Page 31 of Love me, Maddie Mendoza

She giggled. “It was a silly name. But not his fault.”

“Let’s watch the movie,” Nick said, probably because - just like me- he was a second away from talking trash about her boyfriend.Ex- boyfriend.

We ate our tacos in silence as the movie played. After we brushed off our containers; I set it all to the side, and we remained comfortable. Maddie was all over me. When I heard her sniffle, I held her tighter. I was selfish enough to be a little happy that I’d never see Peter’s face again, but I was trying really hard not to show it. When the film ended, Jason and Nick announced they were going to bed. They were barely gone when Maddie shuffled to the side to face me.

“I want you to move back to your room.”

“Told you it’s not going to happen. You need more privacy than me.”

True, she was the only girl in the house so I could live without for a while. It was ok.

“No.” She shook her head. “Bring the mattress in. I will sleep there and you can take your bed again. I’m not arguing about it, Z. It’s the right thing to do.”

I didn’t ask for the reason she was ok to share a room with me now. I knew why. I wanted to refuse, but it sounded much better than either of us staying in the living room.

“It won’t be weird between us.” She guaranteed. “You’d be the only one I’d be willing to share a room with. Plus, you have a nice TV in there and we can have our own movie nights.”

I chuckled and nodded. “All right then. Let’s do it.”

I stood up and offered my arm to Maddie. She took it and jumped off of the couch quickly. I grabbed one side of the mattress as she bounced to the other side. We moved the whole thing, sheets and all.

“Did you turn my bedroom into crochet hell, Mad Max?”

She gasped. “I’d never!”

Little liar.

She laughed away and half helped me to the bedroom, whisper-shouting “PIVOT” where she found fit for comic effect. When we got to the room, I threw the mattress right in the middle and surveyed the place.

Besides Maddie’s big suitcases, my bedroom was pretty much my bedroom. Oh and of course, her bed sheets on the bed and a thick multicolor crochet blanket, but that was just Maddie being Maddie.

“Go, go…” She urged me. “Go lay on your bed.”

“I can sleep on my own sheets tonight. We decide how to go about this later.”

She tsked me before I ever got the words out. Her hands went to my back as she pushed me toward the bed. “No sir. You sleep over there and I can do fine on the mattress. Come on!”

I let her guide me to the bed, and I fell there as she threw me. Maddie went to the mattress, and we both stared at the ceiling. I got comfortable with her soft sheets and her Maddie-smelling-pillow and she did with my things.

“I’m going to be an excellent roommate, Z,” she said.

“Do you think?”

“All those years having to jump a tree just to get to your room. I finally live here, isn’t it great?”

“It kind of is, Mad Max, it kind of is."

“Ineed a name, quick!”

“Excuse me?” she replied distractedly.

I shoved her shoulder, asking for attention. The red-head I met in the party was coming toward us and I needed Maddie to peel her eyes off the crochet and help me figure out the girl’s name. I never saw her before in our anthropology class, but I wasn’t very good with faces… or names, for that matter.

Maddie finally looked up, just a for a second, and then her nose was buried down again. “Cathy,” she whispered.

“Are you sure?” I frowned. “With a C?”

“I don’t know? Maybe a K? What difference does it make?”

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