The only time Robert had talked about his past was when he told Heather she could stay with them. It wasn’t anything much, but he did it to make her feel comforted, and it worked.

“I’ve been on my own since I was about your age too.”

“Really?” Heather asked.

He only nodded in response. There was a sort of kinsmanship between them then, but perhaps only Heather had felt it. Robert have never again related himself to her, or even once asked her how she had gotten where she was.

Something made her think he was trying to make things easier that way. Our pasts don’t matter, we can coexist like normal people. It wasn’t that way for her though. Deep down she really wanted him to ask her what had happened, why she was in the position she was. Part of that was because she wanted understanding once all the facts were laid out, but also because she wanted to ask him about his past too.

Robert worked as a bouncer at some club Heather was too young to get into. Once she thought it would be a romantic idea if she went to work there too. Maybe she could be a waitress or a stripper. No matter how desperate you were for money though, or how rebellious you wanted to be, some women just weren’t right for those jobs. As it was, she had gotten a job at a Mc Donalds.

When she looked at her life now, in the adventurous way rebellious young people did, it seemed like it was just her and Robert, but that wasn’t true. Scott was with them too.

Scott wasn’t like her or Robert. He didn’t have a mysterious past none of them talked about. Scott had left his family to move to the city. When he didn’t have enough money to live on anymore, Robert took him in as a roommate. Sometime after that was when Heather entered their lives.

Technically, she was the third wheel, but really Scott was the outsider. He could always go back home. Most of the time, Heather wished he would.

There was a time when Heather was so sure she would wake up to Robert climbing into bed with her. He would say something about not being able to keep himself from her any longer, or he wouldn’t say anything at all. He would brush the hair from her face and kiss her really softly. When they had sex he would be really gentle and tell her that he loved her.

Sometimes she would imagine this as she heard Scott with him through the wall. Most of the time it made her too angry to touch herself. Robert never said he loved him though, not that Heather could hear, and she made sure to listen carefully for it.

When she and Scott where alone, mostly at breakfast, he would ignore her. He seemed to think she wasn’t worth his time but he was wrong. Scott couldn’t be anything to Robert or her in the long run, he couldn’t understand people like them. She saw that clearly, so Robert must have.

The best thing that could have happened was when Scott began turning yellow and vomiting. He had hepatitis C but Robert still wasn’t done with him. It was frustrating at first but Heather’s odds were better at least then they had been. She could at least hope that it might kill him.

As soon as she was old enough, Heather would drink to Scott’s health. Maybe he would join her.