Not fiends. We could be fiends. Shit. Friends.

You didn’t have to leave.

Come over.

I hate you.

Come over.

You are such a bitch.

I’m sorry about your dad.

But you a bitch.

My phone just kept buzzing and vibrating.

I checked the time. Three o’clock.

Drunk texting. I’d been guilty of that a few times.

I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I replied:
Where are you?

Home. Come over. We can be buddy fuckers.

Do you mean fuck buddies?
I asked.

Yeah.

I typed
: I don’t do that.

Maybe start.

You’re drunk. Go to sleep.

Come over.

No.

Cut my hand.

Bad?

Don’t know. Too dark.

How’d you cut it?

Fell through the kitchen window. Opening it.

Where are you now?
I asked again.

Home.

WHERE at home?

I can see the moon and some stars. You should come.

Bloody hell.

Should I call 9-1-1? No, maybe just keep texting him until I got there. It was about four miles. I could get to the house in under thirty minutes on my bike. Or should I take a taxi? Didn’t want to pay for a taxi. And then I’d have to pay for one to come back. And it could take a taxi fifteen minutes to show up.

The days were still warm, but temps were dropping to the forties at night. I put on jeans and heavy socks and my boots. I pulled on two hoodies, a stocking cap, and mittens. After throwing a few things into a backpack and turning on the blinking light attached to it, I slipped on the pack, then pushed my bike to the street and took off.

I’m always surprised by how many people are out in the middle of the night. I had to watch for cars, and I had to figure most of the people on the streets were coming home from bars or parties.

I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket so I knew texts were still coming in fast and furious—which meant he was conscious.

I pedaled harder and by the time I turned down the familiar street my head was sweating under the stocking cap, and I’d tugged my mittens off with my teeth and stuffed them into the back pocket of my jeans.

I dropped the bike on the grass and ran around the side of the house, past the curled garden hose, past the spirea bushes I’d made crowns from as a kid. And maybe as an adult.

Lights were on inside the house, and a rectangle fell on the ground, coming from a window with no glass. Below the window I could just make out the dark shape of a person.

“Ian?”

“Oh, hey! Was just texting you, telling you to come over. And here you are.”

“Weird, huh?”

“Really weird.”

I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight app, aiming it at Ian.

His arm came up to shield his face. His hand was covered in blood. Dark blood, like it had dried. He was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt.

“How long have you been out here?” Stupid question. He was obviously clueless.

“Don’t know.”

“Let me see your hand.”

He held it out and I passed the light over it. Hard to tell in the dark, with all the blood, but it looked like he’d sliced his palm open. “You might need stitches. Let’s go in the house and clean it up so we can get a good look at it.”

“I kinda like it out here.”

“We have to go in.”

“If you say so.” He rolled to his side.

“Careful of the glass.”

“Oh, right.”

His feet were bare.

“Wait. Don’t move. I’m going to get your shoes.”

“Why?”

“Too much glass.”

Was the house locked? I didn’t have a key. No. The knob turned and I stepped inside. I hurried upstairs to his room, hitting light switches as I went. In the closet I found a pair of sneakers.

Back outside I crouched down and jammed the shoes on his feet, tied them, and then told him to stand up.

He did.

Upright, he teetered, then took several sidesteps before catching himself. Jesus. I draped his arm over my shoulder, wrapped my arm around his waist, and led him toward the steps and the backdoor. Once inside I pushed him in the direction of the sink, turned on the water, and made him stick his hand under it.

“Whoa,” he said, watching the diluted blood in the white sink.

“You really shouldn’t drink,” I told him.

“I’m not good at it.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“But you are.”

“I’m a pro.”

After the briefest pause, he said, “I was sad.”

“About what?” I shut off the water and grabbed a handful of paper towels. They were pretty sanitary, right?

“You.”

I went still, then bunched up the towels under his hand. “Come closer to the light.”

We turned and moved under the ceiling light. He did that sidestep drunk thing again, so I pushed him down on a kitchen chair, then got a better look at his hand.

Hard to say. The cut was maybe three inches long, but not really deep. But it was still bleeding. “I think we should go to the ER.” Last thing I wanted to do was haul a drunk guy to the ER.

“Why? Are you sick?”

“You probably need stitches.”

He pulled his hand from mine, then grasped me at the waist and urged me closer, between his legs. “Let’s go upstairs instead.”

God, did I need to slap him? “Where are the keys to your van?”

“I dunno.”

“Let go. You’re getting blood all over me.”

“Don’t you want to be my buddy fucker?”

“It’s fuck buddy.” I pulled him to his feet, then patted him down, finding his keys in his front pocket. I pulled them out. His phone. “Where’s your phone?”

“I dunno.”

Must have been outside. I’d get it later.

I grabbed more paper towels, wrapped his hand, then pressed it against his belly. “Hold that there.” Then I draped his arm over my shoulders again and aimed for the front door and his van that was parked at the curb.

One thing about Minneapolis? You’re never far from an ER. Five minutes after stuffing Ian in the van I pulled up in front of the well-lit doors of the campus ER. Ian wouldn’t be the only drunk dude inside.

While we waited, Ian complained. “Let’s just go home,” he kept saying. A few times he fell asleep, head tipped back against the wall, mouth open. Finally it was our turn.

Good thing we came. His hand needed twenty stitches. When the doctor was done with the needle and thread, he wrapped Ian’s hand in gauze, told him to keep it dry, handed me a sheet of homecare instructions, and sent us on our way.

The sky was getting light by the time we pulled to a stop in front of the house. I got Ian upstairs to the bedroom, and damn if I didn’t have to take off his shoes and unbutton and unzip his pants for him, tugging them down his legs as he tumbled backward in bed. I dropped the jeans on the floor. “Scoot over.”

He scooted, probably thinking I was going to crawl into bed with him. Instead, I pulled the covers over him and turned out the light. Outside the window, birds were singing.

And speaking of window… The kitchen window had to be repaired. Not my problem, I told myself. Let Ian deal with it.

I was turning to leave the room when he grabbed my hand and tried to tug me down beside him.

So tempting. Maybe if he’d been in any other room I would have done it. I would have been his buddy fuck or whatever he called it.

“I have to go,” I said, pulling my hand from his. “I have class in a few hours. You’ll need to call someone about fixing the window.”