Page 35 of A Series of Rooms
The distinct smell of Friday nights encompassed him as he pulled the shirt over his head. He paused, then wiped his palm over the mirror to clear away some of the heavy condensation.
Through the steam, the reflection that stared back at him looked like it could have belonged to someone else. He wished he could be someone else, too.
There were parts of him now that were nearly unrecognizable to the person he used to be. The legs that stretched out beneath the hem of the sweatshirt were pale and thin, all the tan, wiry muscle from years of track and soccer diminished from months of malnutrition. He’d lost some weight around his stomach, his arms, his face—places where he hadn’t really had much to lose to begin with. Now he just looked kind of sickly.
He forced his eyes away.
He was reaching for the pajama bottoms when Liam’s voice, muffled and pitched up in a way he didn’t often hear, pulled his attention from the other side of the door.
“...know it’s expensive. Yes, I know. It was just a...Mom, it was just an informational packet. I haven’t even applied yet.”
Jonah busied himself with redressing, folding his own dirty clothes into a neat pile, but it was impossible not to overhear his conversation through the thin walls.
“We don’t know that for sure. There’s always financial aid and scholarships and...Yeah, I know it seems like I’m working a lot, but it’s not that bad. My coworkers are nice, and it’s...it’s just a few double shifts.”
Oh, there were those seeds of guilt again. They seemed to have bloomed into full-grown weeds.
It wasn’t the first time he had heard Liam mention picking up hours at work, and certainly not the first time he had managed to work himself up over the idea that he was a direct cause of whatever financial distress Liam was facing. Somehow, though, it hadn’t really occurred to him until now that these weekly financial setbacks could be seriously hindering Liam’s future plans.
“I am still focusing on school. I can do both at once. I would have to do it in New York, too, you know. A lot of people my age work full time in school.”
Full time? Had Jonah known that? He knew he worked a lot, but...no wonder he was always so tired.
Guilt won out, or maybe he just selfishly couldn’t listen to any more of the problems he had inadvertently caused, and Jonah flipped the faucet on the sink, letting the running water drown out the rest of the conversation.
When silence fell outside the door, he cut the water and turned off the lights.
Liam was on the bed, his hair messy in the distinct way it got when he’d been running his fingers through it. Jonah was used to seeing that look after a particularly gruesome math problem, but the visual was much less appealing when he knew that the stress came from somewhere deeper.
“Hey,” Liam greeted him with a smile.
Jonah sank down on the edge of the opposite bed, his back turned to him. He fiddled with the socks in his lap, unfolding them to put on, mostly as a distraction from looking directly at his friend.
“Pizza should be here in ten,” Liam said.
“Okay.”
“Hey, you okay?” Liam asked.
“Fine,” Jonah tried.
He heard the familiar chime of the keychains on Liam’s backpack as he set it on the ground.
“What’s wrong?” Liam made no move to crowd his space, which Jonah appreciated as always, but he could practically feel the burn of his gaze searing through his back. The sting behind his eyes was building to an intensity he wouldn’t be able to contain much longer. He had several responses queued up and ready to fire back at him with perfect composure; a thousand different ways to say‘I’m fine’that he had mastered for the sake of survival. But none of them could get past the lump in his throat.
“Jonah?”
None of them but the truth.
“I don’t think we should do this anymore.”
If perfect stillness had a sound, like water freezing into ice, it would have been the silence that followed his words.
“What do you mean?” Liam asked, carefully calm.
“I...appreciate what you’ve been trying to do,” Jonah spoke slowly and deliberately. “But we both knew this was never a permanent arrangement, right?”
He was still facing away from Liam, his eyes flat and detached in the direction of the wall, but he could hear him shifting uneasily behind him. He could practically feel him fighting the urge to come closer.
