Chapter 4 Mads
Mads
Blake is already in full inspection mode before I’ve even made it through the door with the last box, prowling from corner to corner, grading the place on a rubric only she understands—checking outlets, peering behind doors, opening cabinets.
The living room looks mostly fine. Dusty, bare, but intact. One couch. One sad coffee table. One cracked lamp that’s either a fire hazard or possibly haunted. Nothing too terrible.
It’s already a massive upgrade from my last place. Chase—my former roommate and walking Axe body spray ad—had a habit of hosting shirtless poker nights in our dorm room and clipping his toenails in the common room kitchen sink.
The guy once left raw shrimp in a bowl on the coffee table because he wanted to see if it would pickle. I opened the door, smelled it, and dry-heaved so hard I saw stars. I spent the next hour gag-scrubbing the entire dorm with a towel wrapped around my face.
So yeah, this place? Huge win.
And the fact that Blake’s here?
Even better.
I’d take living in a rubbish heap if it meant sharing walls with her. Watching her pad around in shorts, stretched out on the couch, biting her lip while she scrolls through her phone—Jesus. She’s the one thing that would make any place worth staying.
I’d wreck myself a hundred different ways if she ever gave me a chance.
I’ve seen this girl tear into men twice her size, fearless as hell, all stubborn fire and zero quit. I noticed it the first time she lit into a ref freshman year, and again too many times to count.
There’s nothing I love more than when she turns that fire on me.
Doesn’t hurt that she’s got every other damn thing going for her, too.
I hear her stressed voice from the back of the apartment. “Nope. Nope nope nope.”
I set the box down and find her standing in the bathroom doorway, completely frozen.
“What,” I say, bracing myself, “did we win in here?”
“The toilet just gurgled at me,” she says flatly. “Not like, flushed. Just… gurgled. On its own. Like it’s alive.”
I glance past her and immediately understand. It’s not just the toilet. There’s a single towel hanging in the bathroom that I’m 90% sure predates the internet.
And on the ceiling above the shower is a spider. Large. Unmoving. Making unbroken eye contact with both of us.
She turns to me and says with the most sincere resolve, “I’m peeing outside.”
“You are not peeing outside.”
“Watch me.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“No, I’m being sanitary.” She spins on her heel, already heading back out the door. “I’m peeing outside,” she repeats, and before I can even respond, the front door slams.
I blink at the empty doorway. “Cool,” I say aloud. “Healthy communication.”
I glance at the bathroom again. The gurgling toilet. The single damp towel. The spider who still hasn’t broken eye contact.
I sigh.
I can’t leave it like this. She’s already miserable enough being stuck here with me, and I won’t make it worse. I might be excited she’s around, but I have to accept she doesn’t feel the same. Not yet. So it’s on me now. To make it better. To make it livable. To make it hers as much as mine.
My head spins with everything wrong. The mildew smell, the chipped tile, the damp air that clings to your skin.
It’s already a list a mile long, and I know I won’t stop until every single thing is dealt with.
Because if she’s going to be here, then she needs to feel comfortable.
Safe. At home. And if I have to bleach the walls raw and fight that spider to the death, then so be it.
I rub a hand over my face, already mapping out what needs to go, what needs to be replaced, what needs to be scrubbed until it gleams.
And then I get to work.
First, I evict the spider. Gently and respectfully. Using an old Tupperware container and a scrap of junk mail I found in a drawer. He resists. I persist. We don’t come to blows. Eventually, he’s relocated to a bush outside, and I give him a solid "no hard feelings" nod.
Then I tackle the rest of the bathroom. I find cleaning supplies under the sink that probably expired during the Blair era, but I mix what’s left of them carefully enough not to gas myself and scrub until the grout is no longer visibly sentient.
I clean the toilet. I fix the toilet. Turns out the gurgling was a loose fill valve. Thank you, YouTube.
I toss the cursed towel in the trash and stock the closet (that I had to pry open) with fresh ones.
By the time I’m done wiping down every gross surface in this sad little flat, I’m sweating through my clothes and kind of impressed with myself.
Blake comes back almost an hour later, flushed and breathing hard, with her shirt clinging to her. I think it’s safe to assume she went for a run to clear her head as opposed to actually peeing outside.
She pauses in the doorway, sniffs, and blinks at the faint scent of lemon cleaner.
“You cleaned,” she says slowly, like she doesn’t quite trust it. Which is fair. I wouldn’t trust me if I were her either.
Still, I should probably come up with small ways to keep pranking her while we’re stuck here.
Can’t exactly abandon the Rites completely, even if I’d much rather redirect all that energy into proving I’m worth fantasizing about instead of tolerating.
Right now, she’s got me pegged as the resident nuisance, when I’d prefer her pegging me for something else entirely.
Fuckable.
“I also fixed the toilet,” I add, tossing a Clorox wipe in the trash. “And relocated the spider. We’re all safer now.”
She looks at me, then around the space, then back at me. Her jaw ticks. “I don’t know whether to thank you or be suspicious.”
“I can think of several ways you could thank me,” I say, smirking.
“Fat chance,” she replies, flipping me off and disappearing into the freshly sanitized bathroom. She’s got her overnight bag with her, packed for easy access so she won’t have to dig through the bigger stuff until later. Smart. I wish I’d thought to do the same.
I grin.
Progress.
BLAKE
I step out of the shower feeling mildly less homicidal. The bathroom is clean. Actually, that’s an understatement. It looks like it was exorcised while I was gone. I don’t want to admit I’m impressed, but part of me is definitely wondering if Mads secretly moonlights as a janitor or something.
I didn’t actually pee outside. I stormed out with full commitment, but two minutes into my rage-jog, I realized I didn’t hate myself enough to squat behind a bush like a feral animal.
So I ran to the campus library instead, used their pristine second-floor restroom, washed my hands twice, and rage-jogged back with slightly less righteous fury and a lot more thigh sweat.
My hair’s detangled, my skin smells like coffee-scented body scrub, and the plumbing is survivable, so I’m finally ready to crawl into bed and pretend this day never happened.
Until I see it.
I left my overnight bag zipped, clothes folded tight so I could live out of it for a day or two. Now it’s sitting open on the counter, half my stuff spilling out like someone rifled through it. Shirts unfolded, shorts inside-out, underwear I definitely didn’t leave on top.
I freeze, uncertain.
Mads was probably digging for ammo—something pathetic he could lord over me until I lost it.
A bra he could “accidentally” leave hanging from the goalpost, one of my jerseys he could duct tape to the locker room ceiling, maybe even my cleats, so he could lace them together and toss them over a power line.
Juvenile and exactly the brand of chaos he lives for.
It pisses me off more than anything to even imagine him barging into the bathroom while I’m naked in the shower without my permission, and it freaks me out that I didn’t even hear him.
But the thought doesn’t last. I squash it as soon as it shows up.
For all the ways he gets under my skin, I can’t picture him actually doing that.
He’s the guy who turns his back when I change my shirt after practice, who makes a point of announcing himself before stepping into a room if he knows any of the girls are in it.
The guys’ and girls’ teams end up crammed together on buses and in hotels often enough that those rules matter, and he actually follows them.
I hate admitting it, but I respect that about him.
Infuriating, yes. Boundary-stomping, no.
My running shorts are on top, even though I always pack them at the bottom. The folded stack is out of order, pieces jammed in like whoever went through it didn’t care how they left it.
Was it him? I don’t want to believe he’d cross that line, especially not since we’re living together now, but I can’t explain how else it ended up like this.
“Nope,” I whisper, grabbing my towel and storming out of the bathroom. I don’t care if this is just Mads trying to freak me out. If that’s what it is, he’s succeeded.
He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, scrolling on his phone like he didn’t just set the stage for a psychological thriller or something.
“Seriously?” I snap. “Seriously?”
He glances up, but his eyes do not go straight to my face. They stall, just for a beat, on the fact that I’m standing here in nothing but a towel, dripping water on the floor. “What?”
“You thought it’d be funny to dig through my things now?”
He blinks too fast, clearly short-circuiting, like his brain can’t decide whether to defend himself or keep pretending he hasn’t noticed how close the towel is to slipping. “What?” he asks again.
“How naive do you think I am?”
He slowly sets his phone down, gaze flicking once—just once—back to the edge of my towel before he answers. His voice is rougher than usual when he says, “That is a trap question and I refuse to answer.”
“Messing with my stuff? That’s the best you’ve got?”
“I literally haven’t moved from this bed.” He pauses before adding, “If I’d come in the bathroom while you were naked in the shower, I promise you’d have known.”