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“Pretty much.”
I bristle. I shouldn’t. I hate that Beatrice is loaded and doesn’t care about what happens to me. Honestly, if she wanted to pay the entire house’s rent, she could. She doesn’t want to, though. That’s her prerogative.
I know that I can’t ask for handouts.
I understand this logically.
And I know that she’s doing more than enough by offering to help me get this job with her cousin, but I wish Beatrice was the kind of person who would be willing to be like, “You know what? You’re having a hard time. Obviously. I’ll help you.”
She doesn’t have to, obviously, but I wish that she would.
She can tell that I’m bothered because she crosses her arms under her chest in a protective manner. Her body language says she’s angry, but her voice sounds hurt.
“Are you serious right now? You want to fight about money?”
“I don’t.”
“It’s not my fault my parents have money, Alex.”
“I know.”
“And it’s not my fault that you don’t.”
That’s what it always comes down to. She’s rich. I’m not. She can do whatever the hell she wants. I can’t.
But I don’t want to fight with Beatrice. She’s my roommate. We have a cordial relationship. We aren’t friends even though we’re friendly. We’re polite. We get along most of the time.
That’s it, though.
I have this thing about living with friends. I think that it’s weird and a bad idea. I think that if you’re going to live with someone, you should really choose to live with people you don’t know that well. That way, if your living arrangements don’t work out, you don’t lose anything. If you room with friends and things don’t work out, you lose your friend. That’s a much higher price.
“Hey,” Beatrice softens her voice. “What’s really going on?”
“I’m just feeling stressed.” Because I suddenly care far less about getting the job and far more about whether I’m going to suck off her cousin the first day of work.
“I’ll cover the rent until your first paycheck with Ryan,” she says. I stare at her, shocked that she’s saying this. “You can pay me back with your first check.”
So, it’s not really a gift, but I’ll take it. She’s already covered me once. I’m embarrassed that she’s doing it again.
“Thank you,” I say. I’m embarrassed. Maybe that was the real reason she didn’t offer to help me out before. Maybe she didn’t want to totally humiliate me. She knows I’m proud. It’s a huge problem for me. After a couple of years in foster care, though, I learned that I don’t have much to be proud of. Now, anytime I can do something for myself, I try to. I have this idea that if I can just be strong enough, it’ll somehow make my dad’s memory happy.
It's really, really stupid.
“No problem. Glad everything went okay with Ryan.”
“Me too.”
“When do you start?”
“Monday.”
“So, what did you think?” Beatrice leans forward. She’s obviously happy to not be talking about money anymore. She also looks like she’s more than ready to do a little bit of gossiping. The problem is that I’m not sure how honest I really want to be with Beatrice.
This is her cousin, after all.
Is it fair to tell her that I thought he was stupidly hot?
Is it okay to divulge the fact that if he wasn’t her cousin, if he wasn’t super rich, and if he wasn’t my future boss, I’d want to jump his bones?
