Page 60 of Roommating

“I’m single too.”

“Nuh-uh, buddy. You have to give me more than that.”

He makes a face, a nonverbalfine. “I’m also unattached. I met Ashley at Academy Records and we hung out a few times, but it was casual. I’ve also had two ‘serious’ girlfriends. The first one was my college girlfriend.”

“And?”

“And…” He brushes hair off my forehead. “We’re not together anymore.”

“You don’t want to get into it. Understood.” This is not me being passive aggressive. Having sex with me does not obligate him to divulge details about his romantic history. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. Wouldhiscollege sweetheart story inspire a second-chance romance novel?

“No, it’s fine. She moved back to Seattle after graduation. We tried to make it work long distance, but when I went to visit her the last time, she told me she’d met someone else.”

I throw my hand against my mouth. “She let you fly all the way there just to break up with you? Yikes.”

He chuckles. “Yikes is right.”

“What about the second one?”

“We met on an app and dated for a little over a year but fought when I quit my second job in a row. She accused me of looking for red flags or reasons to quit jobs like other people quit relationships and that she didn’t want to be with someone so flakey and incapable of being a grown-up.” His face flushes and it’s not a delayed reaction to all the fucking. It’s clear this is uncomfortable for him. “I asked if she expected me to stay in jobs that made me miserable and she said it wasn’t the jobs, it was me.”

I grit my teeth. “Savage.”

He smiles. “I don’t miss her at all.”

“Of course you don’t. I bet she smells like asparagus.”

He scrunches his nose. “Random… but I’ll go with it. It’s really hard to figure out what you want to do while busy doing something else, so I came here to figure things out while also rebooting my relationship with Grams.”

“Have you?”

“Rebooted my relationship with my grandma? We’re getting there. But I still don’t know what I want to do as far as a career and kind of afraid I never will. In the meantime, I’m having fun working at the library. Aside from the demon kids who weaponize juice pouches.” He grins.

I smooth out a lock of his hair that’s standing up, figuring that if I’m ever going to take liberties with touching him, a safe time is probably in bed after we’ve had sex twice. “You can’t live on a library page’s salary forever, so unless you want to go back to school for your MLIS it’s a temporary gig.”

He rolls his eyes like a petulant teenager. “Thanks, Dad.”

I throw my hand to my mouth. “You didnotjust say that.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, laughing.

“I am too. I didn’t mean to overstep.” He already said he was afraid he’d never figure things out and I went ahead and rubbed salt in the wound.

His face turns serious. “I’m aware that I’m delaying the inevitable by living with my grandma and working as a page, but besides wanting to get to know her better, I hope I can make up for what happened between her and my dad.”

I open my mouth to argue that it’s not his responsibility but clamp it shut because I understand the urge to want to exert control over a situation you have no control over.

“Well, you’re definitely not going to figure out your future this minute.” I lessen the space between us and raise my leg so it’s now wrapped around his waist. If I twist my body an inch, I can be on top of him. “So let’s focus on the present. What shall we do right now?” I could sleep for days, but I also really want to take advantage of the man in my bed one more time.

He flips me over and pins me under him. “Round three?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The next morning, Adam picks Marcia up at the hospital while I stay back to prepare brunch.Prepare, in my case, defined as: I set the table with the fresh turkey-and-brie heroes, penne pesto salad, and seedless green and red grapes I bought from the Garden of Eden market next door. After calling Jenny and asking if she’d be okay with us being late to work, she told us to take the day off. Between Fruit Punch–Gate and Marcia’s hospitalization, she said we deserved a break and that the library would still be there on Friday.

They get home just as I finish straightening out the mess Adam and I made last night in the living room before we moved things to my bedroom. It’s more mayhem than mess, and if you didn’t know we’d tossed our shirts on the floor and kicked the cushions off the couch in the heat of passion, it might not make an impression, especially since both shirts are technically Adam’s. But the apartment needs to be tidy for Marcia’s homecoming. We haven’t discussed what last night meant or if it meant anything at all, but wedidagree to dote on Marcia and make her life as easy as possible from this point forward so she doesn’t have another hypertensive urgency… or worse.

Rocket is waiting at the door and Marcia greets him first bybending and lovingly rubbing his ears, then grabbing him by the collar when he tries to make an escape out the door. In a baby voice, she coos, “You lull me into thinking you’re happy to see me, but you’re really only using my arrival as an excuse to run laps down the hallway and annoy our neighbors. Aren’t you, my love?” She stands and smiles at me.

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