“Is something wrong?”
“It’s my roommate,” she started, then stopped, and I wondered if she was embarrassed to reveal she had a roommate, or if something had just transpired between them. “I thought we’d be alone.”
The solution seemed simple enough. “Do you want to go to my place?”
She took my hand and put it on her bare chest, just above her breast. I could feel her heart, thumping in time with mine. Just as I was about to lean in and kiss her, the door opened. I quickly retracted my hand.
“Hey, I’m the roommate,” the roommate said, without stopping to chat or shake hands. “Have a good night.”
His taillights lit up and a moment later he was gone. I wanted to jump her bones, but she seemed upset, and I didn’t want to push. What would Nathan 2.0 do?
“Why don’t I call you tomorrow?” I suggested. A strand of hair had fallen in front of her eye. As I reached down to sweep it off her face, she tilted her chin up, and Nathan 2.0 be damned, I couldn’t stop myself from stealing that kiss.
“I want to,” she said, disentangling herself from my eager hands. “But I can’t tonight. I’m so sorry.”
If I hadn’t been so wild with desire, I might have remembered to ask about that audition Louisa had gotten for her. Because the notion that Louisa had offered to help someone—a stranger, no less—was indisputably strange . . . the third strange thing in a night that included announcing she wanted to change her will and showing me her death folder.
I had an opportunity to be suspicious when I was driving home, but I was too busy singing along with the Beastie Boys and fantasizing about what I would do the next time we saw each other, which I hoped would be tomorrow, at my place, with no roommate to muck it up.
I had yet another opportunity to feel suspicious the next morning, when I woke up to see a missed call from an unknown number. When did that come in? I was too distracted to consider that something might be amiss, so I left the message unplayed while I took a shower. I think I might have even sung （“Cum On Feel the Noize,” probably）。 I foolishly thought nothing could spoil my good mood, that’s how clueless I was.
I toweled off, threw on some boxers, then picked up my phone. The voice mail had come in at 6:52 a.m. On any other day that might have concerned me, but this morning I felt impervious to bad news. But that invincible feeling vanished as soon as I pressed “Play.”
“Hello,” a voice said. “This is Silvia Hernandez.” How do I know that name? Oh, right. Louisa’s nurse.
“I am very sorry to have to tell you this,” Silvia Hernandez said, “but I have some very sad news. Very sad.” I heard her voice catch. She was crying.
And I knew the worst possible thing that could happen to a person had just happened to my aunt.
CHAPTER 20
* * *
JORDAN
She was waiting up for me when I got home from the gym. It was nearly midnight. I was rank with sweat, and completely exhausted. But even still, the sight of her sitting on the couch in our living room buoyed my heart.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me,” I said. I thought she might disagree with me, as we obviously had a lot to talk about, but instead she did something completely unexpected: she started to cry.
“I stink so bad right now,” I said, so she knew why I didn’t try to hug her. Not that I thought she wanted me to hug her. I didn’t know what she wanted. Obviously.
“This is my fault,” she blurted. And for a second I dared to hope that she was going to tell me the date was awful, that the man she really wanted was me.
“I totally led you on,” she said, and my hope was crushed like an empty beer can. “I didn’t mean to. I think I mistook the rush of emotion I felt about getting Brando back for something else? It was careless, and I’m sorry. I’ll always love you as a friend. I hope you know that.” With those words—“as a friend”—I understood that I was, and had always been, her last resort. Just like our “pact” implied. “If no better candidate emerges, and I reach the age that none likely will, I’ll take you.” It was a pathetic impetus for an engagement. And I should have known better.
“How did you meet him?” I asked, because apparently I was a glutton for punishment.
She told me the story of collecting Brando at the “creepy” house at the end of the cul-de-sac, how her heart had “leaped out of her chest” when he answered the door. “I’ve never felt that way before,” she said, I guess to make me feel better, and also worse.