I walk in and close the door behind me.
“Kind of helps you get that feeling that you’re in college, though, right?” she asks.
I set my purse on the table.
“You know how they’re always talking about the wild sex parties that go on in college,” Jana says, though I’m not sure why she keeps talking.
I go to the cupboard and pull down a glass, which I then fill with cold water.
“You seem pretty mad,” Jana says. “Will you at least talk to me?”
I take a sip of my water and look at her.
“Look, I don’t know what the big deal is,” she says. “Is that what you wanted to come home to? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that it’s anyone’s fault. I mean, these things just happen.”
The guy’s dressed except for his shoes and socks, but no doubt as a reaction to the palpable tension in the room, he just picks up the rest and heads for the door. I set my water on the table.
“Well,” she says, “now you’ve scared off my date. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve gone out and brought a stranger home? A girl’s gotta be able to go out and make a mistake every once in a while,” she says. “That’s what keeps you young.”
“It doesn’t bother me that you’re having sex in the apartment,” I tell her.
“Oh, good,” she says, taking a deep breath, relieved until she realizes she’s put her shirt on but not her bra.
“It doesn’t bother me that I don’t know the guy or that you don’t either,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says, “are we doing a thing here, because I don’t know what my next line is supposed to be.”
“It wouldn’t bother me if you came home with nine guys, five women and a bowling ball,” I tell her.
“A bowling ball,” she says, forcing laughter. “That’s funny.”
“What bothers me,” I say, “is that after yet another crappy day in my own life, I come home, just happy to be back where I’m comfortable, where I can retreat from the world, to find I can’t even enter my
own apartment without having to walk through your inability to say no to anyone about anything.”
“That’s not fair,” she says. “I picked him up, and I don’t just go around letting people tell me what to do all the time.”
“Then why is your mom still here?” I ask. “She’s the one that does it. She’s the one that gets you acting crazy whenever she’s around. I don’t even care that I walked in on you, I care that there’s such a fundamental lack of respect for me and the fact that this is my home, too. I just wanted to come home, unwind and try to forget that there’s not a single complicated thing in my life, but I can’t even do that.”
“I get that you’ve got this hate/despise relationship with my mom and everything, but you really need to chill,” she says. “I didn’t know you were coming home. If I did, we would have gone to the bedroom.”
“It’s my couch!” I blurt. “Didn’t we have a rule: No sex on common area furniture without at least two towels down? People have to sit on that thing, you know.”
“Oh, so now I’m just disgusting,” she says, walking over to the couch, lifting two towels I hadn’t seen before for the naked bodies that had been thrashing about atop them. “Maybe I’m not the problem. Maybe the real problem is that you can’t figure out how to make things work with your own guy and you’re just pissed when you see anyone else having a good time.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” she says. “I bet that’s it. Things aren’t going so well with you and Mason because you don’t know how to keep a man around longer than fifteen minutes and now suddenly I’m the bad girl.”
“I’m so not in the mood to stand here and listen to your bullshit,” I tell her.
That startles us both. Hearing other people curse has never really bothered me—I heard more than enough of it growing up with dad and mom’s business partners—but I never, ever talk like that. Jana is well aware of this.
“You’re losing it,” Jana says. “I don’t know what you think gives you the right—”
“Oh, will you stop playing the wounded animal?” I ask. “You’re really starting to piss me off.”
“You know what?” Jana asks. “I’m getting out of here. I don’t have to listen to this. After you come in here and scare my date off, I’m not going to stay here and take this.”