Page 21 of Dear Roomie
I don’t have a choice, though. Tanner wants to meet him, and I’ve put off informing him of this fact for as long as I can. My time is up; I have to talk to him today.
I raise my fist again.
If I don’t do this now, I never will. As I’m about to man up and knock, the door swings open. The man I’ve tried so hard to avoid stands in the doorway, dressed inhis normal uniform. He doesn’t notice me at first, stepping out into the hall while digging through the backpack slung over one shoulder.
Yelping in surprise, I stumble backward, trying to avoid being run over. That noise catches his attention, and he stops in his tracks—at least, he attempts to. His feet stop moving, but his upper body doesn’t quite get the memo. Caught by inertia, he stumbles forward as he tries to regain his balance and barrels straight into me. The impact knocks me off balance, and I start to fall back, but his strong hands grip my shoulders, steadying us both. His hazel eyes meet mine, and a myriad of emotions flit across his face. I’m able to single out a few of them: concern, fear, and something I can’t quite place—a flash of heat that causes the butterflies in my stomach to take flight.
As quickly as it came, the moment passes, and his face hardens into an emotionless mask. It’s the same expression he wore when I tore into him in the bathroom; the look rips the wings off those butterflies, and they plummet into my gut.
He stands up straight and takes a step back, releasing my shoulders as if they burned him.
“I’m sorry, I was just leaving. I’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes.” His voice sounds hollow, completely void of emotion. He steps around me without waiting for a response and doesn’t look back as he walks down the hall.
“Morgan, wait.” I cringe inwardly at the sharpness of my tone. I’m already fucking this up. He ignores me as he continues to walk toward the door.
“Please,” I add in a soft whisper. That word gets him to freeze with his hand hovering over the doorknob.
“What do you want, James?” He doesn’t turn to face me, but I can see his back tense as if he’s bracing for a blow.
“I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”
“All right,” he sighs and finally turns back around to face me. “What’s up?”
He watches me with apprehensive eyes. It’s the only spark of life on his otherwise stony face.
“Tanner is driving up for the weekend.” I rip the Band-Aid off.
“Is that it?” A small smile pulls at his lips, and he visibly relaxes. “I’m pretty sure you could have put that in one of your notes.”
“He wants to meet you. I figured it would be better to tell you that face-to-face.”
“Sure, I’m happy to meet him if that’s what you want.” The last of his indifference slips away, and I feel like I’m talking to the Morgan I met a few weeks ago. My heart does that stupid little fluttery thing at the thought.
“Okay, good, because he is going to be here in, like, twenty minutes.”
His eyes flick down to his watch, and his brow furrows. “Will he be here later? Maybe I can meet him then instead. I’m supposed to be at the library with Nathan in fifteen.”
“Please, it won’t take more than a minute once he’s here.”And once he meets you, he should chill out about everything. Despite my near begging, I can still see the no start to form on his lips. After the way I’ve treated him, I can’t blame him one bit. I wouldn’t go out of my way to do things for me if I were him.
“I know you have no reason to do this for me,” I say before he can shut me down completely, “but it would mean a lot to me if you did. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
I mean it. I’ll do damn near anything for him to push his plans back another thirty minutes. I can’t offer him anything personal because I don’t actually know anything about him. He’s practically a stranger who happens to live in my home.
“Fine.” He pulls out his phone and sends a quick text before sitting on the couch.
Several minutes pass, but he doesn’t say anything else while he waits with me. An almost tangible tension looms in the quiet air. He seems completely unperturbed by the silence, but I can feel its pressure growing, suffocating me, begging for me to break it. Each one of my heartbeats echoes in my ears. Every rhythmic thump marks another second passing by, another second of nothing.
“How are classes?” I ask in a desperate attempt to fill the silence with anything.
“Good.” He doesn’t look up from his phone.
“Law, right? That must be hard.”
“It is.” He doesn’t give me any more than that, but I do feel a small bit of pride that I remembered something about him. It’s obvious he isn’t going to entertain my attempts at conversation, and we lapse back into silence.
Time drags as it passes.
Ten minutes crawl by.
