Page 88 of Roommating

And just like that, my sense of calm disappears and I burst into tears, shocking my mother, sister, and myself in one fell swoop.

Audrina shoots up in her chair. “Oh my God. What’s wrong?”

“Are you hurt?” Mom asks, alarm in her voice.

“I’m fine,” I choke out, but the uncontrollable sobbing makes me a liar, as do the big fat tears pouring out of my eyes. My chest heaves with them and I can’t stop.

The blurry blob that is my sister says, “Is this about Adam?”

Because I can’t speak at the moment, I shake my head in answer.

It’s not about Adam. At least it’s notallabout him (because who am I kidding? I didn’t like theideaof him. I likedhim). It’s everything: Adam, my bank account, the trip to Europe I didn’t know how much I wanted to take until I realized I couldn’t. But the true cause of my breakdown, without a shadow of a doubt, is the ease with which Audrina asks for and accepts our mom’s financial support while I can’t, or more accurately,won’t. While my sister manages to float through her period of economic distress using my mom as a raft, I’m drowning and it’s no one’s fault but my own.

“Massages have a way of releasing emotions you don’t even know you’re carrying,” Audrina says, now at my side rubbing my back.

“You can talk about sex with me, you know. We’re all grown-ups here,” Mom says.

Another spa client walks into the room, and we pause speaking while she pours a cup of tea and sits on an empty chair.

“It’s not about sex,” I hiss as quietly as possible. My gaze darts to my mom and quickly away. I’ve stopped actively crying, but my chin trembles in the aftermath.

“Then what is it about?” she asks.

Through my teeth, I say, “Not now.” I lift my chin toward thestranger in the room. “People come here to relax and treatments aren’t cheap. I won’t ruin it for them by doing this here.”

Mom pulls me up by the arm. “Then come with me.” She drags me toward the exit while Audrina looks on with a bemused expression.

“We’re in our robes!” I flash a timid, apologetic smile at the receptionist.

To the person at the front desk, Mom says, “I promise we’re not going any farther than the parking lot.” She removes her credit card from the pocket of her robe and hands it over. “This is collateral.”

I frown. “You brought your credit card into the massage with you? Isn’t that what the lockers are for?”

“I see you’ve regained the ability to communicate. Good. That will come in handy. Besides, your sister works here. They’ll know how to find us. Let’s go.” She pulls me out the door, where it’s a perfect June day—dry with a pleasant temperature of about seventy degrees. Too bad there’s a storm brewing inside me.

The spa is located in a small strip mall housing two other stores: a fancy sandwich shop and a bougie boutique. Fortunately, neither are heavily populated today and no one else is outside save for two women who just left the sandwich shop and are walking to their car. We wait for them to pull out before facing each other.

“This is about me, isn’t it?” Mom says, all knowing as ever.

The vision of my mother standing in a public parking lot wearing a fluffy white robe and towel-cloth slippers with her hair standing up at weird intervals and a postmassage pink glow to her face would make me laugh if we were out here to talk about anything else. “Sort of. You and Audrina.”

Her eyebrows draw together. “What about us?”

I wrap my robe tighter around me. I’m going commando underneath. “You always lectured us on doing whatever it took to befinancially independent and then you let her move back home with you rent-free.”

“Yes,” she says, as if it were a question to be answered.

I lick my lips.Fuck, this is hard. “Since graduating college, I’ve never asked you for anything. I didn’t think I could, and I also didn’t want to. I wanted to prove to you I could take care of myself like you did. But the thing is, I’m really struggling.”

She reaches for me.

“Please let me finish.” I take a deep breath and let it out. “My job pays crap, but it’s all I ever wanted to do so I don’t complain, except that I need to spread that money over a lot of things. My rent is cheap comparatively speaking, but it eats up most of my paycheck, and there are other expenses. I’m also paying off my school loans already because you put the fear of credit card debt in me growing up.”

“Guilty.”

“Carley isbeggingme to go to Europe with her this summer—she says I’m only young once and deserve a break from working and studying. I desperately want to go, but it’s not the responsible move for a struggling grad student whose automatic phone payment was declined for insufficient funds.”

Mom’s face goes white. “What?”

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