I heard the front door slam and then voices in the kitchen. It was Ryan and another girl who wasn’t Tarah. Fuck. It must have been the new roommate. After my day from hell, it skipped my mind that she was moving in today. I wasn’t in the mood to meet her but couldn’t exactly stay locked inside my room all night. If I went outside even to grab a drink, I’d have to introduce myself.
I cracked open the door but couldn’t get a look at her from where she was standing in the kitchen. All I knew about this girl was that she was a childhood friend of Ryan’s and according to him, she looked like one of the Olsen twins. Since I mainly associated the Olsen twins with that show Full House, I sort of had this weird vision of a new roommate named Michelle Tanner with puffy cheeks, walking around saying, “you got it, dude.”
I smoked a cigarette to gear myself up and was just about to head out to the kitchen when a story she was telling stopped me in my tracks. She giggled as she reminisced with Ryan about an ex-boyfriend in high school who used to write her poems inside of origami birds. Some guy named Stuart.
Origami birds? How fucking dumb.
I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself. I walked out into the kitchen and laughed. “That is…the STUPIDEST fucking thing I have ever heard.”
She jumped a little, seeming startled by my sudden appearance.
I reached out my hand. “Hi, I’m Jake.”
She was short, had long, dirty blonde hair and a small pinned-up nose. The only thing about this girl that really resembled the Olsen twins specifically were the gigantic blue eyes now scanning the tattoos covering my arm. Then, she glanced up at me and looked down again quickly when my eyes met hers for a second. You would’ve thought I was holding a flashlight to her face.
Was I making her uncomfortable?
“You must be Neenee,” I joked.
I knew her name was Nina.
“It’s Nina, actually.” As she took my hand, she finally looked straight into my eyes.
“I know your name. I’m just fucking with you.” I smiled.
“Nice to meet you, Jake.”
Her hand trembled in mine. I was definitely making her nervous. I just couldn’t figure out why.
I decided to break the ice. “So, who is Stuart, why is he making you origami bird poems, and who cut off his balls?”
She laughed. At least she had a sense of humor. And a pretty smile.
A really fucking pretty smile.
“Stuart was my boyfriend freshman year of high school. Ryan decided to bring him up now for no good reason.”
“What brings you to Brooklyn?”
“I start nursing school on Monday. Long Island University.”
“Isn’t that in Long Island?”
I knew where it was.
“No, there’s a Brooklyn campus. It’s actually not far from the apartment.”
“With your fear of subways, that’s a good thing,” Ryan said.
Wait. What?
“What’s this, now?” I asked.
“Thanks, a lot, Ryan,” Nina said. Her face was turning redder by the second.
He apologized to her, and she tried to change the subject, but you could tell she was still embarrassed.
I interrupted her because I needed to know. “Are you seriously afraid of the subway or something?”
“She’s afraid of everything,” Ryan said. “Planes, elevators, heights…”
Nina looked over at me, and whether she realized it or not, the fear in her eyes was apparent.
“I just get a little nervous in crowded, contained places. That’s all.” She smiled, trying to brush it off.
I nodded in understanding. “It’s like a phobia. So, places that make you feel trapped?”
“Yeah, basically.”
I got the feeling there was more to this. She might have been trying to downplay it, but her eyes betrayed her, exhibiting a dark honesty that contradicted everything else. Something about the way she looked at me reflected how I felt inside, too. I couldn’t explain it, but I experienced a connection with this girl right then. It was like for a moment, she saw through my façade in the same way I could see beneath the fake smile she gave me when defending her phobias. There was a lot more to this, a lot more to her story. And she couldn’t begin to know the half of mine.
“Hmn,” I said.
She cleared her throat. “So, where do you work?”
She was trying to change the subject. I decided to have a little fun with her.
“I’m an electrical engineer for a company in the city. We design stadium lighting. And at night, I dance…at a male strip club.”
The skin on her face pinked up before my eyes. Bingo.
“Seriously?”
“Yup.” I turned to Ryan. “You didn’t tell her she was living with Magic Fuckin’ Mike?”
She just stood there speechless. She had this innocence about her that I wasn’t used to seeing in girls her age. The effect I seemed to have on her was exhilarating, though. When her face eventually turned from pink to red, I decided to put her out of her misery.
“I’m just fucking with you again.”
“You’re not a stripper?”
“I like you. You’re an easy target. It’s gonna be fun to have you around.”
I walked over to grab a banana and felt her watching me. I bit off the entire first half in an exaggerated way. As much as I loved them, I didn’t normally eat them like an orangutan while crossing my eyeballs. I was doing it to get a reaction out of her and enjoyed the suddenly amused look on her face. Her eyes, which were so fearful and sullen moments ago, now seemed to be genuinely smiling back at me.