Page 92 of The Snowball Effect

Should, being the keyword.

And yet, she found herself staring intently at Emma, her thoughts racing…

DidEmma have any sort of attraction to her as well? Did that matter? What –

She snapped back to the moment as Emma pointedly cleared her throat. Regan startled, bumping her hip into the counter, sucking in a breath through gritted teeth at the pain. Damn, between her fall last night and now this, her attraction to Emma was resulting in so many bruises.

“Are yousureyou’re doing okay?” Emma asked, an urgency in her tone that Regan wasn’t sure she’d heard before.

Regan blinked her eyes open, glancing down at Emma’s wide-eyed stare. God, she reallydidlook concerned for her. And knowing that felt… nice.

“Totally fine,” Regan lied as she gingerly rubbed a hand over her hip.

Physically, she’d be fine. Emotionally and mentally – that remained to be seen.

Emma’s doubt was etched into her face as she frowned at Regan. “Why don’t we ignore my question, and instead, you go and relax? It seems like you need it.”

“Question? What question?”

“When you were spacing out a minute ago, I asked if you wanted to go through the applications with me.” Emma gestured at the table, where her laptop, notebook, and an array of papers were spread out in orderly piles. “I have to finish reviewing the portfolios for the Alton Fellowship by Tuesday. Right now, I have them narrowed down to the top two hundred, but Allegra only wants to personally review our top fifty. We move on to interviews in the next couple of weeks. I came up with a system – a rubric – that I think will help decisively make some cuts, and I thought I’d run it by you to get your thoughts.”

Regan told herself she should leave; that was the logical decision. She should return to her own room and give Emma time and space to work. Sheshould take some time and space to work through everything herself. Emma was right; she could definitely use some relaxation.

Sheshouldgo to her room and get her shit together. She shouldn’t come out of her room until she was positive that she could act like a normal, functional human being around Emma. Until she was reasonably positive that she could think –yeah, sure, I’m attracted to my roommate and experiencing some sort of sexual awakening because of her, but hey, that’s fine!

That would probably be the soundest choice she could make.

“I’d love to,” she said, quickly pulling out the chair next to Emma’s and sitting down.

The thing was, Regan didn’t always make the soundest decisions.

Besides, she’d only just realized she was attracted to Emma, to a woman. What was the harm in letting herself revel in it?

fourteen

Emma wasfairlyconvinced that Regan had, in fact, sustained a head injury at the bookstore last Saturday.

What kind of head injury, exactly? She wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t really her expertise as a non-medical professional.

All she knew for sure was that literally every time she’d seen Regan for the last five dayssomethingwas… off. Again, Emma would be hard-pressed to say exactly what it was, but there was always something.

Sunday, it had simply been the staring. Regan had sat with her and discussed her work project for a couple of hours. Which had, honestly, been even more helpful than Emma had imagined it would be. How frequently she’d turned to catch Regan just… staring at her had been weird, though.

Monday, there’d been what Emma had started thinking of as the coffee incident. In which she’d left her cup of coffee in the kitchen, so she’d run back into the kitchen while in her bra and underwear to grab it. Only to bump into Regan – not literally – who had promptly spilled herowncoffee down herself.

Tuesday, Regan had tripped over her own feet, landing face-first against the living room floor when she’d been on her way to join Emma to watch TV. Luckily, her face had hit the plush arearug, butJesus. Emma had been stretching and hadn’t actually seen what had made Regan fall.

Wednesday, they’d barely seen one another due to their work schedules, as Regan had to close. Still, though, she’d been a little weird when Emma texted her to ask if she’d remembered to bring something for dinner or needed anything.

Last night, Emma had entered the bathroom while Regan had been showering; she’d just needed to grab her moisturizer and assumed she’d be able to slip in and out before Regan would even notice. After all, Regan was singing – loudly and heartily – along with the music playing on her phone.

But Reganhadnoticed. She’d paused her admittedly decent singing that Emma had finally gotten used to – and might, just the littlest bit, have started to enjoy – cutting abruptly off as Emma opened the medicine cabinet.

Emma had frozen in place as Regan asked, “… Emma?”

“Who else?” She’d returned playfully, in a manner she’d only realized was veryReganafter the fact.

“An axe murderer, serial killer, abductor… New York’s full of weirdos.”

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