Accidental Housemate

20: searching

the distance between us
was measured in miles,
but I felt it
in everything.

SEARCHING

. . .

Dave was wasted.

When I opened the door, he smelled like alcohol, his hair was a mess, his clothes were wrinkled, and he looked exhausted. Was that what ‘hanging out’ meant for him and his friends?

When he leant off the wall to enter the flat, he lost his balance and almost crushed me under his heavy figure. Thanks to my quick reflexes, I caught him in time and helped him lean on something else.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

I only hummed and scurried away to get him a glass of water. Dehydration and alcohol weren’t a nice mix, and his breath smelt awful, too.

“Why’d you get this drunk?” I asked as I handed him the glass.

He finally reached the sofa and sat down. “I dunno. I got carried away until I texted you.”

Carried away drinking? Sure. As if I didn’t know he wasn’t that type.

I nodded anyway. “About that…” I trailed off, awaiting an explanation for his texts.

“Oh, yeah…” The guy sounded too tired and awkward to talk about it at that moment. Instead, he leant into my side, laying his head on my shoulder... the shoulder burdened with thoughts. “Perrie.”

“Yeah?” I looked down at him, unmoving.

His reply was a peck on my jaw. Then, he said something that made my heart drop. “You’re too beautiful from this angle for me to handle.”

I changed the topic. “Can I use your phone?” He leant away and raised an eyebrow, so I added, “I’m out of credit. Need to make an important call.”

Although unsure and obviously annoyed about how I dodged his affection, he nodded and fished his phone out of his pocket. He unlocked it with his fingerprint and gave it to me. He then wasted no more time and sprawled across the sofa. I got him his blanket and pillow, so he could sleep since he didn’t look like he was moving to his room.

I hadn’t run out of credit. The truth was that I wanted to check for something, for someone, on his phone.

I exited the keypad he opened for me and went to his browser. My palms started sweating as I got closer to uncovering the truth, asking myself if what I was doing was okay. I was breaching his privacy and taking advantage of his drunk state, but he could’ve breached mine when I was drunk, too. I wanted to know.

Your privacy? Jokes. You were once on the internet of your own will, and it’s hard to disappear from such a vicious place.

Taking a long breath, I clicked the three dots on the side and checked his history tab. I wouldn’t check anything else on his phone but this. I looked up ‘Rochelle’ in the search bar and, disappointingly, got a few results.

The search dated back to the night I asked him about whether he watched porn, and then again in the morning before we kissed. A swell of repulsion filled me as I came to the conclusion he already knew who I was when he requested our first kiss, and when we kissed every time after that. He hadn’t genuinely wanted to try, nor did he care about me, but he merely remembered me as the same actress he once jerked off to.

You don’t have the right to be upset. You did this to yourself.

I clicked some links in the results that directed me to some infringed pornography videos of me and some other actors with whom I had worked. When I quit the industry, I had taken all my videos down, but of course, it was hard to fully disappear from the internet. The remnants of my past lay in front of me, assuring me I could never move on.