Roomies - Christina Lauren Page 0,6
in Paris. Robert told me to take the night off, and he doesn’t need to be at work until around five today anyway. I know I won’t see Calvin tonight, so I’m trying—and failing—to banish him from my thoughts. The memory of my first glimpse of his face and voice is blurred by a cocktail of feelings: First, there’s disappointment. He was my happy place . . . why was I compelled to venture outside my predictable routine and ruin it by speaking?
Next, there’s anger and confusion. Why didn’t he tell the paramedics the truth? Why did he run away?
And finally, there’s attraction . . . I still really, really want to make out with him.
With a hammering heart, I jog down the stairs into the station the next morning, bag tight to my hip as I nudge past the slower-moving commuters. At the bottom, I pull up short, always unprepared for the sound of Calvin tearing through more up-tempo, elaborate pieces. Most days, he’s strictly classical guitar. But for whatever reason, on Wednesdays he seems to favor flamenco, chamamé, and calypso.
The crowd is thick at 8:45. It smells like dirty steel and spilled soda, coffee and the pastry the guy next to me is unself-consciously shoving in his mouth. I expected to feel at least some emotional turbulence when returning to the scene of my near death, but other than wanting some answers from Calvin, I don’t. I’ve been here so many times that the banality of my memories still overrides the trauma. It still just feels . . . ooh, busker and meh, subway.
I take the last few seconds to rally before Calvin comes into view. I’m generally not one for confrontation, but I know I’ll never stop overthinking what happened Monday night if I don’t at least say something. His feet appear first—black boots, turned-up cuffs—then his guitar case and legs—a rip in the knee of his jeans—hips, torso, chest, neck, face.
A traffic jam of emotions always clogs up my throat when I see his expression, and how transported he becomes when he plays, even in the chaos of the station. I push them down, digging for the memory that he left me shouting like a crazy person in the back of an ambulance.
He looks up right as I move in front of him. The shock of eye contact makes my heart roll over and I wince; my righteous indignation has deserted me. His eyes drop to my cast, and then return directly to the strings of his guitar. Beneath the shadow of his stubble, I can see a flush climb over his cheeks.
This acknowledgment buoys me. I open my mouth to say something just as an E train shrieks to a stop on the platform only a dozen yards away, and I’m quickly swallowed in the sea of people pouring out of it. Breathless, I look back through the crowd, only to catch Calvin packing up his guitar and jogging up the stairs.
Reluctantly, I move deeper into the station, nestled in the herd of commuters. It’s notable that he looked up, right? He doesn’t usually do that. It’s almost like he was waiting for me to appear.
The C train pulls into the station, too, and we all take a few steps closer to the tracks, closer to each other, ready to jockey for a spot inside.
And so begins my completely unnecessary ritual.
Robert is waiting for me in front of the Levin-Gladstone Theater when I approach. It’s probably more accurate to say that he’s waiting for the coffee I bring every Wednesday through Sunday. When I hand it over, I catch a flash of the telltale logo on the cup, and am sure Robert does, too. Madman Espresso is ten blocks away. If Robert realizes that I take the train every morning to an out-of-the-way coffee shop because I want to see Calvin, he doesn’t mention it.
He probably should. I need my ass kicked.
The wind blows Robert’s red scarf up and around his black wool coat, like a wild flag waving in the middle of the gray steel view along Forty-Seventh Street. I smile up at him, letting him have this quiet moment of transition.
Work is stressful for him lately: It Possessed Him has taken off in a really insane way in the past nine months, and all shows are sold out for the foreseeable future. But our lead actor, Luis Genova, only signed on for a ten-month run, which comes to an end in a month.