physiology book, I ended up thinking about something else—usually about how bad my grades were going to be that semester.
“Yeah.” He sat up straight, scratching his neck. “This job does take up a lot of your time, doesn’t it?” He suddenly looked very serious, and though my room was cold, the tips of his ears were pink. “I’ve actually been thinking about that.” He cleared his throat. “I was thinking how nice it would be, for you and for me, if you didn’t have to do this job next year.”
I waited, my eyes moving over his shoulders, his hand resting on the sheet.
“You know Rudy graduates this year. He’s going to move out.”
Before he could finish, I was shaking my head. “I can’t move in with you,” I said. “I can’t pay that kind of rent.” It was true. I would have to apply to be an RA my senior year as well. The last time I saw my father, he’d asked me twice if I was on schedule to graduate, and what kind of financial aid I thought I might get for medical school.
“Right.” Tim sat up so the sheet fell over him. He looked a little Roman, wearing a toga. “The thing is, you wouldn’t have to. You know I got that scholarship. And I’m working at my dad’s office this summer, and he…Let’s just say he’s happy about the scholarship, and he’s making things easy on me. I’ll have enough to pay for that apartment myself. Or we could move into a different one. I could pay for the bills, everything.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to mislead him. But I was so flattered that he’d asked. I wanted to just stay in this moment, his invitation, the romance of it, hanging in the air.
“Okay,” he said. “It would be nice if you said something now.”
My eyes moved around my dorm room, at the bare linoleum, the blank walls, the vibrating pipes overhead.
“I mean, otherwise, you’re going to have to keep this job until you graduate, right?” He looked a little pained. “You’re going to be living in the dorm your senior year.”
I nodded, picturing his apartment, with its pretty wood floors and the balcony off each bedroom. One of the balconies was big. I could make a terrace garden. The kitchen was small, but it would be wonderful to get to cook for myself, to cook nice meals with Tim, and to not have to walk across a parking lot every time I wanted to eat. I would never have to see the dining hall again. I would never have to eat off another orange tray.
Someone knocked at my door.
“Hello?” I turned back to the door, checking to make sure it was chained.
“It’s me. Marley.”
“Do you…do you need something?”
“I just wanted to get your opinion on something. I wasn’t sure about this shirt.”
Tim’s eyes moved from the door back to me. He looked as if he were about to say something that might make me laugh. I leaned forward, away from him. “Uh, can I tell you tomorrow? I’m sort of…I’m in bed.”
“Oh. Sure. Sorry. I didn’t think that…” Her voice was already growing fainter. “Sorry.”
Tim smiled. I smiled back.
“What?” he asked. “Is it the living together thing?”
“No. No, I just…you know.” I knew what I had to say, and how to say it. I just didn’t want to. He looked so happy. “I have to think about, what if…something happens?”
His eyebrows lowered. He moved his hand through my hair. He really had no idea what I meant.
“What if we break up?” I whispered, as if a lower volume might soften the words. “And then what do I do? I wouldn’t have this job anymore. Where would I live?”
His hand moved away from my hair. “I don’t think we’re going to break up. Do you?”
“I don’t know.”
We stared at each other. I had just blurted it out. It seemed such an obvious answer. Of course I didn’t know. He didn’t know. Neither of us could possibly know. But he looked hurt.
“I don’t mean that I think we’re going to. Or that I want to,” I added quickly. “I just mean that, if I give up this job, that’s kind of…it for me.”
He appeared to be taking in this information. He rubbed his chin and squinted at the cinder-block wall. “It’s ridiculous,” he said slowly, his eyes moving over the water pipes. “It’s ridiculous that they don’t let you control the heat in each