Gray by Pete Wentz

Author:Pete Wentz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Coming of Age, Biographical, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781416570363
Publisher: MTV Books
Published: 2013-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

16

John Miller is my new roommate. Right now, he and I are sharing twin beds in my old bedroom, but we’re moving out soon. When I showed up at my parents’ house with him in tow, my mom’s jaw about hit the floor. He had managed to make himself look extrapathetic by not showering for a week, so his hair stuck out in all directions from underneath his trucker’s cap. I told my mom that he had no other place to go, that taking him in was an act of charity. It was an easy sell; my mom loves charity. She emptied his garbage bag into the washing machine, made him some food, sat back, and watched the elbows fly. Nobody eats like John Miller. It’s like being in shop class or something. Debris everywhere. You should be required to wear safety glasses whenever he’s at the table.

My mom loved him immediately, leaned against the refrigerator with arms crossed, listened to his stories about Jacksonville and his two older brothers with glee. She watched him saw through meals and thought he was just the greatest—a real character from the Deep South, right here in her tastefully wallpapered kitchen. John Miller was laying it on thick too, complimenting her cooking with an antebellum grace (“This here cake is better than my grandmama’s”) and offering to work on the hydrangeas out back (“There was a time when me and my two brothers had ourselves a lan’scapin’ business”). He seemed to get more Southern as the situation demanded it, and right now he was talking like some combination of Foghorn Leghorn and Roscoe P. Coltrane. I half expected him to pull a coonhound out of his pocket. It was amazing to watch him work. There was an art to it. His eyes were constantly darting around the room, sizing everything—and everyone—up, sussing out their weaknesses, plying them with praise. John Miller was a natural-born con man, a used-car salesman, a lawyer’s lawyer. Naturally, my dad didn’t like him, but I could not care less; in a few days, we’d be set up in our own place, and then the real fun would begin.

In the midst of all this, I wasn’t even thinking of Her, and I didn’t until later that night, when John Miller was buzz-sawing through sleep (he did everything abrasively). I lay there in my old bed, thinking of the times she had laid next to me, the summer nights when my parents went away to their place in New Buffalo, on the shore of Lake Michigan, and she and I would sleep wrapped around each other, the window open, the cool air kissing our shoulders. I had long ago decided that I didn’t love Her anymore, but on certain nights, when I lay awake while everyone else slept, eyes wide-open in the dark, I knew that was a lie, or at least I was pretty sure it was. Maybe I did love Her, more than I’d ever loved anyone or anything else in my life.

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