Page 7 of A Totally Platonic Thing
Getting up those stairs wasn’t the funnest thing I’d ever done. Lucas chivvied me up first, probably so he could catch me if I started to fall. Totally unnecessary, because I only tipped over backward once, and Lucas boosted me easily with one big hand right on my ass, shoving me up a step and making me start to giggle despite myself, especially when his fingers lingered for a second and tickled me.
Lucas’s low growl of annoyance drew out another hysterical little laugh, and then we were at the door, and Lucas was holding me out of the way while he unlocked it, and I cuddled up against him because I wanted him not to be mad at me, and it was kind of a blur as he got me inside and onto my bed, where I flopped on my face like I’d been hit with a hammer.
It felt like it, too. The little cartoon birds were circling around my head and tweeting and everything, and there were blinky stars.
My eyes were closed, but yeah. Blinky stars.
Something tugged on my leg, and I moaned in protest.
“You really want these shoes on your bed?” Lucas asked from down near my feet. “You’re lucky I’m not leaving you in your own filth.”
“Yeah,” I said into my pillow. My mouth tasted, like, so gross. Unbelievably gross. But asking Lucas to brush my teeth for me totally wouldn’t fly. In horror, I heard myself slurring a request that he do just that. How needy could I be? He’d never speak to me again.
Both of my shoes came off, and then I wiggled my feet in relief as he pulled my socks off too. Ah, air on my toes. Felt so fucking good.
Lucas’s footsteps retreated. I heard running water, and then his footsteps came back.
When he grabbed me by the shoulder and flipped me over, it took me a second to bring him into focus.
He had a tight-lipped, grim expression…and my toothbrush in his hand.
“I love you,” I mumbled, and let my eyes close. “Best roommate ever.”
Lucas would take care of me after all.
Thank God, because I had no idea what I’d do if he stopped.
Chapter Two
Lucas
It took me forever to go to sleep, with the clock ticking down way too fast to my alarm going off and the sound of Chris snoring lightly across the room. I had more than enough time to question all my life choices.
I’d been doing that a lot lately, to be honest. And as angry as I was? Yeah, making my mind calm down and stop picking at all the stuff that bothered me in the background wasn’t going to happen.
Because I was pissed. I had to force myself not to actually grind my teeth together by sheer force of will. Five hours of sleep—that’s what Iwould’vegotten if Chris hadn’t needed a ride home. I could be functional on five hours, fine even. But that didn’t make it ideal, and he knew how much was riding on my finishing my senior project, finishing my degree with honors.
Neither of us had parents we could move back in with or ask for help if a job didn’t materialize after graduation. Mine were divorced and living in shitty apartments and working shitty jobs in a shitty town in Colorado. Chris’s had bought a share of some hippie commune land in far northern California, and he could only live with them if he paid in and then followed the commune rules, which included daily two-hour group mediation sessions—themeditationwas another mandatory hour in the evenings—no animal products of any kind, and thirty hours a week working on the cannabis farm they’d started.
Completely aside from the fact that all that sounded like hell on earth, and that Chris was allergic to marijuana, he would last ten seconds in a “group mediation session,” whatever the fuck that meant, let alone the meditation.
So we had no fallback, no plan B. We only had each other to depend on. Chris tried not to show how much it upset him that his parents had basically cut the cord, but I knew how alone he felt sometimes. And I’d fill that gap if it killed me—after all, Chris filled a similar sort of gap for me—but that didn’t mean I didn’t need him to meet me halfway on the practical shit we had to deal with. I had total faith Chris would find some awesome career eventually, but making a living with an English degree would take a little longer to get started than with my engineering major. So how did he think we were going to be able to pay the rent or eat if I couldn’t graduate on time and have a solid project to put on my resume?
But he still didn’t give enough of a fuck to take care of himself and keep himself out of dumb situations where I’d need to come running to the rescue at the expense of getting my work done.
I’d always come running to the rescue. And he knew it. And apparently, he didn’t appreciate it enough to…fuck it, enough. On to other problems, if I couldn’t help staying awake and brooding. Anything but Chris.
Electrical engineering. That was a big one. I mean, I loved the actual subject, but only one of the career choices I’d been looking at lately, with graduation looming close enough to get my blood pressure into stroke territory, really grabbed me. My senior project had hit a snag. My advisor was an unhelpful douchebag. And I almost never got enough sleep.
Jesus, that was going to give me a headache. Moving on.
Then there was breaking up with Emma right after spring break, about a month ago. That one loomed a lot when I couldn’t sleep, hadn’t gotten laid, and wondered when I ever would again. Partly because I couldn’t quite remember why I’d broken up with her that particular day. We’d been spending a ton of time together, maybe too much. I’d started to feel a little smothered. And yeah, I wasn’t totally in love with her, and I was sure she wasn’t totally in love with me, either. We’d been arguing right before I said maybe we should see other people, but the details were hazy simply because the argument had been so circular and stupid. Had we fought about Chris? It was possible. She never liked Chris.
Chris. Jesus fucking Christ. Everything seemed to come back to Chris.
I lay totally still and listened, relaxing when I heard another little snore. Still breathing, then.
Fucking hell. I rolled over and blew out a long breath of my own, staring at him in the almost-darkness. The blinds let in a trickle of illumination from the neighbor’s security light, just enough to see his dark hair on his pillow and the outline of his body under the blanket I’d tossed over him after I finished brushing his teeth and coaxing him to drink a glass of water and knock back a couple of aspirin.
