Page 22 of Pucking My Grumpy Roommate
She exhaled softly, nodding. “Talking is good.”
Hours later, we were sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, takeout containers abandoned around us, scrolling through our text history and taking turns reading messages aloud. It should’ve been painfully awkward, especially for someone like me who valued privacy above all else. But somehow, with Kate laughing helplessly beside me, it just wasn’t.
“Oh god, listen to this one,” Kate said, holding up her phone. “‘I’ve never told anyone this, but sometimes I organize my sock drawer by color and fabric weight.’ Stone, that’s the saddest attempt at a confession I’ve ever heard.”
“Says the woman who admitted to naming her underwear after Golden Girls characters.”
“Hey, Blanche the underwear deserves respect,” she shot back, tossing a fortune cookie at me.
I caught it easily. “At least I didn’t write—” I picked up my phone and scrolled to find the exact quote. “‘Sometimes I imagine your hands on me when I’m alone in bed, wondering if they’re as strong as they seem in my head.’”
Kate’s face flamed again, but she didn’t back down. “Well? Are they?”
The air between us suddenly feels charged with something electric. I flexed my fingers unconsciously.
“You’d have to find out for yourself,” I said, my voice lower than usual.
She swallowed visibly, her eyes darkening. Then she reached for my phone. “Let me see what else I said to you.”
As Kate scrolled through our messages, her expression shifted from embarrassment to something else. “It’s fascinating,” she mused. “We were essentially different people via text.”
“Were we?” I asked, leaning back against the couch. “Or were we more ourselves?”
She looked up, surprised. “That’s...actually profound, Stone.”
“Don’t sound so shocked. I went to college.”
“To play hockey,” she teased.
“Economics major,” I corrected her. “With a minor in business management.”
“Hmm. Hot and smart. Dangerous combination.”
My eyebrows shot up at her boldness, and she immediately clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Sorry! Text Kate is bleeding into Real Kate. Boundaries. We need boundaries.”
I watched her squirm, enjoying her discomfort more than I should. “What exactly would those boundaries be, Dr. Ellis?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t ‘Dr. Ellis’ me with that voice.”
“What voice?” I asked innocently, deliberately lowering it further.
“That one. The one that’s like...” She waved her hands vaguely. “Auditory chocolate.”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. A real laugh that I felt all the way through my chest. Kate stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve never heard you laugh before. Not like that.”
I shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “Haven’t had much reason to lately.”
She smiled then, soft and genuine. “Well, finding out your uptight landlord is actually your secret text boyfriend is pretty laugh-worthy.”
“Boyfriend?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Figure of speech!” she backpedaled quickly, then paused as her phone buzzed with a notification. Her eyes widened as she checked it.
