Chapter 4
The thing I can’t wrap my head around is that Mike is nothing like Ryan said.
I’ve been living here for a week, and he hasn’t thrown a single party. He goes out a lot. There have been more nights than not that I’ve heard the front door open in the middle of the night. Or early in the morning.
But he does dishes. He cleans up after himself. When he’s in his room, I can hear music through the wall, but it’s usually bands I listen to, so it doesn’t bother me.
The worst part is, he asks.
If his music is too loud. If I wanted him to turn it off. If I need anything from the store. If I want to hang out.
He’s nice. Annoyingly, confusingly nice, so much so that it makes it hard to keep my distance. I built my whole strategy around him being someone I wouldn’t like, and I’m finding that’s the complete opposite of who he is.
And that’s becoming a problem.
Tuesday evening, I’m sitting on the armchair with my laptop, working on an assignment due next week, trying to stay ahead of it after falling behind all of August, when Mike comes downstairs.
I glance up briefly before looking back at my screen.
Not distracted at all.
He goes to the kitchen, comes back with two sodas, and holds one out toward me without a word, wiggling the can to get my attention.
I take it because refusing would be rude. “Thanks.”
He drops onto the couch across from me, crossing his legs. He doesn’t turn the TV on. Doesn’t say anything. Just sits there and watches me in comfortable silence.
It’s not comfortable for me.
I type something. It doesn’t make sense. Delete it. Type it again.
“What are you working on?” he asks after a while.
“Paper.”
“What class?”
“Physics.”
He makes a face. “Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t leave either. I can feel him there even when I’m not looking. There’s just something about him. He has a presence. He’s always making some sort of noise. And he looks at you, even when it’s weird.
He doesn’t seem to care.
After a brutal amount of time where neither of us speaks and I pretend to do my paper while he stares at me with those eyes, he reaches over and picks up the acoustic guitar leaning against the side of the couch.
I don’t mean to watch him, but he settles it across his lap easy as breathing, the way I used to, and starts strumming a quiet tune, humming along.
I close my laptop.
“I’m gonna work upstairs,” I say, already standing.
Mike looks up, his fingers going still on the strings as he watches me gather my stuff with a little frown. “Oh. Okay.”
I don’t hear him play again that night.
I eat dinner in my room most nights, even though when I moved in, I was looking forward to having a real kitchen. Making actual food.
But Mike is in the kitchen, so I eat a bowl of cereal in my room.
Around seven, I started to hear voices downstairs that I don’t recognize. More than one. I tell myself it’s not my business and put my earbuds in. And it’s working, I’m thoroughly unbothered by Mike and whoever he has downstairs with him.
For about thirty minutes.
Until there’s a knock at my door.
I pull out an earbud. “Yeah?”
The door opens a crack, and Mike leans in, blowing a strand of hair from his face before he talks. “Hey. Some of my friends are over. You should come down, hang out. They’ve been dying to meet my new roomie.”
I look at my screen. “Oh. Um. I think I’ll stay up here.”
“Come onnn, it’s only a couple of people. My besties. Nothing crazy.” He pauses. “They’ll be nice, I promise.”
“Can’t. I’ve got work to do.”
He looks at my screen, showing a YouTube video I put on to drown out the sound of his friends, and looks back at me. He doesn’t call me out, a small blessing. “Okay, well,” he says. “If you change your mind, you know where we are.”
Downstairs, I hear a loud burst of laughter. A girl. And a lower one too. And of course, Mike’s, somewhere in the middle of them.
I turn my video up.
They’re still here at ten when I go down to get a water bottle. I tried to time it right, assuming that they left after a lull in conversation.
But no such luck.
Mike is on the floor against the couch, his guitar in his lap again.
There’s a heavy-set guy next to him, with dark skin and a buzz cut.
He seems friendly enough, laughing at something with his whole body.
A girl is cross-legged on the couch above them, with pink braids and glasses, gesturing with a beer can while she talks a mile a minute.
Both of them are dressed the same way as Mike. Jewelry, band tees, rips everywhere.
They look like the kind of people I would have wanted to know once.
Now, I grab my water and try to sneak past them.
“Alex!”
I stop.
Mike’s friends have gone quiet, looking at me with way too much curiosity for my liking. “Come meet the guys.”
“I’m tired,” I say, already starting up the stairs again.
He pouts this time, full on, pursing those stupidly kissable lips, and I have to get away from him. “Okay.” He always says that. No problem. But this time, he sounds a little down.
The girl with the fuchsia hair gives me a small wave, and the guy raises his chin in a greeting.
I nod back to both of them before I make my retreat, wondering, not for the first time, why I did this to myself.
Ryan comes over on Thursday after class, because having someone else in the house makes it easier to exist here. Sorta like a buffer.
We’ve been playing Xbox for an hour, a shooter game Ryan chose, and he’s winning by enough that I’ve started to lose interest. But that’s fine. This is exactly the kind of normal evening I should be having, and I’m doing okay.
Not thinking about anyone.
I’ve started to relax for the first time all week when I hear footsteps on the stairs.
Mike strolls into the living room wearing the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen on another dude, drawing my attention to his pale thighs and the tattoo of a black cat—
I have to physically redirect my eyes toward the television screen.
“Hey,” Mike says, easy, resting onto the arm of the couch beside me. Touching my arm with the outside of his leg as he glances at the screen and then at Ryan. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Mike.”
Ryan doesn’t even acknowledge him.
Mike doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, he doesn’t show it. He looks back at the TV. “You guys wanna watch a movie after this round? I was thinking about ordering a pizza.”
That plan sounds amazing. Watching a movie with him, eating pizza. Hanging out the way roommates do. The part of me that I keep trying to suffocate is begging to say yes.
Is going to.
“We were actually just leaving,” Ryan says, already reaching for his jacket, even though he wasn’t planning on going anywhere thirty seconds ago.
“Oh,” Mike says, something shifting in his expression. “Alright. No worries.”
He looks at me then, a question in his eyes that feels bigger than pizza and a movie. A line I can step over or draw completely.
I put my controller down.
“Yeah,” I say. “We should head out.”
Mike nods once, standing up from the arm of the couch. I make the mistake of looking at him when he does.
The tank top he’s wearing rides up when he moves, and I see a sliver of pale skin above the waistband of his shorts, a hint of the star tattoos on his hips at eye level.
I look very hard at the door.
“Have fun,” he says, and it would sound neutral to someone who doesn’t overanalyze everything he says. But I hear the sigh in his voice.
Ryan is already halfway out the door before I stand up to follow him, grabbing my keys off the side table, not looking back, no matter how much I want to.
Outside, once the front door is closed behind us, Ryan starts toward my car as if nothing happened. “That dude is so weird. Did you see what he was wearing?”
I don’t say anything.
But yeah. I saw what he was wearing.