This Is Where We Live - By Janelle Brown Page 0,64
come to some kind of dead end in his life, Jillian’s words returned to him with a new, cruel edge. But what if you have nothing left to compromise? he asked his mother, mutely.
He rose from his seat, stumbling blindly out of the booth with no particular destination in mind. He found himself standing just below one of the dancing girls, a pretty blonde in a spangled silver minidress, devastatingly young. She glanced down at him just as she flung her arms up over her head, in jubilant answer to the rising call of the pop tune on the jukebox, and then bestowed a fairy-tale smile on him, a smile of such pure beatific joy that Jeremy wanted to cry.
“I’m still here,” he said out loud, unsure whether he was addressing the girl or the former members of Audiophone or himself. “I’m still here.”
He arrived home drunk and furious. The street was quiet, the houses all locked down for the night, only the motion-detecting security lights illuminating his path as he made his way toward his front door. He slammed the door closed behind him, not thinking about whether it might wake up the tenants of the house until it was too late.
In the living room, he could hear the buzz of the television set—was Claudia still awake?—and stumbled toward the sound, stopping first in the kitchen to raid the fridge. His beer was gone—again. He was pretty sure that Lucy was giving it to her doctor boyfriend, which just pissed him off even more. In a petulant act of minor revenge, he helped himself to her bag of toasted coconut marshmallows and popped one in his mouth, then crammed another one in and another until his mouth was stuffed full. He was still chewing his way through the toxic fluff when he arrived in the living room to find the marshmallows’ rightful owner sitting there, much to his dismay.
Lucy sat in her floral chaise in front of the television, wrapped in a silky pink robe with some sort of feathery trim. The overhead lights were off but she’d lit a cluster of candles that sat in the center of the coffee table, releasing a faint scent of carbon and vanilla. SpongeBob SquarePants flickered on the screen.
“Hail to the conquerer.” Jeremy intended this to be funny but he couldn’t stop the bitterness from slurring his words. “She gains mastery of the remote.”
Lucy flinched. Her eyes flickered to the bag of marshmallows in Jeremy’s hand. He held the bag out to her and she opened her mouth to say something, but then shut it and shook her head instead.
Jeremy sat down heavily beside her on the chaise. “Why are you watching a children’s television show?”
Lucy shrugged. “There’s nothing in cartoons that will make me feel bad,” she said. “There’s enough horrid stuff in the world that I have to deal with every day at the hospital, so I don’t really want to watch it on TV when I come home. No one ever dies in these kinds of shows unless they’re really bad guys.”
Jeremy was struck silent by this; in his drunken state it seemed like a rather profound thought. He examined his roommate with a new respect. Lucy sat up against the cushions, pulling the robe tighter around her. He could see the ridged outlines of her nipples under the straining satin, the drape of her fleshy thighs. He found himself getting a minor hard-on despite himself and shifted his attention to the television, where SpongeBob SquarePants was having his temperature taken by a blobby pink creature that appeared to be an obese starfish.
Next to him, Lucy shifted away slightly, tilting her torso to maximize the space between them. She seemed vaguely frightened: Was he really that scary? Had he been too obvious about his contempt for her? He wasn’t a bad guy, was he? He was suddenly desperate to know what he looked like to her. Maybe someone who was a complete outsider could look at him objectively and tell him what everything was all about. The last of his anger fizzled away, replaced by a deep, shamed sadness.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t been very friendly to you,” he said to the television. “I’m just a little protective of my personal space.”
Lucy turned to study him. “I’m not that bad,” she said. “Even if I’m not as interesting as you guys.”
“I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.” He paused. “My band broke up tonight.”