Urban

My Roommate's Brother Intro

Added 2022-04-05 13:48:37 +0000 UTC

ALL STORY LIST | PARTS - PART 1 | PART 2

Autor - N. Crescent

It was all Carl, my roommate could talk about for weeks: his brother was coming to stay with us for the weekend. I couldn’t tell if he was excited about the visitor if he was dreading the visit it had been ages since he’d last seen his brother. “It must be over five years now since I last saw Tanner,” Carl said to me. Carl and Tanner were close when they were young kids, but they drifted apart when they became teenagers.

Carl was into sports. He played football for many years and he got into partying at a young age. Tanner was apparently the opposite, taking absolutely no interest in sports, had few friends, and he’d never gone to a party in his life, as far as Carl knew. By senior year, they hardly talked, and then they both moved to different states. At first, they would text one another from time to time, but that eventually stopped as they never had much to talk about.

“He keeps everything to himself,” Carl said to me. “You can always tell there’s something on his mind, but he never just comes out and says it. It’s frustrating.” I’d known Carl for almost five years since we both started college. We both played on the same college football team. He was the quarterback, and I was the running back. We took a few of the same classes, we had a lot of the same friends, and we went to all of the same parties. I suppose you could say we were close buddies.

I introduced Carl to his girlfriend, now fiancée. She was an old friend of mine. Carl had always been very grateful. He even offered to be my wingman until I found myself a nice lady. But I think he was starting to regret that offer. “God, Martin, you’re so damn picky,” he said to me once, planting his face into his palms.

I can’t even count how many times Carl went out of his way to set up dates for me, only to hear me find little problems with every girl he chose. “She laughs too much,” I would say, or, “She was lousy in bed,” or, “She brushes her teeth funny.” “You think everyone’s lousy in bed and what do you mean, she brushes her teeth funny?” “I don’t know, it just rubbed me the wrong way.” I must have been so annoying, but I just knew that if it bugged me after a single date, it would drive me absolutely nuts after a couple of years.

And I wasn’t looking to change anyone. I didn’t want anyone who wanted to change me, so why should I have the right to want to change someone else? I appreciated Carl’s efforts, but none of the girls he picked for me got me excited. None of them sparked that fire that I was looking for. I was a firm believer in love at first sight, even though I’d never been struck by that arrow. ‘One day,’ I always told myself. “You just need to settle on someone and accept their flaws,” Carl said to me, but it was easy for him to say. He and his fiancée were perfect together.

As far as he was concerned, she had no flaws. Maybe I was just destined to be a bachelor for the rest of my life that’s trendy these days, always being single, never being tied down. Who needs love anyway, right? It was late when I heard the knock at our door. I’d already been in bed for about an hour, but I wasn’t able to fall asleep due to the creaking floorboards in the other room: Carl pacing back and forth as he waited for his brother’s cab to drop him off. I listened to Carl as he hurried to the door, and then I heard the door open.

“Um, hi, can I help you?” Carl said. There was a silence. Whoever was at the door didn’t have a voice deep enough or loud enough to reach my ears through my closed bedroom door. I sat up and looked out my window. There was a cab pulling away. I tried to look down at whoever was at our house, but I could only see a sliver of a suitcase on our doorstep. “Oh my God,” I heard Carl say, and there was another long silence.

And then, “Are you fucking with me?” I went to my door and carefully grabbed the handle. I had to see for myself what was happening. My curiosity had been more than piqued. I gently pushed the door open and peeked my head out. The living room was silent. Carl stood with his lips parted, staring at a pretty, young blonde, who was standing in our doorway. She had nice long legs, and a soft, gentle face. She was biting her bottom lip and she looked pale as if she’d just delivered some terrible news to Carl.

An anxiety-filled my heart. Was it about Tanner? Was he in some sort of accident on his way to our house? He was taking a Greyhound bus through the mountains, and it was the middle of the winter. You always hear about buses going over cliffs. “Is everything alright?” I asked, and both Carl and the blonde woman looked at me.

“It’s fine, man, go back to sleep,” Carl said. His eyes were wide and his gaze was inward as if everything was not in fact fine. He’d just been given some heavy news, but clearly, it wasn’t any of my business. “Alright. If you need me, don’t be afraid to wake me up,” I said, and then I receded back into my room. Carl invited the woman into our house I knew because I could hear two sets of footsteps entering our living room.

But for the rest of the night, Carl kept the volume of his voice low, and all I could hear was indistinguishable muffled mutterings. I tried to press my ear to the door to get an idea of what was going on, but I couldn’t make out anything they were saying. After about twenty minutes, I gave up and went to sleep.

It was rare that I was awake before Carl, and the next morning was one of those rare occasions. Especially strange was the fact that I was able to make breakfast, clean up, and watch a couple of hours of television and Carl still wasn’t awake. I was tempted to go check on him to make sure he was okay, or to see if he was even in the house at all. Maybe he’d gone with that girl God forbid to the morgue to identify a body.

It was a morbid thought, but I couldn’t shake the image of Carl’s pale face from my mind, his inward gaze, and his parted lips. Something happened the night before, and the curiosity was driving me insane. And then I noticed the pair of women’s shoes by the door. Was that girl still here? Did she stay the night? I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and then she walked in: the cute, little blonde from the night before.

Her hair was messy and she was only wearing a long t-shirt I couldn’t tell if there were shorts or even panties under that shirt. There certainly wasn’t a bra, and if there was, it was doing nothing to stop her perky nipples from pushing against the soft cotton of her shirt. She jumped when she looked up and saw me. She pressed the palm of her hand to her heart and said, “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be sorry, I’m the one who startled you,” I said.

Who was this woman and what was she doing in our house? I wanted to ask, but I had a good feeling it wasn’t my business to know unless Carl wanted to tell me. I didn’t want to pry and go behind Carl’s back after he’d already dodged me the night before. “Is Carl awake yet?” she asked. “Not that I know,” I said. “Understandable. We were up pretty late last night. Do you mind if I have some cereal?”

“By all means,” I said, opening the cupboard for her so she could pick out a box of cereal. I even retrieved a bowl for her. I took a seat at the kitchen table, unfolding the morning newspaper, and I watched her curiously as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. She bent over slightly as she opened drawers looking for a spoon. I pretended not to notice, not telling her where the spoons were, so I could bask in the view for just a few extra seconds. She had a nice bum and a nice curve to her back.

The way she stood up on her toes as she searched through drawers was strangely adorable. I was a little bit disappointed when she found a spoon and stood up. “Mind if I sit?” she asked. “Be my guest.” She took a seat across from me, bringing her bare feet up onto the seat of her chair, pressing her knees to her chest. There was a childish adorableness to the way she sat and ate her breakfast. “So you’ve known Carl for a while?” she asked.

“About five years now,” I said, looking up into her eyes. Her eyes were deep and hazel, and hard to look away from. She had a sly smile on her face as if she knew I thought she was beautiful and she wanted to tease me. There certainly was no sign of tragedy or mourning on her face not the face of a woman who had just told a man something horrible had happened. But if she wasn’t there as some sort of message-bringer, then why was she there? Who was she and why did she spend the night? Was it appropriate to ask?

Was it any of my business? It was partially my house, so I suppose it was, in a small way, partially my business. “Have you known Carl long?” I asked. “Quite a while, yeah,” she said, her sly smile growing just big enough that I could tell there was something fishy going on, some secret being dangled in front of my eyes, just far enough away that I couldn’t reach out and grab it. It almost seemed like she wanted me to ask, like she was baiting me, drawing me in trapping me. But why? “Have you met Carl’s fiancée?” I asked, sort of changing the subject but also trying to pull up some more clues. Her smile went away and her eyes grew wide. “His fiancée?” she said.

My heart sunk into my gut. Was I sitting across from Carl’s mistress? She had mentioned that she and Carl were up all night was she insinuating they were up all night having sex? Why did she stay the night? “I haven’t, no,” she said. I tried to think of something to say to smooth things over, or even to just change the subject, but I could think of nothing. I was suddenly at a loss for words, worried I’d just driven a peg through Carl’s life, or at the very least, the life of this girl sitting in front of me.

“What’s your name?” I asked. “Alice,” she said, and then she smiled. “I’m Martin,” I said. “Is something wrong?” she asked. “No, nothing’s wrong. I guess I just didn’t get a ton of sleep last night.” We ended up talking for a while. I tried my best to keep the topic of conversation away from Carl, worried I would say something else I shouldn’t say. She told me about the college she was attending, and the classes she was taking. She was applying to law schools, including one in our town (which is what brought her to town).

It was application season and I knew there was a big college fair in town because Carl’s brother was coming for the very same reason. I thought about asking whether she knew Carl’s brother, but again, I didn’t want to touch on any subjects that were outside of my personal business. So instead I asked about her hobbies. She loved baking and she loved playing the violin. “If it wasn’t for money, I would drop law school and try to be a full-time violinist,” she said. “What about opening a bakery. Surely there’s money there, right?”

“I don’t think I’m good enough. Baking is a newer hobby,” she said. “Well one of my hobbies is eating baked goods, so feel free to practice your hobby here in the house,” I said. She laughed. “I might just do that.”

She had the cutest laugh. In fact, she was strangely perfect in every way. We’d been talking for over an hour and I’d been able to come up with no flaws, no nitpicks which was a record for me. She was beautiful, she had a great sense of humor, she was a great conversationalist, and she was smart. She was the real deal, the full package. The only real issue was the fact she might have been Carl’s mistress, and if true, she was obviously unavailable and out of the question. I held my reservations. It was noon and Carl was still in bed.

“Would you mind if I baked something maybe some cookies?” Alice asked. “I certainly wouldn’t stop you,” I said. “I think a nice batch of cookies might cheer Carl up,” she said, and the mystery deepened. Cheer Carl up? Was he feeling down? Had Alice brought some bad news along with her peculiar visit? Was there something wrong with Tanner, Carl’s brother? I almost asked, but I held back, still not feeling totally comfortable broaching that assumedly sensitive topic.

As Alice began digging through the cupboards in search of mixing bowls, I heard the opening of Carl’s bedroom door. I got up and went into the living room. He walked past me and headed straight for the front door. “What’s up? Where are you going?” “I’m going out for a run. I’ll be back later,” he said. He looked exhausted as if he hadn’t slept all night. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes, too locked on his goal of getting out of the house quickly.

He left me no time to ask why Alice was in our house or why his brother never showed up. He definitely seemed upset about something maybe there really was some bad news hopefully nothing terrible.