Page 103 of Things I Read About

I smile. That’s always been a favorite of mine.

“What?” Nate says, looking back and forth between me and the road. “That’s the first time you’ve smiled in a week, what is it?”

“That idiom. It was Charles Lamb, an early-eighteenth-century poet, writing to another poet, saying that he would never again use two different inks when writing a letter. He said, ‘You cannot imagine how it cramps the flow of the style.’So dramatic. Over ink. I’ve always like that one.”

I look over at him, his brows are raised.

“It’s weird. I know.”

“I didn’t say that.” He checks the mirrors obsessively, then changes lanes. “So, the piano, brains, and idioms?”

I open my mouth to add mafia romance novels to his list, but I stop. I can’t chat with him. I can’t joke around and get to know him, or be known by him, without it hurting. So, I nod and shift back to the window. And my chest throbs and my eyes sting. But thankfully I manage not to sniff.

_____

“I don’t know, I just don’t love the neighborhood, sweetie.” Susan’s face says in my phone screen. This is the third place, and my personal favorite.

“But it’s way bigger, closer to campus, it even has a little yard. I won’t have to worry about piano noise,” I try.

“Let me talk to Dad,” she says, not looking at the camera, because we both know that’s code forI’m going to give you time to come to your senses and agree with me.

“All right.” I admit defeat.

“All of them are great options, good prices, I just want to make sure you’re safe, okay?” She adds.

I smile and nod, and then we say our goodbyes.

Nate is standing at the edge of the worn, empty, dusty living room space. He makes a weird grunting sound, so low I almost miss it.

I look his way. “Uh oh,” I mutter. “You’ve got your hands on your hips.” He looks down at his hands, then relaxes. “You know who else does that right before a lecture? Susan.”

He puts those large hands up in surrender. “No lecture. All three choices are plenty safe, or at least, they will be after your family covers them in security cameras.” He takes a couple steps toward me, though we still have many feet of scuffed hardwood flooring between us. “Just seems to me like if you can make a perfect score on the MCAT, you can probably choose your own apartment. Or house.” He gestures around us.

“They just worry.”

“Why didn’t you say what you wanted? That you want to put a big grand piano in here and play until your ears bleed? You can’t do that in an apartment building.”

I almost recoil, surprised by how well he knows me. “Suze already knows that.”

“Does she?” He tilts his head.

“Yes.” I puff up, suddenly defensive. How dare he act like he knows me better than my own family. “And the apartment complex has a ton of amenities, taking things like the trash, laundry, and finding a gym off my mental plate so I can focus on school. And a lot of other med students live there. She knows I’ll get lonely holed up here with just my books. She’s just looking out for me.”

He watches me for a minute before he goes back to his phone. I scoff in irritation, that he is really just going to start ignoring me in the middle of a conversation. The first real conversation we’ve had in a week.

“You know you—”

Bzzz.

“These are just the first few I found,” he says. “But I think you should consider it.”

I pull up our text thread and see a link.

“You found apartments for me?”

“Uh, no,” he says, fumbling. “This is, changing the subject. Kinda.”

I tap on the link. It takes me to a shared document.