Page 37 of Dear Roomie
“This may break the rules, but will you show me some of your art?”
“You want to see it?” James jerks back up to sit straight as a rail. Her voice shakes, but her eyes light up.
“Is that your question?” I can’t help but tease her. This version of James, this insecure girl sitting on the couch, is so different from the girl who confronted me in the kitchen on my first day here. She stares up at me with joy glittering in her eyes, and I swell with pride knowing I put it there.
“Yes, James, I would love to see your work.”
She springs up off the couch and stumbles her way to her bedroom. The sounds of pages rustling and furniture thumping drift out from the open door. A few minutes later, she rejoins me in the living room with her arms full of different books and places one with a blue canvas binding in front of me.
“Look at this one first.”
I pick it up and thumb through it, careful not to rip or smear any of the pages. The first book is full of still-life drawings from around campus, made with a dark fine-point pen. As I finish looking through the book, she hands me another. I take my time looking through each page, spending those extra few seconds to appreciate the artistry. It’s clear she has put a lot of time and effort into every piece.
Each book offers something different: some are full of brightly colored portraits, and others are hastily drawn outlines. There are several drawings of Grover, Tanner, and her friends mixed in throughout the pages, and I’m surprised to find drawings of Nathan, Gage, and Karis toward the back of one of the books. I flip to the last page and gently close it. Disappointment shoots through me when I don’t find any drawings of me, but I swallow the feeling back down. This isn’t about me, this is about her art, and it is good. Really, really good.
“James, I don’t know what to say.” I pause for a second and her face falls.
“You hate them, don’t you?” She begins panicking before I can finish my thought, haphazardly collecting the sketchbooks into a pile. “This was amistake. I never should have shown you these. My dad is right. I will never make it as—”
I grab both her shoulders, forcing her to look at me and stop her frantic ramblings.
“They are amazing. No,youare amazing.”
She freezes completely and ducks her head toward the ground, but I catch a glimpse of pink on her cheeks before she can fully hide her face.
“Thanks,” she mumbles at her feet.
“I think it was your turn to ask a question,” I prompt her, trying to draw the light back out of her.
We fall into an easy routine, quickly abandoning the drinking rules in favor of getting drunk, and the one-question-at-a-time rule is abandoned not too long after. At some point, the game turns into genuine curiosity and a desire to truly get to know each other. Between the alcohol and the late hour, the conversation comes to a lull, but I don’t want this to end. I can’t let this end when there is no guarantee that I’ll get it with her again. I rack my brain to find any excuse to keep her out here with me.
“Do you want to see another of my favorite shows?” It’s a shot in the dark, but it’s better than nothing. She gives me a sleepy but enthusiastic nod, so I move to fiddle with the TV. It takes longer than it should due to the alcohol in my system, but I’m able to get the first episode ofThe Adventures of Sir Lancelotplaying on the screen.
“How is this even nerdier than your other nerd show,” James asks through a yawn.
“Shh, just watch.”
She listens to my order, leaning back to get more comfortable on the couch. I don’t know who initiates, but we drift closer and closer as the episode progresses, drawn together by some magnetic force until our thighs touch in the center of the couch. The air between us buzzes with electricity, making me keenly aware of her smallest movements. Normally, this is where a guy would pretendto stretch so he could drape his arm over his girl’s shoulder. That isn’t the play here. There is nothing like that happening between my roommate and me. But no matter how many times I tell myself that, the roaring of my heart in my ears never lessens.
The pictures on the screen fade into the background as my focus locks in on the woman beside me. My throat tightens and my whole body freezes as her head droops and comes to rest on my shoulder. Before I can get a question out, a quiet snore passes from her lips.
A sharp pang of disappointment rocks through my chest at the sound. Of course she is only sleeping. Even if this was intentional, I shouldn’t let her do this. I should wake her up and help her get to bed, but I’ve been ignoring a lot ofshouldswhen it comes to James Clarke, and this is no different. Wrapping my arms around her, I pull her closer, adjusting our position so we’re both lying down and her head is on my chest. For one brief second, the world stops spinning around us, and everything is right. The heat from her body soaks through the layers of our clothes, creating pleasant pinpricks along my torso. She snuggles in deeper as if she’s chasing more of that feeling. I mute the TV so it doesn’t wake her but leave it on so the flashes of light from the screen still illuminate her face. I drink in her features, knowing I will never get a moment like this again.
This is wrong.
She is going to wake up tomorrow and see this as a mistake, but I am too selfish to stop her from making it. So I watch her in silence, committing every inch of her in this peaceful state to my memory. My eyes grow heavy and burn as I fight sleep. I would give anything to live in this moment forever, but sleep eventually pulls me under, and for the first time since I moved into this apartment, I don’t dream.
Chapter 15
James
Morning comes, and with it, a sense of serenity. My consciousness hangs in that delicate space between awake and asleep, that limbo where you’re aware of your surroundings but not what they mean. I float in that peaceful state, only truly aware of an all-encompassing warmth that wraps itself around me in a tight embrace. It’s the type of warmth that feels like drinking hot cider while sitting on a porch swing on a chilly fall night—the type that feels like home.
I burrow in closer, inhaling the woody scent that floods my senses as my face presses against a solid wall of heat. The wall shifts and groans, and then I’m encircled in molten iron bands.
Wait, walls don’t move or groan like that.
The thought breaks through the half-asleep haze and brings me to a full state of alertness. I crack my eyes open, only to find my face buried in a chiseled chest. It’s not the chest that would make this whole situation okay—not Tanner’s chest—but Morgan’s. He lies underneath me, dead to the world, with his arms wrapped around me, locking me in place. I try to pull away, but his vise grip tightens against my escape.
