Page 44 of The Chemistry of Us

“Whatever,” I muttered to myself.

His door jerked open just as I turned to walk toward the bathroom. Vaughan looked how I felt, completely wrecked with dark circles under his clear eyes and a tortured look on his face. “I have to pee.”

“Did you need emotional support or something?”

He crossed his arms over his bulky chest. “May I please use the restroom before you go in there and spend seventeen hours in the shower?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What part of last night's conversation didn’t penetrate your tiny little brain?”

“Penetrate.” He laughed.

I shoved him. “Piss yourself.”

It wasn’t mature, but it was my only option. Sprinting toward the bathroom, I locked the door behind me while he pounded on it and cursed me to hell about a dozen times before threatening to break down the door.

“It’s war, dipshit!”

“Cinderella, I swear if you don’t open this door!”

“Use the sink! Find a bottle! Go outside. Whip it out. You’re used to that, right?” I called back. “I’m going to take a very relaxing shower, then I’m going to class. Oh, would you look at that? I need to shave my legs.”

“And your beard!” he fired back.

“Jealous because you can’t grow one or mad because you need one?”

“I’m not gay. And I can grow facial hair, you twat!”

I almost laughed at how loud his voice got. “Sure, okay, the rules clearly state that if someone is in the bathroom, the other needs to wait patiently. Deep breaths, Vaughan. Rein in the rage.”

“Tru! I swear if you?—”

I quickly pulled up Spotify and connected to the speaker on the counter, then turned on the shower, smiling the entire time.

However, my victory was short-lived because he was gone when I left the bathroom. And because it was Vaughan, I was immediately suspicious. He doesn’t take things lying down. I crept out of the bathroom with my towel wrapped around me and slowly tiptoed toward my room.

It was empty.

I breathed a sigh of relief that was again short-lived when I noticed a bottle of Mountain Dew on my nightstand with a sticky note. “Drink me. I dare you.”

Please, the guy wouldn’t actually pee in a bottle and put it in my room.

Yet.

I reached out and tapped my finger against it. “EWWW!”

It was warm.

It was his piss.

He was dead.

After gagging into my free hand, I quickly put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt along with my black peacoat and white tennis shoes, then grabbed the bottle and marched into his room. Maybe it was petty, but I was so done with him and needed boundaries, so I short-sheeted his bed. I ended it by cutting a few pieces of my hair and laying them between his tight sheets.

The man was a clean freak who hated even having his own hair anywhere, let alone a long dark tendril taunting him from his white sheets.

Whoops?

I smiled the entire way to class.

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