Page 32 of Overtime
“Are you pulling my leg?”
“Why? Is it over your budget?”
“No!” I gasp. “It’s a hundred fifty bucks cheaper than I’m currently paying, and that’s with one extra roommate.”
“So you’re interested then?” Ryan clasps her hands as if she’s praying. “Say yes, please. I like you and I really need someone to split the bills with, like,yesterday.”
“I’m about to say yes, but…”
“If your concern is Aran, he won’t bother us. Much.” She blinks cutely, which is in contrast to the whole badass look she has going on with her pixie haircut and ear piercings.
“No, I mean. You can have your boyfriend over as much as you want, that’s not?—”
Someone chokes. Aran, from the kitchen.
Ryan starts cackling.
“What?” I ask, confused as heck.
“Boyfriend? Aran? Mine?” She screeches. “That combination of words is just—nope. Don’t make me drink bleach.”
I hear coughing from the kitchen. In the middle of the fit, Aran asks, “You thought Ryan was my girlfriend?”
“Well, I—Yes?”
The two of them laugh. Which isn’t shocking from Ryan, considering what she just said. But I haven’t heard Aran laugh a single time before, and it’s jarring. Because it’s a good laugh—hearty and entirely unhinged.
My face probably looks like a stop sign. “I take it I was wrong.”
“Severely.” Ryan smacks my shoulder a few times as she calms down. Wiping a tear off her face, she adds, “I mean, we did try to date during sophomore year, but it was like trying to date a cousin.”
“Do you want me to barf all over your kitchen?” Aran asks, his voice still weird.
“Anyway, if it’s not about this jerk, what’s the holdup?”
“Still money.” I bite my lip. “I don’t have enough for a deposit or for movers.”
“We got you.” She puts her arm around my shoulder, steering me back to the kitchen where Aran’s chopping up vegetables as if this is his house. “First, there’s no deposit.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, I’ll just add you to my existing contract. And second, you see that guy over there?”
I face Aran, who pauses what he’s been doing and raises his eyebrows.
“Um, yes?”
“See all those big muscles on him?”
“Well, no. He’s wearing clothes.”
His eyebrows rise another notch, and I wish I could’ve worded it a different way.
Ryan grins at me. “True, but you know they’re there just by how he’s built, yeah?”
And also because I saw them on a video, but this I have the decency to keep to myself.
“Well, guess what? He’ll help you move. And I’ll sweeten the pot. He’ll get all his goons to help you move as well. For free. How’s that?”
