Page 2 of This I Promise You
Get off my nuts and mind your own fucking business.
That is exactly what I want to say to this woman sitting in front of me. But I don’t say it because I need her help. With the amount of times I’ve bitten my tongue since I moved to North Carolina one week ago, you’d think I’d have bitten it clean through by now. She keeps asking personal questions that have nothing to do with student housing. I’ve been living in my car since the day after I left Kansas City back in December and I’m over it. School’s about to start and I need this apartment. I do not want to live in the dorms again. I can’t. But I don’t even know what else she wants from me.
“Mr. Acre.”
“Pleasestop calling me that. It’s Paul. Just Paul.”
“My apologies, Paul. Listen, I’m trying to help you. But you don’t have enough financial aid to afford single-living housing.” Mrs. or maybe Ms. or Miss, hell if I know, Gossard—according to her little nameplate—gives me the bad news. “I’m only asking about your relationship with your parents because if they were to help, then we might be able to make this work. Without them, I’m sorry.”
“I told you. They don’t like that I’m gay. We don’t talk. That’s why I moved here.” I curl in on myself. I shouldn’t be embarrassed to admit that. It’s just fucking with my head. And I’m really trying to avoid saying “gay” ’cause I swear she flinches every time.Gah, I need to get the hell outta here. I’m sure my sour face isn’t helping. I’m itching to get to the gym on campus. I just gotta move in first.
This was a bad idea. How am I supposed to afford living alone when I decided poetry was a viable career?
“If you were open to the dorms—”
“No. No dorms. I already told you that.”
“—or a roommate? Perhaps we could find duo-living housing for you.” She winces. “Would you at least accept a roommate?”
“Do I have a choice?” I sigh heavily and sit up in my chair for the first time since I sat down in this stuffy shoebox of an office. “For real, if that’s it then what the fuck ever. I just can’t live in the dorms.”
Fuck. I shouldn’t have said fuck. I shouldn’t lose my temper on the lady that holds my living situation in her hands. I wipe my hands down my face. This whole thing is stressing me out!
“I understand.” Her lips stretch into a thin line as she digs through the papers on her desk to staple them together and hand them to me. “Take this. Fill it out in the waiting area. I’ll work on finding you a roommate.”
“Thanks,” I deadpan and leave.
The waiting room is packed full of students and it’s far too loud for me to think, and my head is starting to pound. I should have eaten breakfast this morning. I’m getting the worst headache. I cannot with people right now, so I go sit on a bench out in the hall.
“Damnit.” I run my hand over my face again.
“You good?” someone asks.
I look up to find a gorgeous African American woman sitting on a bench directly across the wide hall from me. She is slender, impeccably dressed in a wine-colored turtleneck sweater dress and a wool trench coat to match. Her heels are the same glossy wine color with red bottoms and she has long box braids tied perfectly on top of her head. Her celebrity doppelganger is 1,000 percent Zendaya. Holy shit, it’s uncanny. It’s the whole vibe she’s giving off, too. And all she’s doing is sitting there.
My solitude is over as quickly as it came. “Uh, yeah. I’m good. This day is just not going the way I want.”
“Same.” She sets her clipboard next to her and leans back against the wall. “I’ve been trying to get an apartment for a millennium and these bitches ‘can’t find my original application’so now I might have to live in the dorms. Again! I did last semester and I literally cannot anymore. I could live off campus ’cause, like, money isn’t an issue, but it’s too far away for all the shit I have going on. Whatever. Doesn’t even matter to these people that I’m a legacy. Which is incredibly in-fucking-convenient. But again, whatever.”
“They told me I can’t afford my own apartment. Not enough financial aid.” I try to be aloof as I shrug away my problems, but I’m so anxious right now that I’m regretting ever leaving Kansas City to begin with. I have to keep telling myself that this move is good for me. I just wish my brain would believe the words I keep feeding it. But I’m here now. Might as well fill out these forms so I can get to the gym and blow off some steam. Hopefully she’ll stop talking to me so I can focus.
“Well isn’t this just serendipitous.” She looks far too happy.
Shit.
Guess we’re still conversing. Fine, I’ll bite. “Why’s that?”
I narrow my eyes at her, hoping she’ll take the hint. She doesn’t.
“Well, webothdon’t want to live in the dorms and webothcan’t get our own place. Thus it’s meant to be!” She’s so cool and chill and carefree and gorgeous that I envy her. Like the whole world is her play toy and she can do or say whatever she wants. I’m just some wound-up-tight yo-yo ready to drop into the Grand Canyon and explode.
“What is?” I ask with so much annoyance in my tone. I don’t mean to per se. I know she can tell and I kind of feel bad, but I’m just not in the mood right now.
I close my eyes and rub comforting circles into the side of my temple. I really should have eaten something.
“Can you not utilize more of the English language?” She scoffs. “We can just be each other’s roommates. Duh!”
I snap my eyes open in bewilderment. This cannot be happening. “I don’t know you.”
