That Bubbling Feeling: A Feel Good Roommate Romance Novel

Chapter 25

Jonah

I woke up thinking about Caroline for the first time in years. It took me a minute to realize why. I knew she was there last night, but I couldn’t remember any of the specifics. Sleep must’ve reset my brain entirely. My body, not so much. Not only was I in pain, but I was also practically fully dressed. I lifted my blanket to see the open button-down hanging off the sides of my stomach and the unzipped jeans that sat around my hips.

Fuck, my head hurt.

There was no movement from Kai’s edge of the room. Assuming she was still resting, I took the opportunity to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for a few quiet moments, pulling my covers back over me. I replayed my last real interaction with Caroline, before last night, before the breakup, in my head.

Happy Valentine’s Day, I had texted her. She knew I didn’t care much for the holiday, and she claimed she didn’t either. Still, I didn’t feel there was any reason not to recognize it at all. She was my first real relationship. My first valentine.

She didn’t text back for an hour. Truthfully, I’d forgotten I even sent the message by the time I got a reply.

Nerd, she answered. We said we weren’t going to celebrate.

I chuckled at that. When things were good with Caroline, they were good. But when things were bad…

I know. But I still wanted to let you know I’m thinking about you.I wasn’t really. I was and I wasn’t. I couldn’t figure out if the issue was that I was just a distracted and distant person, or if I simply didn’t like her that much. She said she didn’t mind the way I was, she said she was okay with my personality. But by the end of it, I had this suspicion that she was so angry with me all the time because she thought my loser tendencies would allow her more control than they actually did. I don’t know. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but she really hated it when I put up boundaries.

Don’t go soft on me now.I chuckled again. How innocent I’d been. I’ll see you tomorrow when this silly holiday is over.

She didn’t want to hang out that day. She said she rejected the holiday so much that she boycotted it entirely by spending the whole day doing whatever she wanted alone. It sounded empowering. A little dramatic and self-righteous, but empowering. Plus it meant I could have the apartment to myself and work on music while Oli and June ran around town together, so I was more than happy to leave her to it and hear all about it the next day.

But I never got to hear all about it, because Caroline forgot to block Tiff from seeing her Instagram stories. She remembered me, of course, Kai, Oli, June, Noah, and even my parents. But she forgot Tiff. And we saw those stories. All of them.

It wasn’t the first time I’d suspected Caroline was keeping secrets from me. My effort dwindled every time she seemed to lie about her whereabouts, every time her phone chimed and she angled it away from me to respond. I wasn’t jealous or overbearing—quite the opposite, really—but she acted like I was. Sometimes just asking what her plans were for the day turned into an argument about my nosiness. I could never figure her out. When I wanted to be alone, she practically tugged on my arm for attention, and when I gave her attention, she didn’t really seem to care for it.

And it always went the same way. I’d leave her alone for a few hours, and then she’d text, apologizing for her behavior, saying she was unwell mentally. I knew that and I wanted to support that. I wasn’t well either, and I did my best.

Was my best any good? Maybe not. But it was all I could give. I tried and tried and tried, until I saw those stories she posted on Valentine’s Day.

Out to dinner alone, my ass.

I learned from Kai that love takes compromise, and that sometimes you need to understand that being with someone is making room for another person in your life. Something I’m not very good at. Something Kai, historically, had been too good at. Never would I let a person come in and take over my life entirely as she did.

And forgive me for saying it, but it’s true and she knows that.

But I did take a grain of that knowledge into my relationship with Caroline. I did make space for her. I did understand that a relationship might feel weird and new, and that I needed to open myself up to it. But for her to cheat? To wake up every day unsure if it would be a good day or a bad day for months just for her to make excuses to see someone else behind my back?

No, thanks.

I learned a lot from that relationship, but one lesson that stuck with me, one that I could never shake, was that taking a chance, as I’d done on Caroline, was a big fucking mistake. Romance, it seemed, only pried people apart. It showed their worst colors. I’d seen it with Kai, too. I’d seen how her relationship went down, down, much further than my own. I didn’t want that for myself. I didn’t want it for either of us.

I finally lifted myself up to see if Kai was awake. Her bed sheets were in the exact same position they were in last night when we left the house, slightly curled up in the corner from when she’d shoved them aside to come wrestle with me before we went out.

Meaning she slept with me after we got home…

Had I really been so drunk that I’d forgotten we fell asleep together? I was having an obscene amount of trouble piecing together the flashes in my mind, and nausea began creeping into my chest. When the door to our bedroom finally cracked open and she walked in with a tray, something hit me.

I stared at her blankly, digging into the deepest crevices of my brain to try and remember exactly what happened last night. I wasn’t sure, but I felt a heavy guilt, an anxiety, that I’d probably done something wrong. It was a feeling I usually got when I let myself drink and have fun, which is half the reason I almost never did it, but today it felt heavier.

What had I done and where did this pit in my stomach come from?

Her gaze burned a hole right through me, not with anger, but with an intense sweetness that devoured my senses like a piece of cake that’s far too rich. Her stare did not falter as she approached and set the tray on my desk, placing a bowl of cut strawberries with sugar sprinkled on them next to me and handing me a mug of coffee, nor did it waver as she sat next to me and faced me, holding her own mug in her hands and taking a long sip.

“What did I do?” I asked warily.

Her eyebrows twitched, first with confusion, then with…hurt?

“How much do you remember?” Caution. She was using caution.

I could’ve told her nothing, let her retell the entire night. But would she divulge? How bad had it been? I could’ve told her I remembered everything so she’d open up as if there was nothing to hide, but if she assumed I already knew, perhaps she wouldn’t go into detail. Fuck. I decided to be honest.

“Hardly anything. I feel guilty and I don’t know why. Did I offend you in some way?”

She blinked twice before looking off to the side, weighing the best way to tell me, perhaps. “Nothing happened.” She shook her head and offered me a little smile. “It’s just anxiety, Jojo. Nothing happened.”

I didn’t believe her until she started telling me how she got me home. She giggled as she re-enacted how my head had been rolling around on my neck as if it weighed fifty pounds, leading my body wherever it fell. I smiled while she informed me that I’d fallen into my mattress with my shirt unbuttoned and my pants undone, and she’d slipped my sneakers off my dangling feet while I lay there face down.

Apparently, Oli and June had chosen to stay behind, and Kai told me so with the same voice she uses when she has a really good piece of gossip. “You know how they are with public sex and all,” she said, swiping one hand down conversationally.

I rolled my eyes, grinning, thanking the universe that their kink was to do it out of the house when they could, and not something worse like in their roommate’s bed. We laughed together for a few long moments, which released the larger part of my nerves and assured me I’d done nothing last night to ruin our friendship.

“And Caroline?” I finally asked, taking a sip of my drink.

Kai’s smile grew. “Do I have permission to call her a bitch?”

“Call her whatever you want. No one’s listening but me.”

She stood from her seat and set her coffee on the nightstand. “Jonah, you gave that bitch the smackdown of the century!”

“What?” My heart jumped. Had my encounter with Justin turned me into some sort of raging lunatic? I sent my senses to my knuckles, weighing just how much they hurt. Is that where the guilt was coming from? “I… Are you serious? I would never, Kai. Justin was different. I would never.”

“No! Oh my god, no, Jo. Verbal smackdown. You told her off so well I almost dropped to my knees to bow to you.” I wouldn’t have minded seeing that. “You were like, ‘I tried, and it didn’t work.’ Something like, ‘It’s not my job to fill the gaping black hole that is your self-esteem.’ Oh, it was fucking awesome. I will never forget it. I also may or may not have insinuated that we’ve hooked up.” She pulled her cheeks back as if she felt sorry about it, but I could see that she didn’t by the way she shoved her thumbnail between her teeth and beamed.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Kai’s feelings for me were somehow changing. She was acting…different. She was looking at me differently. I couldn’t quite pin it, but it was like most giggle-prone person on the planet went and got gigglier, like her smile got smilier and her closeness got closer.

I shook my head at the thought. I was being ridiculous, and this really wasn’t the time.

“Oh, I feel so bad.” I ran my hand over my face, trying to cover my grin. I didn’t really feel bad, but I should have. Yesterday consisted of a punch and a kick to my manager’s face and a “verbal smackdown” on my ex. Years of avoiding confrontation altogether had put me quite out of practice, or so I thought. But I’d be lying if I said the exposure, the straying from my lane, didn’t make me feel anxious. The nerves between my ribs told me that was probably enough social interaction for the rest of the year.

“Can I ask what you did to deserve it? All the hate, I mean.” I was hardly offended by Kai’s question. I knew the role I played in it all.

“I didn’t love her. Why?”

“Because I need to know what we’re working with. Are you sure you didn’t do anything else? You can tell me if you were an asshole to her.”

I loved you the whole time, and while I never admitted it to her, she knew.“Nothing, Kai. We both fucked up.”

She gave me a look like she didn’t believe me but continued on anyway. “Then how are we going to snap back at her? Revenge? Confrontation? Let’s get on some super spy outfits and go find her. We can follow her around and pull pranks.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“Nothing, but it’ll be funny.”

I shook my head and took another sip. The coffee really wasn’t very good, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. She still wasn’t on the best of terms with the coffee machine, and I wouldn’t dare pick sides. “If it has anything to do with Caroline, it’ll blow up in my face. Believe me.”

“Jojo, if you’re going down, I’m jumping head first into the flames after you. Let’s cause some chaos.”

A smile took my face as I doused her hot madness. “I can’t, Kai.”

She whined, kicking one foot and pacing about the room. I knew she didn’t really want to cause any drama; she was just bored and looking for me to work through my feelings. But I didn’t need to work through them. I disliked Caroline not only for our relationship, but for how she treated me after. How she treated others. It was nothing that sparked the need for revenge or even closure. I simply wanted to continue my life without her in it.

“She cheated on me,” I said quietly. I’d never told Kai, never wanted to, because that wasn’t even the worst part.

Kai cursed and muttered something about having gathered that last night, her attention snapping to me.

I crinkled my nose thoughtfully. “I think I deserved it. But she…” I took a deep breath, ready to trudge up muddy memories of someone I had once trusted. “Caroline was a high school biology tutor.”

Kai slapped a hand over her mouth. She understood before I even said it.

“The kid begged me not to tell,” I said. “The kid. I got in touch with him when I found out to see if he needed help, and he begged me. He said they were in love, and he didn’t want Caroline to be taken away. He was seventeen. Caroline and I were twenty-one.”

Kai’s mouth hung on its hinges. She didn’t appear to be offended in the slightest that I’d never told her, rather interested in hearing the rest of the story. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do, Kai. I heard him out. It was only a four-year difference, and I was so thrown off I hardly knew where to turn. But I remembered what you said about that guy from Holland. Do you remember him?”

She nodded. Some guy Ana met right when she and Kai first started school in Spain. He was ten years older than her, and she was a fresh eighteen. It didn’t last long. I remembered Kai saying she didn’t see the big deal with the age gap as long as it was all consensual, but as time went on, she let me in on little glimpses of clarity. Finally, she realized that the issue wasn’t whether Ana wanted to or not. It was the fact that the guy didn’t make the correct decision even though he knew better, even though he knew Ana would grow and slowly realize what had happened to her. And that’s how he actively took advantage of her.

So, I had to come to terms with the type of person I’d been dating. She’d dragged me through the mud, and I’d let her. I told, and she never forgave me.

“I don’t ever want to be near that again,” I said after explaining how everything went down. How Caroline lost her job, but no charges were pressed. How she was blacklisted because of it. “I just want Caroline to go away.”

It hurt when all that happened. I can’t lie. But it was just Caroline, so I got over it. I could never imagine going through that with someone I truly loved, watching them fall from a pedestal like that or letting them hold my heart only for them to drop in the dirt. I’m not sure I’d be able to endure it.