Chapter 10
ten
MAINE
So my brilliant plan is to seduce my roommate for a bet I can’t afford to lose.
This might be the best, or the worst, episode of the Maine Show ever.
The shower water still drips from my hair as I check my reflection one final time, going through my mental checklist. Showered. Check. Fresh shave. Check. Body spray applied with all the subtlety of a desperate man trying to mask the scent of failure. Check.
Now to see if I can charm Maya, when she looks at me like I’m daytime television she forgot to turn off.
I’ve hooked up with plenty of girls who actually wanted the full Maine Hamilton experience. All surface charm, no assembly required. But Maya sees straight through my bullshit and finds it mildly entertaining, at best, like watching someone else’s dog chase its tail.
After I dress, I head out of the bathroom and into the living room, where Maya has colonized the couch. She’s got medical textbooks stacked around her like she’s preparing for siege warfare against ignorance, and she’s so encapsulated by one of them that she doesn’t even look up at me.
But I look at her.
God , do I look at her.
Afternoon sun slants through our mostly clean window—her doing, obviously—turning her black hair amber at the edges. She’s got this habit of tucking one leg under herself when she studies, her free foot tapping out rhythms to music only she hears.
Like always, the tiny movement draws my eye to her bare ankle peeking beneath cuffed jeans, the delicate bones there seeming impossibly fragile for someone who regularly tells grown men where to shove their opinions. And as she?—
Fuck! My mind shouts at me. When did you develop an ankle fetish?
I saunter over and fold myself onto the couch with the calculated grace of someone who’s practiced this move in the mirror (twice), letting my thigh settle against hers.
Not aggressive, just… geographically inevitable.
She doesn’t shift away, but her foot stutters mid-tap like a record skip, highlighter hovering.
“What do you want, Maine?” She sighs, not even looking up from her textbook, although she puts the cap on the highlighter.
“Studying hard or hardly—“ The words tumble out before my brain can stage an intervention. “Fuck, just pretend I didn’t say that…”
Her mouth twitches, fighting a smile. “Too late. That joke is terminal; it says so right here on page thirty-three…”
I laugh, for real, not because she intimidates me or because I’m trying to win a bet. “Damn, how long do I have?”
“Seconds.” She still hasn’t looked up, but I catch the way her eyes narrow with suppressed laughter. “The only cure is immediate cessation of awful wordplay.”
“But then how would I communicate?” I grin. “It’s like asking me to play hockey without a stick.”
A smirk. “Even better…”
I lean in, close enough that she’ll definitely catch the full twelve-dollar cologne experience. Desperate times, desperate measures. “Besides, I’m just establishing a baseline of terrible. Everything after this will seem like Shakespeare, just you wait.”
That earns me the full Maya Hayes Diagnostic Stare—the one that makes you feel like she’s cataloging your vital signs and finding them wanting.
Her dark eyes track from the damp spot where my hair drips onto my collar, down to where my hand rests on my thigh, fingers drumming nervous energy inches from her knee.
“I’m just trying to figure out your angle here, Maine.” Her voice carries that particular tone I’ve learned means danger, the vocal equivalent of a scalpel, ready to dissect whatever bullshit comes next. “We’ve been circling each other for weeks. Pranks, tit-for-tat, even a bit of flirting, so…”
“We could call it a lot of things…” I execute the classic arm-along-the-back-of-the-couch maneuver, and my fingertips find the ends of her hair, testing. “Study buddy bonding? Maine getting Maya to let her guard down before he strikes? Who knows?”
“How about ‘Maine is having a neurological episode and I’m trying to memorize cardiac conduction pathways’?”
She’s holding her ground, verbally, but she hasn’t moved away from the touch of thigh-on-thigh or hand-on-hair. Nor has she evacuated to her room like she does most of the time when she’s had enough of my shit. Instead, her foot’s gone completely still now, and there’s tension in her posture.
It’s like a player waiting for the puck drop.
“See, that’s your problem right there.” I gesture at her textbook fortress, injecting confidence like it’s a performance-enhancing drug. “You’re overthinking the heart. Sometimes you’ve got to trust the rhythm… feel the flow… get in the zone a little.”
Her laugh explodes out of her—half snort, half cackle—and it’s music.
When she really laughs, not the calculated version she deploys at parties, but the real deal, her whole face transforms. Her eyes squeeze into crescents, her nose scrunches up, and there’s this tiny wheeze at the end that she’d probably hate knowing about.
“Did you just use cardiac physiology as foreplay?” she says. “In all the bullshit I’ve heard from all the guys, that’s a first.”
Fuck, do I have a shot here? Already?
Suddenly, the fear of paying out money I don’t have is replaced by the excitement of winning money I could really use.
And, you know, the idea of sleeping with Maya, which wouldn’t be bad either.
It’d be like a cash bonus for fucking out the tension that’s existed in our living arrangement for weeks now.
“I’m first for a lot of things,” I say, trying on the line.
“Oh, honey.” She pivots fully toward me, knee pressing mine with intent that feels deliberate as a hip check, her eyes sparking with something that makes my mouth go dry. “You’re going to have to bring way better game than that. This isn’t some puck bunny at an afterparty.”
A moment crackles between us like lightning, because in the last ten seconds we’ve both declared game on for the attraction between us.
It’s been unspoken for weeks, flirting and sideways glances, but now it’s on the table.
And it’s not just words, either. It’s the way she’s angled toward me, head tilted, full lips parted…
Interest. Genuine, holy-shit-is-this-happening interest.
Challenge accepted.
My pulse kicks into overtime like I’m in sudden death.
This is it, score the goal or eat ice.
“I could help you study.” I reach for her textbook, deliberately clumsy so our hands collide over the anatomical diagrams. “Uh, sorry, I?—“
Her fingers slide between mine like water finding cracks, skin fever-warm and soft. “Are you having a stroke? Should I check your pupils?”
Her hand stays tangled with mine, her thumb’s drawing tiny circles now, each rotation sending signals straight to the southern parts of my anatomy her textbook probably has clinical names for, but most of my hockey buddies have far cruder names for.
Except Kellerman. Fucking nerd.
She continues, looking into my eyes. “Pupils normal, although patient has chronic foot-in-mouth disease. Old enough to know better, young enough to?—“
Three rapid knocks.
Pause.
Two more.
Every muscle in my body locks up like I’ve been checked into next week.
Not now. Not when I might actually be getting somewhere.
That knock’s been branded into my brain since I was fifteen—Mom’s special code from when she’d check if I was asleep before they’d leave for another hospital run with Chloe. Except I’m not fifteen anymore, and they never just “stop by.” Gas costs money they don’t have, so if they drove here…
Something’s wrong.
“Expecting someone?” Maya asks, still a little flirty, not detecting the changing mood.
But I’m already moving, legs on autopilot like muscle memory from a play I never wanted to learn, and when I open the door I find the full Hamilton family disaster variety hour. I blink at them a few times, not quite knowing what to say to them.
Mom clutches her purse—the same cracking Target clearance special she’s been nursing for five years with superglue and prayer.
Dad checks the time on the cheap-as-fuck Timex I bought him years ago.
And Chloe, my baby sister who stopped being a baby the first time she asked if she was going to die, well…
Well, fuck, she looks like microwaved death.
Chloe sags against the doorframe, because standing is just another thing trying to kill her. Her gray-tinged skin says oxygen’s a luxury her lungs can’t afford, and the circles under her eyes have evolved from shadows to full-blown bruises.
“Hey buddy,” my dad says, and I can tell he’s calculating gas mileage and lost wages. “Chloe had a rough morning. Thought maybe a change of scenery…”
Translation: We’re one bad day from complete breakdown and you’re the only respite care that doesn’t charge.
The familiar weight crushes down on my shoulders—responsibility wrapped in resentment wrapped in love wrapped in bone-deep exhaustion. They came here without asking because they know I’ll never say no, despite whatever is going on with me.
But my mouth’s already moving, performing the script written before I could read. “Of course. Jesus, Chlo, are you trying out for The Walking Dead?”
She manages a laugh that deteriorates into a wheeze, then uses a word most eight-year-olds aren’t allowed to, but she has a special permit for. “Asshole.”
“Language,” Mom says on autopilot, hands already excavating her purse. “Her four o’clock meds are in the front pocket—blue pills only, not white, because she already had those —and her peak flow meter’s in there too. If she drops below 200?—“
“Emergency room, I know.” I take Chloe’s elbow, accepting her weight like I’ve been doing since she was three and I was ten and nobody thought to ask if I was strong enough. She’s lighter than last time. Always lighter. “We’ve danced this dance, Mom.”
“The nebulizer’s in the car. I can?—“
“I have one here.”