I should just quit while I’m ahead before I injure something I don’t want to injure, namely my pride.
It’s not like my brother is going to care if I quit. He never niggled me to join in the first place—it was just something I wanted to do coz he’d done it. If I continue walking in his footsteps, I’m going to end up with a wife, ha ha.
Thirty minutes later, the doorbell rings and I am accepting a large pizza box, two cardboard boxes containing Lord only knows what, and a liter of cola. I hand the delivery bloke a five-dollar bill as a tip.
It smells delightful, and my stomach growls.
“Roomie, dinner is here!” I shout it up the stairs, relishing the way that sentence sounds.
Roomie.
I have a roommate.
How American of me!
Eliza appears at the top of the stairs, flushed and wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans—like she’s been working all day at a laborious job and needs a shift break.
“Awesome, I’m starving!”
We eat in silence for a while, having set ourselves up in the den in front of the telly, plates and pizza and napkins strewn every which way, the glow from the screen our only light.
“Do you want to talk about how you’re feeling?” I interrupt the mellow vibe, throwing the question into the atmosphere with reckless abandon, curious about what’s going through her mind after all that’s transpired the past twenty-four hours.
“How I’m feeling about what?” A slice of pizza dangles from her mouth mid-chew, the pointy part of the triangle between her teeth.
“You know—being kicked out of your flat.”
“I wouldn’t call it being kicked out so much as…” Her sentence drifts off.
“Being kicked out of your flat?”
“I hate the way that sounds.” She chews then swallows. Chases it with a chug of water.
“But it’s true.”
“Fine, it’s true. More or less.”
“More.”
Eliza shoots me an irritated scowl. “Would you knock it off?”
“I can’t seem to.” I laugh. “But honestly, Eliza, if you want to talk about it, I’m all ears.” Much like Prince Charles, I am all. Ears.
“Do you actually want to talk about it?” she shoots back, skepticism written all over her face. “Or are you just being polite?”
I’m always polite. Besides, don’t females like discussing how they feel and shite?
“You should get your feelings out since your two mates dumped on you.”
“I mean—I’ve been messaging my friends from back home. That has helped a lot.”
Her friends from back home. Makes me realize I don’t know her background all that well any more than she knows mine.
“Where are you from?”
“Not far from here—about three hours south. In Indiana.”
Indiana. Huh.
“Do you want to live in Indiana when you graduate?”
Eliza laughs, a tinkly, merry little sound I’ve not heard before. “No, probably not. There isn’t much where I grew up, and I think I’ll want to be more in a big city. What about you?”
“I’ll return to London. I have a flat there, and my brother is living there with his wife while I’m here.”
“His wife? How old is he?”
“Twenty-three. Just had a birthday.”
Her eyes go wide. Real wide. “Twenty-three! How long have they been married?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. Six months? Eight?”
I don’t keep track of shite like that; Mum does. When it’s their anniversary, she’ll message to let me know, and I’ll text my brother HAPPY ANNIVERSARY and that will be that. Same goes for most birthdays and events.
“There has to be a story there somewhere…”
And clearly she wants to hear it.
“There is,” I begin, settling in to tell the tale of how my brother Ashley met, married, and fell in love with his wife, Georgia. “When my brother moved here, he partied a lot. One night, a girl walked up to him on a dare at the rugby house and asked him on a date—she was supposed to pick the ugliest bloke in the room and ask him out. And that bloke was my brother.”
“Wait, wait, wait—hold up. So what you’re saying is, she asked him on a date because he’s ugly?”
“He’s not ugly.”
“Oh. Then why did she ask him out if that was part of the dare?”
“Are you going to let me tell the story?”
“Sorry.” She locks her lips and throws away the key.
“Georgia was being hazed. Part of the track team and all that.” I wave a hand around airily, as if that explains it all. “If you met her, you would wonder how she left herself open to that—she’s quite formidable and it’s hard to imagine her falling prey to that behavior, but whatever. This is their story.”
Eliza nods along.
“So according to the legend, Georgia walked up to him and started chatting him up, having a bit of conversation before landing the final blow—the problem is, he was well aware that the track team hazes their members this way, and he was insulted, to say the least. What bloke wouldn’t be?