I always wanted one good story. One good story that I would eventually tell at Thanksgiving to eager family members, that I could pontificate to my future ungrateful children whenever they complained, I would simultaneously cringe and laugh about with friends or strangers at a bar. I thought that story would be about Ariana.
I met Ariana during a terrible period of my life. Ten years after graduating college, my girlfriend left me for someone who clerked with her at a law firm. “The artistic life,” she explained, “is not for me.” She was talking about me stacking books at Barnes & Noble while trying to pitch a half-finished novel. After she left, I hated the Upper East Side and the rest of New York City for that matter. I hated passing parks, restaurants, and yarn stores that I used to love, only to constantly be reminded of a person who didn’t love me anymore.
I moved back to Miami, my hometown, on impulse. I packed everything on a Tuesday, arrived at my parents’ home on a Wednesday, found a new place through a “Miami Girls Looking For Housing, Apartments, Sublets” Facebook page on a Thursday, and moved into Ariana’s two-bedroom condo in North Miami Beach the next Friday.
Honestly, I did not know much about Ariana before the move. We friended each other on Facebook, and we messaged back and forth a few times about logistics, like rent, electricity, and parking. The price was more than reasonable, especially post-pandemic in a city like Miami. I looked through some photos of her and concluded that she was white and pretty with a round face, brown eyes, and long brown hair. When we finally met in-person, the one thing that really surprised me was her height. She was nearly six feet tall.
Some part of me knows that I neglected my due diligence, specifically not asking her questions about her personal and professional life, because I was desperate for housing and depressed over my girlfriend leaving me for someone who was equally as stable as her. Now, I know that a part of me purposefully sabotaged my housing situation because I wanted new drama in my life, something to take my mind off my failed relationship. In that sense, I was successful.
Four months after meeting, I told Ariana that I was moving out. I never signed an official lease because it was a sublet, so my decision was not completely devastating to me or her. I just could not live with her anymore. At the time, I convinced myself that we were the least compatible roommates on earth. After living with my partner for nearly twelve years, someone who was clean and considerate with a schedule that complimented my own, Ariana felt like the exact opposite. While I woke up every morning to go to work at a temp job as a receptionist downtown, Ariana would be coming home from a night out. She would sleep from 7am to 7pm, left pots and pans on the stovetop for days, and smoked cigs in the living room. When I finally gained the confidence to ask her to go outside and smoke on the balcony in front of our outdoor stairwell, she stabbed the lit cigarette into a plate, marched to her room, slammed the door, and left the plate with the rotting cigarette there for days.
To this day, I am unsure if she even had a job. When I gave her my rent, she would pocket it. After the first time this occurred, I felt obligated to do some light stalking on Facebook. I wondered if she was related to a celebrity or real estate mogul. I found a photo of her and her dad, searched for him on Instagram and Google, and discovered his law firm. He was a famous defense attorney in the area. Based on photos and location tags, I knew that his house was on the Venetian Islands, not too far from where we lived, and with a quick search on Zillow, I saw that similar houses were worth 19 million dollars. Based on that information and other interactions with Ariana, I concluded that she was rich and spoiled, another reason for me to hate her, another reason for me to leave.
The singular comfort that I felt was that this whole situation, albeit awful, would make a good story one day. One day, I would tell people about Ariana’s temper, greed, and lack of hygiene. One day, potentially, this might even become something worth writing.
The story would have a perfect, poetic conclusion. The night I planned on leaving, Hurricane Aaron was hitting the east coast off Homestead when I was packing my things. As I shoved my last suitcase into the living room, Ariana came through the front door, soaking wet and juggling two bags of Taco Bell and a seafoam green Baja Blast. “I come with gifts!” She shouted.
“I’m good,” I muttered, thinking about how I was going to move all my stuff, plastic bins, a pink duffle bag, and two other completely full suitcases, into my car in the rain. I told Ariana that I got a job in West Palm and would find a new place there, but really, I was going back to my parents’ place while I found a new apartment.
“Look, I don’t think you should leave tonight. The rain’s getting really bad out there. I could barely drive home.”
“I’ve driven in the rain before,” I snapped, “besides, I heard the flooding was going to be bad in Homestead. We should be fine up here.” I opened the door and immediately saw the pouring rain. It was coming down like a sheet, completely engulfing the stairwell. I was from Miami and never seen anything like it. I shut the door and groaned, “Guess I’m staying here one more night.”
Ariana smiled, looking pleased with herself. She moved to the couch, a brown plush sofa procured from Craigslist for $30. At least that is what she proudly told me when I moved in. She placed the Taco Bell bags on the large, glass coffee table in front of her.
I sunk into the couch next to her. She pulled out a bag of chips and a plastic container of melted cheese. She gestured towards them with her head, offering me some.
“No thanks.” I knew that if I ate even one chip Ariana would hit me with a “you can Venmo me!” The first night I moved in, she ordered Domino’s for herself. I was still unpacking. She went out that night without me, but she left a slice on a plate with a note, “Help yourself!” I did. The next morning, she sent me a request for $5. I never ate or drank any of her food again, even when it was presented to me politely.
“Okay,” she said and grabbed the remote. Our television, her television, was haphazardly propped on a pile of thick books. She turned on an old season of Love Island, and we mindlessly watched for an hour as the rain and wind progressively worsened. I heard it pounding on our ceiling.
Suddenly, the apartment next door’s television blared with the emergency flood warning. I grew up hearing that series of staticky, jarring beeps, so I knew instantly what it meant. Then, our lights flickered, the television went out, and there was darkness. Ariana and I both used our iPhone’s flashlights to find some candles and a lighter.
“I didn’t think it would get this bad,” Ariana admitted, shuffling through a kitchen drawer for supplies.
“Lights should turn on in a few minutes,” I mumbled, annoyed.
We sat on the couch again, staring at the TV, waiting for it to reboot. The silence of the room was only punctuated with the sounds of the rain and Ariana chomping on leftover chips.
After finishing the bag, she swallowed and asked, “Want a drink? I have tequila in the freezer.”
“No thanks,” I stated automatically. I didn’t want to be hit with a Venmo request for $18.95 tomorrow morning or whatever random number she would charge for a couple shots of tequila, but as she left the couch, I smiled, realizing that I would never see Ariana again after tomorrow.
“Actually,” I added. She fumbled for a glass in the cabinet. “I’ll have a drink.”
I got up from the couch and met her in our sliver of a kitchen a few feet away from our shared living room.
“Found the tequila,” Ariana said, pulling the bottle from the freezer which was crammed with frozen dinners that she hoarded.
“Do we have a mixer?”
“Oh, we can use the Baja Blast.” She casually motioned towards it. It was completely melted and room temperature, still sitting on the coffee table. The seafoam green color glowed. She had taken maybe two sips of it.
She handed me two white glasses which were both chipped at the lip and grabbed the tequila. We sat on the couch again in our same position, and I set the glasses on the table. I watched her generously pour two drinks for us.
“Cheers,” she joked.
We clinked our glasses. I took one gulp. It was the grossest drink I ever had, but I drank it all. She refilled it. She drank hers. I refilled her glass. After a few drinks, we lit candles and placed them on the coffee table. We then continued to stare at the black screen, our reflections looking back at us.
“Let’s play a drinking game,” Ariana suggested excitedly. I thought that she intuitively knew that I did not want to make conversation with her, so this was her compromise.
“Like what?”
“Never have I ever?”
“Sure,” I said, taking another swig. The drink was getting easier to swallow anyway.
“Never have I ever been to Paris,” she announced.
I drank. “Study abroad,” I explained.
She shook her head. “I’m so jealous. I’ve always wanted to go.”
I thought about her father’s nineteen-million-dollar mansion a few miles away from us. How had she never been to Paris?
“Your turn,” she said, bringing me back to the room.
“Never have I ever,” I contemplated my next few words. The room felt smaller, the drinks were getting stronger with less and less Baja Blast to water them down, and I had nothing to lose. “Never have I ever been to the Venetian Islands.” I don’t know why, but in that moment, I wanted her to acknowledge her privilege, her rich dad, and her perfect, self-centered lifestyle.
She didn’t drink.
“Wait,” I said, looking around the room as if someone else was a witness to this game, and before I could really consider my words: “Doesn’t your dad live there?”
“How do you know my dad lives there?” She glared at me. She seemed perfectly sober which alarmed me.
“Facebook, maybe a little Googling,” I explained and forced a laugh, trying to keep the mood light. She remained stoic.
“Uh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” I found myself stumbling on my words and could not comprehend what was happening. I could not see her reaction in the dark, or maybe, I refused to look at her. I don’t remember.
I stared at the Bath and Body Works Stress Relief candle on the coffee table.
She coughed and confessed, “I haven’t spoken to my dad in years. I don’t know where he lives.”
Suddenly, the photo of the two of them flashed in my face. I remembered that she had braces in it.
“Oh,” I said, taking a drink as punishment.
It occurred to me that this was the longest conversation we ever had. She was usually asleep when I was awake after all. The room shook from the thunderstorm raging outside.
Instinctually, I changed the subject. “One time, in college,” I began, “there was a thunderstorm, and some lightning struck outside the window, and the professor stopped teaching and everything and was like, ‘Did you guys see that?’ I didn’t realize storms like that weren’t normal up north.”
Ariana laughed, a huge relief. “I forgot you’re from Florida too. Where did you go to college again?”
I realized then that she knew almost nothing about me.
“NYU,” I stated and drank again. The game was incidental to my drinking at this point.
“No shit, my ex-boyfriend went there.”
I nodded. A lot of people went to NYU.
She continued, “Maybe you knew him? Gray Addams.”
I shook my head. “I really only know people who studied creative writing.”
“Ah,” she understood, “he was studying illustration. Such an amazing artist.” She sat up a little straighter. “He had this thing for roofs.”
“Roofs?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, roofs. He always said you could tell so much about a building based on its roof, how old it is, how much care has been put into it, how many different people have fixed it and plastered their work on top of another’s.” She put her drink down and smiled at the thought. “You know,” she looked at me, “I’ve never looked at roofs the same way since I met him.”
I realized then that I didn’t know Ariana either. The room got quiet even though it was still thundering, and here we were, sitting completely still in the dark, and I thought that maybe the story is not that I lived with a horrible roommate for four months after my heart was broken. Maybe the story is about Gray Addams, about roofs, about a person I never really knew and would never see again.