Jill and I are only friends for one reason. I think we’ve both always known. We weren’t even ever really friends, just drawn together by our mutual love for Causby, and our need to keep it alive. Jill is his ex-girlfriend; I’m his best friend’s little sister. Her chance with him is over, and I have never had one. With a guy like Causby, there’s only one thing you can be sure of; he’s going to let you down. But, I guess, we’re both just gluttons for punishment, because that has never mattered to us. Neither of us has even seen him in almost two years, but until recently, we talked about him almost every day.
The only reason we ended up roommates is because neither one of us could find a job after we finished college last year. Well, Jill finished, I dropped out. Right now, she’s a waitress at the same restaurant she worked at in high school and I’m selling ladies’ underwear at the Belk’s in Northlake Mall. Neither one of us wanted to move back home, but neither one of us had any money, either. I hadn’t even seen her since high school, but we ran into each other in the mall one day, and now here we are, in a crummy one-bedroom apartment on the east side of town, sleeping in bunk beds like we’re having a sleep over or we’re away at camp. Like we like each other.
The apartment’s got all the usual problems: a leaky roof when it rains, bad insulation, and an unbelievable roach infestation. They like to hide out in cabinets and kitchen drawers so they can jump out at you when you go to get a glass or a knife. A couple of months ago, one jumped in Jill’s black hair and you couldn’t even see it until, screaming and flailing, she finally knocked it out. It skidded across the kitchen floor on its back and I stomped on it, the fragile shell of its body crunching under my shoe.
I think it was about that time that Jill started spending almost every night with her new boyfriend, Rick, a lawyer, who’s a regular at her restaurant. They’re going on vacation to Belize in the fall. She’ll probably get some ridiculously large diamond soon and be gone for good, leaving me to fend for myself among the roaches. Not that she ever helped much. Whenever it’s her turn to kill them she says they have a right to live, too.
So lately, we haven’t talked much about Causby. We’re tired of telling the same old stories and we don’t have any new information. He hates social media and hasn’t had an account since Myspace. He never updated it, anyway. He’s still carrying around a freaking flip phone. My brother, Seth, joined the Navy after high school and rarely talks to him. Even more rarely than I talk to Seth. I ran into Causby’s dad at the Handy Mart a few months ago. He said Causby’s living in Texas and working on a cattle ranch, but I think he was just saying that to have something to say. I don’t think he knows anything more about Causby than the rest of us.
It’s Tuesday night and I’m sitting in the den, scrolling through Netflix and stuffing my face with stacks of sour cream and onion Pringles. I glance over at the kitchen floor where the first two kills of the night lie slightly dismembered and motionless. I don’t always clean them up right away like I should. The apartment manager says she has the place sprayed regularly, but in the eight months we’ve lived here, there’s been no letup in the problem. When I do finally move out of here, I’m going to go on a killing spree and leave all the little mangled carcasses on the floor for her to deal with. Screw the deposit. I’ve managed to save up some money, so maybe it won’t be much longer before I can afford a nicer place.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table and I lean over. It’s my parents’ landline. They only live five miles away, but my mother feels compelled to talk to me every day. She thinks I have issues. She says that my desensitized approach to the roaches is bordering on an abnormal obsession and she wants me to talk to her therapist. What she really wants is for me to move back home, but I’d rather be buried in roaches up to my eyeballs.
“What, Mama?” I say, tapping the speaker button.
“Allison Baker, do I sound like your mother to you?” a male voice says.
“Seth?”
“This is not your brother.”
An unpleasantly warm sensation spreads across my body. “Who is this?” I ask in a funny voice I can barely hear over the slamming of my heart.
There’s an eruption of laughter. “Has it been so long you really don’t recognize my voice, Allicat?”
“Causby?” He’d named me Allicat when I was eight, a combination of my first and middle names, Allison Catherine, thinking he was wildly clever. I was never fond of it.
“In the flesh, babe,” he says.
“What are you doing here? Your dad told me you were in Texas! I mean, that was a while ago but I…”
“Well, I came over to your parents’ house to see you, and they told me my girl’s all grown up and has her own apartment. Mind if I come over?”
I scramble into the kitchen, slipping in my stocking feet and almost resmushing the roaches. I duck under the sink and launch a desperate search for the dustpan.
“You ok over there, Allicat?”
“No…I mean, yes…I’m just…nothing,” I say, trying to keep the phone pinned to my shoulder while I sweep up the carnage. All the bustling has resuscitated one of the roaches, and its legs kick at the air as it plummets into the trash can.
“Now don’t bother to get all pretty for me, sweetheart. You’re already the most beautiful girl in the world,” he says, his voice turning silky.
I know he’s just fucking with me, but despite that, and in complete self-loathing, I giggle. Some sadistic part of me blurts out, “You don’t really think so.”
“Sure, I do.” He says it with such warmth I almost believe him.
When I open the door to him half an hour later, he’s not alone. Lee Sanders, another of Causby’s and Seth’s friends from high school, is standing beside him in the breezeway, holding a case of Bud Light against his thigh. I hope my disappointment isn’t too obvious.
Causby steps across the threshold and hugs me, lifting me off my feet.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” I say. “What’s the occasion?”
“What, can’t I come home every now and then just for the hell of it?” he says, setting me down and walking toward the couch.
“You never do, so no,” I say, smiling at Lee and motioning for him to come in.
“I was here last summer,” he protests.
“Two summers ago,” I correct him, closing the door sitting between them on the couch. “And you weren’t here for nothing; you were here for your sister’s wedding.”
During the cake cutting at Meghan’s country club reception, we snagged a couple of bottles of champagne and slipped out to the golf course. We might’ve stayed out there all night, getting drunk and rolling around in the grass, talking about how lame weddings are and cursing Seth’s good luck that he was stationed in Guam and couldn’t make it. We didn’t even realize the reception was over until we saw the limousine drive up, and then we started scrambling, trying to get our shit together. Causby’s tuxedo jacket was hanging on the 100-yard marker. I’d ditched the toe-pinching heels Meghan insisted the bridesmaids wear on the fairway and the left seam of my dress had worked its way around to the back. We were racing toward the veranda, holding onto each other to keep from faceplanting, when the sprinklers went off. We were drenched within seconds, Causby laughing, me insisting this isn’t funny! when he stopped and tugged me toward him, our lips close enough to touch. But, neither of us made a move, we just stood there in this awkward embrace, breathing in each other’s faces, until we heard the guests shouting out well wishes and the limo peel away from the curb. The newlyweds were gone and so was our chance to become something more.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “Man, I guess it has been two years.”
“How’s Seth, Allison?” Lee asks, handing me a beer. “I don’t think I’ve seen him more than a couple of times since high school.”
“No one’s talked to him in a couple of months, but he’s still somewhere off the coast of Italy.”
“That’s got to be nice.”
“Yeah. I might go visit him after the ship docks, near the end of the summer.”
Droplets of beer spew from Causby’s mouth. “Bullshit! You’re afraid to fly!” he says, nudging my knee.
I glare at him. “The trip to Disney World was like fifteen years ago.”
“Our parents planned a vacation to Disney World together one summer, and Allicat here was so scared on the plane ride there she cried the whole way,” Causby tells Lee.
“Only halfway!” I say. “And it didn’t help to have you and Seth picking on me the entire time!”
“That’s fair.” He grins. “Well, maybe I’ll go with you to Italy. Keep you company, in case you get scared.”
I flush and look down at my lap. “You could,” I say, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice. From the corner of my eye, I see a roach scurry across the kitchen counter and dip under the ledge.
“You know he’s here for Jill, right?” Lee says while Causby’s in the bathroom.
We’re in the kitchen, and I’m searching for snacks. I turn away from the cabinet I’m checking, hot prickles creeping up my neck. “What?” Causby and Jill broke up three years ago. Neither of them has ever told me why and I’ve never asked.
Lee nods. “He wants to get back together with her. I just thought you should know.”
“She has a new boyfriend. She won’t be interested.” I go back to rifling through the half empty boxes of Saltines and Ritz crackers, poke aside a crinkled bag of Lays that can’t contain anything more than pulverized crumbs. “Besides, he hasn’t even asked about her.”
“Only because he doesn’t want to hurt you,” Lee says, prodding the grate below the refrigerator with the toe of one Converse. I might’ve told him that it’s a roach hotbed under there if I could speak, but I’m still fumbling for words when the toilet flushes and Lee hauls ass back to the couch.
“Everybody good?” Causby says when he comes out, and we both nod like a couple of bobble heads.
On our tiny square of a balcony, Causby and I sit, drinking the last of the beer, our lawn chairs pressed so close together our arms are touching. Lee’s passed out on the couch, one leg dragging the floor, a string of drool trailing out of one side of his mouth.
Causby tips his chair back on two legs, rests his feet on the rail. “So, what are you doing here, Allicat?”
I stare blankly at him. “What do you mean?”
“I thought you wanted to move out west after you graduated.” He swivels his head to look at me. “You could get a thousand better jobs than working as a clerk in a department store.”
“Didn’t my parents tell you? I didn’t graduate. I dropped out of school.” I take a sip of beer. “I’m surprised they didn’t tell you. It was all they could talk about for a while.”
“You dropped out? Allison, what the fuck? You’re the smartest person I know! Why would you do that?”
I shrug. “I didn’t like my roommate, I failed a couple of classes, I had an affair with one of my professors, I was homesick, I stopped taking my anti-depressant and flipped out. I don’t know. Pick one.”
He doesn’t laugh. “I’m serious.”
“I don’t know. Really. I got tired of keeping a 4.5 GPA, I guess. I just didn’t give a shit anymore.”
He’s scowling at me. “That’s literally the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. You’re going to fuck your life up if you don’t go back and graduate.”
“Jill’s not coming home tonight,” I say, blowing across the lip of my beer, the bottle making a dead, hollow sound.
He takes his feet off the rail and the chair legs screech against the cement. “Oh, where’s she going?”
“She’s staying with her boyfriend. She stays with him a lot.”
His face contorts a little, but he irons it back out. “Good. Good for her.” He points to an arrangement of stars. “There’s the Little Dipper.”
“You dropped out,” I say.
Now he laughs. “Well, hell, I’m not your role model, am I?”
I don’t say anything.
“If I am, you might as well be worshipping the golden calf.”
I stand up and throw my beer bottle out into the parking lot. It skitters across the pavement and thumps against someone’s tire. I’m splashing cold water on my face in the bathroom when I feel him come up behind me.
“You’re shit-faced,” he says.
“Aren’t you brilliant! Are you sure you’re not a college graduate?”
He pulls the towel off the rack and holds it out to me. I turn the faucet off and reach for it, pressing the terrycloth to my cheeks. He puts his hand on my back and rubs in slow, small circles.
“I’m sorry I upset you.”
My shoulders sag. “I’m not upset.”
“I just don’t want you to have to sell underwear to rich women with fat asses for the rest of your life.”
I take the towel away from my face and smile. “Poor and skinny ones buy underwear, too, you know. And it sounds more important if you call it ‘lingerie’.”
“You know what happened with the job I had as a cattle hand in Austin? The ranch owner’s son came home from college for the summer. He said he wouldn’t be able to use me again until September. Now I’ve got to find a way to make a living for the next four months. They need some extra hands on a fishing boat in Maine going out to sea next week, but I don’t even have enough money to get there to take the job. The only way I even got home was with a truck driver friend who was making a run to Charlotte.”
We look at each other in the mirror for a minute.
“What about your parents?” I say.
“They don’t have anything extra now that they’re both retired.”
I turn and put my arms around his neck. “You could just stay here,” I say. “I’m sure someone is hiring for the summer. It would be great to have you back for a while.”
He pulls me tight against his chest. “I’ll figure something out,” he says.
I wake up near dawn and can’t go back to sleep. For a while, I listen to the whistle of Causby’s breathing above me. “You don’t have to move,” I said, when he slid his arm out from under me and swung out to the ladder, to Jill’s bed. We’d been cuddling on mine for at least an hour. “Yeah, I do,” he said, already climbing.
I get up and open the top drawer of my dresser, pull the money I’ve been saving out of a sock near the back. The bunk bed ladder creaks each time I step on a rung, and I’m sure it’ll wake him up, but when I reach the top, he’s lying with his back against the wall, eyes still closed. I sink my knee into the mattress, inch my way onto it until I’m lying beside him again. I trace a finger across the stubble on his jaw, let it trail over to his bottom lip. A twitch starts up in his cheek and I pull away. I wait until he’s still again to slide the cash into the front pocket of his jeans. Then I lift his arm and put it over me, his hand over my hip like a blanket.
Rain is crashing against the roof when I wake again. There’s a slow throb in my skull and Causby’s not beside me anymore. I lean over the bunk rail. He’s crouched on the floor, looking under my bed.
“Trying to make a quick getaway?” I say.
He rears back, catching himself with one hand behind him. He gives me a slow smile. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Your shoes are in the den.”
He stands up, slides the bills I folded into his pocket up to where I can see them. “You didn’t have to do this…”
“I know.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
“I know.”
I throw my leg over the side. Living in a third-floor apartment has toned my calves and thighs. I take my time climbing down. Causby’s standing by the ladder, his hand still halfway in the pocket with the money.
The weak light streaming through the gaps in the blinds is still too bright for me and I squint against it. “When are you leaving?”
“I don’t know. Probably tomorrow.”
My arms wind around his waist. “Come have lunch with me today.”
He cranes his neck, looks down at me. “Allison, I…”
“We can make some concrete plans about going to visit Seth.”
“I should probably spend some time with my folks…”
I let go of him. “Oh, ok, I get it. You’ve got what you need now, so….” I move over to the closet. The hangers scrape along the rod as I separate my clothes from Jill’s. I start looking through her side first.
“You know it’s not like that.”
“I do?”
The toilet flushes and Lee emerges from the bathroom, uses the doorframe to do a chin up. “Yo, Caus, I have to be at work in an hour. Let’s go.”
I resist the urge to flip him off when I see how Lee’s looking at me. Mild amusement mixed with pity. I hope he does another chin up and the doorframe rips off, puts him on his ass with the breath knocked out of him.
“Yeah,” Causby says. “Just looking for my shoes, man.”
Lee slides his gaze between Causby and me. “Whatever.” He raps his knuckles on the wall a couple of times and goes down the hall. The refrigerator door sucks away from its frame, and then we hear, “Hey Allison, there’s a roach in your fridge. It’s alive.”
“I’ll call you,” Causby says.
“My lunch break is at two,” I tell him.
“Yes, ma’am.” He gives.me a mock salute. “See you later,” he says, but the kiss he plants on my cheek feels like a goodbye.
I’m looking through the hall closet for my rain jacket when I hear the key turn in the lock. Jill steps in, shivering, and lowers her umbrella. Her cheeks are glowing, fresh from romance and sleep.
“Hey,” she says. “Good thing you’re getting a jacket. It’s kind of chilly out there, with the rain and all.”
“I thought so. It looks it,” I say. I find the jacket and slip my arms through the sleeves. I’m wearing her black silk blouse, and I hope she didn’t notice. The last time I wore something of hers without asking, she was pretty bitchy about it.
“Was…someone here?” Jill asks, peering into the kitchen at the row of empty beer bottles on the counter. I think I see a roach disappear down the neck of one. Hopefully, there’s enough backwash inside to drown it.
“Oh, yeah,” I try to say casually. “I was hoping you’d decide to come home last night instead of going to Rick’s. Lee Sanders and Causby stopped by.”
“Causby? He’s in town?” The rosy blush in her cheeks disappears.
I nod. “Well, he was last night. I don’t know how long he’s planning to stay.” I double knot the belt of my jacket around my waist and swallow against the dryness in my mouth.
“Well, you should’ve called me! Or shot me a text! I had my phone beside me all night! You should’ve called!”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t think you’d want to be bothered.”
She’s still shivering, her damp sundress sticking to her thighs, and I’m late for work, but neither of us move. The dripping umbrella is really starting to make a mess. I watch the drops run off the canvas, plunging with abandon into the rising puddle.
“For Causby? You should’ve called,” she says once more.
