On the Roof

The sky is dark with few stars piercing through the twilight. The harvest moon hangs low and bright, signaling the approach of fall. I can feel the season change in the air, it’s not as warm as it was a few weeks ago. I should know to expect the temperatures to change, but so much has changed lately; I wish desperately for something to remain constant. 

The shingles under me scrape the backs of my legs. I’m wearing shorts, even though it feels much too cold for them. My upper body is wrapped in a jacket some boy left in my room two weeks ago. I already know he won’t be returning for it, nor will he ever admit he was there long enough to leave something behind. 

I’ve been sitting on the roof a lot lately. It’s my favorite place to cry when no one is home, and my favorite place to drink when they are. I’ve been living in a communal home for only a few months. My sister is renting one of the rooms downstairs, the rest of the rooms are filled with men over the age of twenty-one. They buy beer and stock the fridge with more alcohol than I’ve ever seen in my life; it will all be gone before next week. They ask me what I want before they go to the liquor store, which I appreciate because I am only eighteen years old.

One of my roommates, Kyle, is sitting next to me, sipping on a beer and spitting chewing tobacco into a red solo cup. He’s the youngest of the young men I board with and his room is right down the hall. He comes from a farming family in northern Iowa and speaks with a slight southern accent. I probably tell him too much about myself, but he’s a good listener and offers solutions to my problems. 

“I want to tell you something. Something stupid that I did,” I say, dipping my toes into the conversation rather than diving right in. 

Kyle chuckles a little and spits into the cup. The baseball cap he’s wearing covers his eyes in a deep darkness, so I don’t even bother trying to look into them. “What now?”. 

I know he’s entertained by my life, by my naive mistakes. I’ve been making a lot of mistakes recently, three major ones in two months to be exact. While Zach finds humor in my misfortune, I’ve thought about killing myself every single night for the past week. This is a secret I don’t bother telling him, knowing he’s not going to be sympathetic to those thoughts. 

“I may have made out with Parker,” I say quickly, like the words would burn my tongue if I let them linger. 

Kyle throws his head back and laughs. I simmer in his laughter, waiting for him to comprehend the shit I’ve stepped in. 

Parker lives downstairs, across the hall from my sister. I don’t even remember how it happened. I was lonely, he sent me a text asking me if I wanted to cuddle. I had been crying, and despite not wanting to cuddle with him specifically, I agreed. Laying there, tangled in his blankets and wrapped in the scent of his cologne, I allowed myself to cross a line. Having boundaries has not been my strong suit lately.  

All we did was kiss, and when I woke up in the morning I knew it had been a mistake. Not only did we live under the same roof, my sister had once confided in me that she thought Parker was cute. I was mortified that I had possibly done something to hurt my sister, and in the process, I had hurt myself. 

“It’s not funny, he won’t leave me alone,” I say, starting to giggle at my own bad luck. 

“Hold that thought, I need another beer before we keep talking about this. Do you need another one?” he asks, gesturing at the Mike’s Hard Lemonade in my hand. It’s still half full, I shake my head in response. 

Kyle crawls in through the window. I hear the fridge open, shut, then he crawls back out onto the roof. He pops the top and takes a long swig, “Alright, I’m ready,” he says. 

“Well, I feel bad, because I definitely shouldn’t have agreed to do anything with him in the first place,” I start. 

“No kidding,”  Kyle interrupts, sarcastically. 

“I know, I know. But now, he texts me like every night asking if I want to come sleep in his bed again. He’s knocked on my door asking me to sleep in mine, and I didn’t know what to say. I’ve had to start locking my door and pretending to be asleep just so I won’t have to answer,” I explain. 

“Why don’t you just tell him you’re not interested,” Kyle asks, packing more tobacco inside his lip. 

“That’s too easy,” I say, knowing how silly my excuse sounds. 

Kyle chuckles to himself, smiling widely as he brings the beer can to his lips for another sip. “I don’t know how you get yourself into this shit,”. 

“Me neither, but I wish it would stop,” I whine. 

“It would stop, if you would stop,” he says. 

There’s silence. I don’t like living in a reality where my problems are my own fault. I want something or someone else to blame, so I don’t have to be the one to apologize. I know I am hurting Parker, filling his head with false promises with my inability to speak on my own behalf. I know I am just hurting myself, over and over, but I have no solution. I want to keep doing it. It feels good to be wanted; I’ve never felt that before. 

“Parker broke our pact though, so I don’t really give a shit if you talk to him or not,” Kyle says, taking another long drink from his beer. From the way he leans his head back, I can tell the can is already almost empty. 

“Pact?” I question. 

“Aw, man,” Kyle sighs, as though he’s made a mistake. I keep staring at him in the darkness, hoping the stare bores into him, guilting him into continuing. He takes the last sip of his beer, crushes the can, and crawls back through the window without saying anything. I’m afraid he won’t come back, but then I hear the fridge open, close, and he appears in the window again. He pops the top of the beer as he sits back where he was. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, so you better not say anything to Parker or Dylan. Parker may not have even been a part of it, I can’t remember, so definitely don’t say anything to him,” he slurs. 

“I won’t tell anyone, what are you talking about?” I demand, waiting. 

“When you moved in, obviously we all thought you were super attractive,” he starts. My face burns in the dark. “So the three of us, I think it was the three of us, made a pact that we wouldn’t sleep with you so there wouldn’t be drama in the house,” Kyle explains. 

“You never thought to ask yourselves if I would want to sleep with any of you?” I ask. 

“Well, damn, I wasn’t suggesting that we were going to force ourselves on you. Just, you know, if you were interested in us, then we wouldn’t pursue you. But if Parker was a part of that pact, he just majorly broke the bro code,” Kyle says, then spits in the plastic cup again. 

“Well, my heart goes out to you and Dylan,” I say sarcastically. The sugar from the Mike’s Lemonade cramps my stomach and makes me feel like I’m going to vomit. “What am I supposed to do about Parker?” I ask. 

“Just keep ignoring him until he takes the hint, I guess. Or you could do the adult thing and talk to him,” Kyle suggests. 

There was silence and in my head I decided I wasn’t ready to do the adult thing. I think I never have been. Cooking my own dinners and doing laundry was something I was ready for, I’d been doing those things for myself for a long time. Making mistakes, being the bad guy, having to admit I am wrong are all things I am unfamiliar with. I’ve always made excuses, always hidden from the difficult things. My backbone feels more capable of carrying around the burdens of others than my own.

Tears start rolling down my cheeks. I drain the rest of my Mike’s Hard Lemonade into my mouth, guiltily. I regret moving into this place and living with men who treat me like objects to be debated over. I’m crying because I hate myself, I’ve never hated myself more. I’m crying because I’m scared, now not just of Parker, but Dylan and Kyle as well. The next time I see them I will be aware of their eyes on me and where they wander when we’re speaking. I will think about their thoughts as much as I ponder my own. 

I crawl back through the window and throw the empty glass bottle in the trash. I walk through the kitchen and make a right, my bedroom door is right there, waiting for me to hide inside. The room is small, but big enough for my bed and a desk to sit and write or do my homework, that’s all I really need anyway. I lock the deadbolt on the door and crawl beneath my Batman sheets.Every one expects me to be mature, to do the mature thing, but I still sleep on Batman sheets. How’s that for a paradox? 

I cry, because I am lonely, because I am hurt, and because I’m afraid it will always be this way. I fall asleep and wake up with a tight, red face and a headache.