Chapter 3 Rowan

WHEN I UNLOCKthe door, I'm convinced I have the wrong room. Because it already looks like two people—or maybe even a half dozen—live here, piles of clothes stacked on both beds, photos and fairy lights strung up on three fourths of the available wall space, notebooks and folders strewn across the desks.

The only thing missing is my actual roommate.

"Dios mío," my mom says under her breath, eyeing the walls with a particularly venomous glare. "That wasn't very considerate of her."

"Maybe she didn't think I'd be moving in today." I nudge aside an ironing board, almost impaling a stuffed penguin perched atop a tower of textbooks. "Or at all."

As gently as I can, I transfer a mound of sweaters from what I assume is my bed to the other. Despite what I reassured Kirby and Mara, I've kind of been hoping my roommate and I become lifelong friends. I was Rowan's college roommate, she'd say during her toast at my potential future wedding, for better or for worse. Then we'd share a wink because of all the mischief we got into back then. But Paulina Radowski from Sacramento never responded to my follow request on Instagram and remains as much of a mystery as the day her name popped into my email with the subject line Successful Roommate Match! Mostly I'm just impressed that she managed to do so much to the room in so little time.

My mom holds tightly to her purse, as though trying to protect it from the chaos. "It's… nice."

I roll my eyes, dropping my navy JanSport into a desk chair. "It's not supposed to be a luxury apartment. That's part of the experience."

Even though my mom and I are close, this trip is the most extended time we've spent alone together in… well, ever. Maybe because they work together, my parents have always functioned as a unit. They've always trusted me, either because I got good grades and stayed out of trouble or because I wanted to maintain that trust by continuing to get good grades and staying out of trouble. Sometimes they joked they barely had to parent me at all. I'm not sure what it must feel like for my mom, dropping off her only kid at college across the country.

She helps me unpack as much as possible before we make a list of everything we still need. I tell her we can figure out the public transportation, but she insists on renting a car, and I don't protest.

I applied to ten schools and picked Emerson because it seemed like the kind of place that valued creativity above all else. There's a heavy focus on the arts, and even walking through my dorm, I spot flyers for theater tryouts and comedy shows and all kinds of performance art. It was a bit of a gamble, given I'd never been there—a gamble Neil was taking too, since this is also his first time in New York. But as soon as I stepped onto campus, saw the towering brick buildings contrasted with the newer, more energy-efficient ones, I knew I'd made the right decision. I'd only ever pictured Boston as romantic and snow-dusted, didn't quite anticipate the blistering heat at the end of summer. But this is beautiful too, sprawling green lawns and the sun turning ancient pathways amber.

We stop at Target, and even on the opposite coast, the familiarity of a Target is oddly soothing. We left the bigger items for this shopping trip, figuring it would be easier. During the drive back to campus, we detour through Beacon Hill, and I can't stop myself from gazing out the window, trying to take in every detail of this new city. Uneven cobblestone streets. Row houses in shades of deep red. Gorgeous old streetlamps that threaten to pull me back in time. I love it all.

There's no sign of messy, mysterious Paulina Radowski when we get back.

"I swear, it wasn't this complicated when I was in college," my mom says as we struggle with a fitted sheet. She pauses to shove a dark curl out of her face, jostling her orange glasses. "Shower shoes? Since when do showers require a specific type of footwear?"

"Maybe they just didn't care about foot fungus back then," I mutter.

My RA stops by and introduces herself, a junior named Lexie who's majoring in comedic arts.

"You must be funny, then!" my mom says, and I have to fight a cringe.

Lexie gives her the kind of practiced smile that indicates she gets this question a lot. "Oh, sometimes. Would you believe that most comedy is born from tragedy?"

This might be the real tragedy: when Lexie leaves and my mom says, "She seemed nice. Maybe you two will end up becoming friends."

It's such standard mom behavior, and yet I can't explain why it irks me. "Pretty sure befriending your RA is like being the teacher's pet. Not sure if that's the reputation I want."

Both of us might be a little hangry, so we head to the dining hall, which I imagine will be some kind of sad buffet. But this—there's a sandwich bar, a pasta bar, a build-your-own burrito bar. Vegetarian options galore, everything marked with symbols for potential allergens.

"When can I move in?" my mom jokes as we get in line for burrito bowls. Then, when we take a seat: "You're not too embarrassed to be sitting with your mom?"

All around us, new freshmen are doing the same thing, some of them staring down at their plates while their parents talk, others on their phones. There are some sparse groups of students, but it's overall fairly calm.

"Of course not." This time, my smile is genuine, because I really do feel this way. "I'm glad you came. Thank you."

Because it's true that everything is new and different, but the undercurrent of excitement is stronger than the anxiety. I think I could really love it here, and not just because this burrito bowl is delicious.

We talk about my classes, about the books she and my dad are working on right now. Together they've written more than thirty children's books, my mom as the author and my dad as the illustrator. And yet more than my creative writing class, my mom is thrilled that I'm taking a 200-level Spanish course.

"I'm sure it'll be a lot of grammar," she says. "A lot of reading."

"Two things I love."

An easy smile. My mom was born in Mexico to a Mexican father and a Russian-Jewish mother, but I stopped taking Spanish junior year and haven't managed to become fluent. I used to hate that I wasn't, but maybe the silver lining is that I'm all the more eager to learn. To feel more connected to that piece of my culture.

"There's something I've wanted to talk to you about," she says. I motion with my compostable fork—maybe Boston and Seattle aren't that different after all—for her to continue. "It's about Neil."

I gesture to my phone, face up on the table. "He said he's out to dinner with his roommate and his roommate's dad, and I can't wait to hear that story."

"Good. That's good." Then she pokes at the brown rice in her bowl in this way that makes me certain something serious is coming. A little cough. "You know we love him, Ro—we have from the beginning. He's been nothing but kind to you and to us. And it's very sweet, how much he loves the Riley books."

We've talked about Neil before, of course. When I got home late one night back in July, she was still awake in her office, and emerged to ask if I was being safe. I said yes, but that I'd been thinking about it and I might want to get an IUD. She agreed that it was probably a good idea, so we made the appointment and she took me to have it implanted. Kept me company on the couch the rest of the day as I waited for the cramping to go away.

"But," my mom continues, a novel's worth of meaning in that single word, "you've only been together…"

"Almost three months," I supply, that length of time suddenly sounding so small. Three months doesn't account for all the time we spent trying to one-up each other at school, all the times I counted his freckles during class and later tried to rationalize that this did not mean my feelings for him were anything but simple curiosity.

Even at graduation, a mere forty-eight hours after we'd cemented our relationship, it felt like we'd been together for much longer. After I delivered my salutatorian speech and the two of us switched places, he squeezed my hand behind the podium so no one else could see. During his valedictorian speech, as he talked about what we'd accomplished as a class and what the future might hold, his eyes caught mine more than they probably should have. I was convinced I'd never seen anything more beautiful than that boy in a graduation gown, gazing at me with the purest admiration on his face. In every photo from that day, we are easy smiles and soft touches.

Now my mom has moved on to shredding a napkin. "This isn't easy for me to say, Ro. Your father and I talked about it before, and—"

"You two have been discussing my relationship?"

"Well—of course. You two became very serious, very quickly. You can understand how there was a little whiplash, hearing about this guy you despised and then suddenly you were bringing him home and telling us he was your boyfriend." At this, my face grows warm. "We're just wondering… if maybe now isn't the best time to be tying yourself down."

I pause with a forkful of plant-based al pastor halfway to my mouth. There's no way she's saying what I think she's saying, but I have to make sure. "I'm lost. Are you telling me to cheat on my boyfriend?"

Her eyes go wide behind her glasses. "No! My goodness. We would never—no," she affirms, brushing this off with a strained little laugh. "Just that you're going to be meeting so many new people here, people from all over, with all kinds of different backgrounds. I don't want you to feel like Neil is holding you back from any of it, and not just romantically. I want you to have the best four years here, and it might be tough if you're constantly running back to your dorm for a scheduled video call or using your weekends to go to New York instead of spending time with friends here."

I let those words sink in. Sure, in the back of my mind those fears have prodded at me, too. But I've always dismissed them. We were living in the moment this summer, which made those fears feel like wasted time.

"Being with Neil doesn't mean I can't have fun here at Emerson." There's an edge to my voice, a tone I'm not used to taking with either of my parents. A twinge of annoyance, a clench of my jaw. "I'm not going to be locked in my room the whole time on the phone with him. You should know I'm not the kind of person to let a relationship get in the way of school. I think I made that pretty clear in high school."

"I know that. You're a smart girl. But things are different now, with you being out here on your own," she says. "This is your education. Your future. It's the most important thing in the world, even if it doesn't feel that way."

Now that twinge deepens, an unfamiliar frustration tightening my chest. I can't believe we're having this conversation. "Mom. I know. Did I not demonstrate that for the past four years, even when I was dating other people?" My mom and I have never snipped at each other, not like this, and it makes me even more eager to end this conversation. Criticism from my parents has never felt quite this personal before. "I've worked too hard to get here. Neil doesn't change any of that."

"We just don't want you to get too in your head. You know—with all the books you read. You don't have to settle down quite yet. That's all we're saying."

It's a not-so-subtle jab at my genre of choice, something they've only recently become aware of. For years, I hid my love of romance novels, worried both friends and family would judge me. My parents have mostly been accepting, even taking a couple book recommendations, but every so often, I get the sense that they wish I loved something else.

If this really is all they're saying, then why do I feel like they might actually mean so much more?

My mom's staying in a hotel nearby and flies back tomorrow, and I don't want to end the trip on this note. But when she asks if I want to catch one of the move-in-week comedy shows, I lie and tell her I'm too tired, that I want to make sure I have all my energy for tomorrow's freshmen orientation.

The rest of the night, as I play Cards Against Humanity with some other freshmen in the eighth-floor lounge, Greta from Los Angeles and Minato from Tokyo and Ben from "just down the road in Quincy," as Paulina never shows up and I grow marginally worried about her and Neil texts me photos he's sneakily taken of his roommate's questionable taste in posters, I turn over my mom's words. And I make a promise to myself.

As much as I love him, I won't let having a boyfriend keep me from the full college experience. I don't want to put our relationship on a pedestal behind unbreakable glass, but there's a happy medium here. We're good together, and I'd be an idiot to give that up just because we don't live in the same city.

There's no reason I can't have both.