Love and Demotion Read Online Free Page A

to clean it. I would never leave that…”
But his grin told her he was just kidding. “Take it easy,” he said, handing her the black plastic lid. His fingers grazed hers, and she felt actual heat at the contact.
And then he walked past her, past the puddle, and disappeared into the heavy front door of the library.
    *** ***
    Regina climbed the five flights of stairs to her apartment on Bank Street, her bag heavy with books she couldn’t resist checking out of the library.
She lived in a small apartment, on the most perfect block in the most perfect neighborhood in the city. She thought of it as her Great Escape – not only from the limitations of her hometown, but from the far-reaching, needy arms of her mother. There, tucked away in a brownstone in a neighborhood that was once home to literary greats such as Willa Cather, Henry James, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Edgar Allan Poe, Regina was truly on her own for the first time in her life.
The only blight on this otherwise perfect landscape of newfound freedom was her roommate, Carly. Carly Ronak was a tragically hip Parsons student who only cared about two things: fashion, and men. And the men changed more often than her jeans; It seemed every week there was a different guy in the rotation.
Regina had never had a roommate before. During college, her mother had insisted that she live at home rather than one of the Drexel University dorms in center city Philadelphia – a twenty minute drive from their house in the suburbs. She realized, now that she lived with Carly, that her mother had had maybe too much influence over her social life in the past few years. As daily witness to Carly’s whirlwind dating life, Regina had to wonder why she hadn’t ventured more into that arena herself. It was partly her mother’s fault – she was so negative on the issue of Regina dating that sneaking around hardly seemed worth the effort. The few dates Regina had gone on were so disappointing, they weren’t worth the lies to or the arguments with her mother. But now Regina had to wonder if she had missed out of something important.
As for Carly, it took Regina a few weeks to figure out why she even bothered having roommate. She appeared to have an endless supply of cash, at least when it came to clothes. Shopping bags from Barney’s, Alice and Olivia, or Scoop were ubiquitous in the apartment. Regina didn’t know much about clothes, but she knew these stores were a far cry from Filene’s and Target, where she did all of her shopping. And then there was Carly’s constant maintenance of her long, highlighted hair at Bumble and Bumble, and seemingly endless meals out. Regina had never seen Carly so much as pour herself a bowl of cereal. She even ordered in scrambled eggs on the rare weekend morning when she woke up in their apartment.
The mystery was solved one night when she was awakened by Carly and her hookup du jour banging around the kitchen at two in the morning. Carly admonished the guy for all of his loud moaning (which had awakened Regina an hour earlier) – “My roommate will be traumatized,” Carly had said. To which the guy replied, “I don’t get why you even have a roommate. Your dad is Mark Ronak.” Carly told him that it wasn’t a money issue; her parents insisted she have a roommate for “safety reasons.” They had both laughed over this, and the guy had said, “Good thing you have someone around here to keep you under control. Otherwise, you might be a bad girl.”
Of course, Regina Googled Mark Ronak, and learned that Carly’s father was the founder of the country’s largest hip-hop record label. This little background detail served to widen the gulf between Regina and her roommate; The idea of either of her parents even listening to hip hop — or even pop music — was unimaginable to her. Regina’s father had been in his mid-thirties when she was born, and died eight years later. He had been an architect, and the only music he listened to was opera.