Roommates With Benefits

  Instantly, my hands left him, my body backing into the wall behind me. He stayed angled toward the shower for a moment, another shudder spilling down his back, before he turned around.

  The look on his face wasn’t the one I was expecting. He was gloating. Like he’d just won some game I hadn’t known we were playing.

  My blood rolled to a boil. “I know what you’re doing.” My eyes narrowed more when his tipped smile became even more crooked.

  “Trying to get clean?” His gaze ran down me, like he could see every nerve still firing in my body.

  “You’re trying to catch me in a weak moment.” I pushed off of the wall, trying to prove to him his proximity to me had nothing to do with anything. Of course, that was a total lie. “You’re trying to seduce me with your body, but I already told you. It’s going to take a lot more than that to break me.”

  Giving himself one last rinse, he pulled the curtain open to exit. “Counting on it.”

  I’d booked the client. The colossal one. The foreign one everyone in the Free World had heard of. The same client whose brand everyone wanted to have hanging off their shoulder or slung around their feet, and the very one whose success had come from a select few being able to afford it.

  Ellis had sent me an entire case of champagne to celebrate, which seemed odd since I was still two years below the legal drinking limit, but it had been a thoughtful gesture. I was sure Soren would have plenty of the opposing opinion to say.

  The thrill of it was still fresh and hadn’t quite settled in. I wanted to celebrate—in a way that didn’t involve marinating my liver in bottles of champagne. Jane and Ariel had offered to take me out dancing, but that wasn’t really celebrating to me. It was just a workout that took place outside of the gym. Complete with meatheads trying to get all up in a girl’s business when they weren’t selling anything to begin with.

  I wanted a celebration. The kind that involved going out and eating a good meal, capped with the best kind of dessert, followed by wandering around the city and taking in the sights late at night. Something more serene than the newest, chicest club in Manhattan.

  That was what I was daydreaming about when I heard the click of the lock turning over before the door swung open. Soren’s heavy, familiar footsteps echoed inside. He’d just gotten off work and would probably be up late studying, like he had all week. He had midterms coming up and was stressing with all of the time practice and work were taking up.

  “Hungry?” I asked as he walked by the kitchen, where I was standing with the fridge door open, looking for something “celebratory.”

  His head shook as he dropped his bags in the hall. He was back to leaving his stuff scattered around wherever it landed.

  “Long day?” I closed the fridge and turned into the hallway.

  He was already opening up his books and pulling out a pencil. His answer came in the form of another head movement.

  “I was just heading to bed, so . . .” I started for my partition, hating how awkward things were between us now.

  After a few more attempts at seducing me—compliments of his hard, very seduction-invoking body—Soren had backed off. It had only been the past few days, but I couldn’t figure out why he’d come on so hard and strong only to bow out so suddenly.

  Had he finally realized I was a lost cause?

  Had he gotten bored?

  Had he accepted I really wasn’t worth all of the effort?

  Had I imagined the whole thing?

  Stupid questions. They’d riddled me into a state of paranoia lately.

  “Hey, my mom asked about you coming to dinner again this Thursday.” Soren sounded as tired as he looked as he pulled a bunch of crap from his pockets, crumbling up most of it and aiming it at the wastebasket. Most of it landed outside of it though.

  “Soren, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” I headed toward the garbage can.

  “Come on. She’s been asking every week since you moved in.” He lobbed one last crumpled wad toward the garbage. Missed that one too. Good thing he played baseball. “Besides, she doesn’t know anything about the stuff that’s gone down between us. She just thinks we’re roommates and you’re a long ways from home.”

  “The stuff?” I echoed.

  Soren’s shoulder lifted, gesturing for me to correct him on it. The thing was, I didn’t have a better term for what had or was still going on between us. There hadn’t been a term created for a relationship like ours. If you could even call it a relationship.

  “Come on. Mom throws down an insane meal, and I can promise you my brothers will be on the best behavior they’re capable of if you come around.” He tucked the pencil behind his ear. “She won’t feed them dessert if they aren’t.”

  “I’ve got a late shoot this Thursday.” I shot him an apologetic smile as I crouched to toss the garbage in the actual garbage.

  “If I give her one more excuse for why you can’t come, she’s going to think you either hate me or you hate them.” He sighed, sliding out of his sneakers. “You’ve got to give me something I can give her so when I tell her you can’t make it again this week, she doesn’t break down in tears.”

  “Your mom’s not going to cry because I can’t make it to dinner.”

  “She might. She really wants to meet you.”

  Inhaling, I did a mental scan of my schedule next week. I didn’t actually have anything on Thursday night, and Soren’s mom had been extending the invite to have dinner at their place ever since I moved in. She did Thursday night dinners for the whole family, and even though Soren and his brothers couldn’t make it back every week, they made it as often as they could. When he didn’t have late practice or have to work a shift or have a test the next morning.

  As I was tossing away the crumpled wads, I noticed a trend. “These are all phone numbers. Lots of phone numbers.” I’d already tossed half a dozen cocktail napkins and still had as many more to go.

  “I get a bunch of them every shift.” His face read no big deal as he wandered into the kitchen.

  “And you just toss them out?”

  “What else am I supposed to do with them?”

  “Call one of them.” I wadded the one with an XOXO below the number into a small ball before throwing it in the wastebasket.

  “I’m not looking for some relationship with a girl I met working in a pub,” he said as he riffled through the cupboards, no doubts about what he was searching for. I swore he ate half a package of his beloved cookies every single night, yet he still looked like he could be a cover model for any fitness magazine out there.

  “The kind of girls who stuff their phone number in some strange guy’s hand probably aren’t looking for a long-term commitment. At least not all of them.” I glared at the extra mile “Candy” had gone by scribbling a couple of hearts around her number.

  “I’m not looking for that either.”

  “No?”

  “I’m into someone else,” he said through a mouthful of Nutter Butter.

  My arm froze. Was he talking about me? The look he shot me from the kitchen left no question to it.

  I made myself look away. “You’re not going to get that from her either.”

  “I’m not looking for that from her. I’m looking for something else.”

  “Not looking for that?” I arched an eyebrow at him as he roamed back into the room, a stack of cookies piled in his hand.

  His eyes sparkled. “Okay, well, maybe I’d be down with that after she gave me something else first.”

  When he held out his cache of cookies, I took one. It was weird, but Nutter Butters were growing on me.

  “What something else?”

  He crouched beside me, collecting the last few napkins and dropping them in the garbage. He stayed there for a moment after, waiting for me to look at him. “She knows it. She’s just not ready to say it out loud.”

  I could only hold his eyes for a heartbeat. They were too intense. Suggesting too much. And he was too damn cl
ose for me to trust myself to not do something I was going to regret all over again.

  “You’ve never called one of these girls?” I stood up, casually backing away a few steps. “Not once?”

  His head shook as he rose. “Why settle?”

  “Because you’re a guy.”

  His half smile suggested he knew something I didn’t as he moved toward the table. “I’m a man. I know what I want. And I’m going to get it.”

  My heel tapped the floor as I watched him settle in for another long night of studying. He went sans shirt again, as he’d been most every night since . . . that fateful one. I knew why he was doing it. To wear me down. As much as I wanted to believe no amount of bare skin could get to me, I knew better.

  “Thursday night. If I agree, will you stop with the half-naked to fully-naked antics?”

  Soren was in the middle of ripping out a piece of paper when he paused, looking as surprised by what I’d said as I was.

  “I’ll stop,” he said quickly, waving at where I was glued to the wall away from sans-shirt Soren. “It didn’t seem to be working that great anyway.”

  It was working. “And these phone numbers aren’t some attempt to push me into some jealous rage?” My toe tapped the side of the wastebasket.

  “Give them a call. Find out for yourself.” He got back to what he was doing before dropping into his favorite chair. “You might claim you didn’t mean anything you said to me that night, but I meant every word. I’m not going anywhere.” He extended his arms like that was that. He wasn’t going anywhere and I could just believe him because he’d said it. If only trust was that simple.

  “What if I do? What if I go somewhere?”

  “No problem.” He shrugged. “I like the chase too. Stay, and I’ll wait. Or run, and I’ll follow. Either way, you’re not getting rid of me. Accept that, so you can rework this plan you’ve been using to try to push me away.” In his eyes was a fire—a challenge. “I’m not easily moved.”

  My stomach was misbehaving from the things he was saying and the looks he was giving. “Soren—”

  “Gotta hit the books now. Test in the morning.”

  “Soren—”

  “What?” His grin stretched wide as his eyes roamed me in the way a predator might assess its prey. “You didn’t like me trying to seduce you with my body. Let’s see how you fare against my mind.”

  Of all the days to be running late, this wasn’t the one. It was Thursday night, and I’d told Soren I’d meet him at the apartment at five. It was five fifteen by the time I started busting up the stairs to the sixth floor.

  “Soren! I’m ready to go, sorry I’m late!” I announced after unlocking the door and flying inside.

  The apartment was still dark. Shuffling the bouquet of flowers into my other arm, I wrestled my phone from my purse to find I’d missed a text from him a few minutes ago. Running late. Meet me downstairs at 5:30?

  After punching in a quick reply, I took advantage of those few minutes to gather up the garbage to take downstairs. Soren had said his mom was serving dinner at six, so I knew we’d be pushing it to make it in time. His practice must have run late, as seemed to be their habit. He was on the road this weekend and had heard rumors that some scouts might be in the stands, so he’d been putting in extra time at practice lately.

  The garbage wrangled into one bag, I grabbed the flowers again and left the apartment. As I was locking it back up, I noticed a door down the hall open. The very door I’d been waiting to open for what felt like forever.

  Number sixty-five. Mrs. Lopez’s unit.

  Stalling with the lock, I waited until a figure floated into the doorway before turning. Let’s see what the woman my roommate had been “helping out” looked like.

  The garbage bag fell out of my hand when I saw her, my jaw falling too.

  Mrs. Lopez. She wasn’t anything like I’d pictured her. Not one bit.

  For starters, she was old enough to have been my grandma, if not my great-grandma. She was barely topping five feet and had her silver-white hair combed back from her face. She wasn’t wearing a crimson, form-fitting gown and kitten heels like I’d conjured up in my mind—she was wearing a house dress in a pastel floral print, and navy corduroy slippers that looked like they’d seen better days.

  Wait. Maybe this wasn’t the Mrs. Lopez. Maybe this was her mother or great auntie or . . . since she was shuffling a bag of garbage outside too, a housekeeper.

  “Mrs. Lopez?” My thoughts manifested verbally.

  Her attention turned my way, an easy smile forming when she saw me. “You’re Soren’s roommate, right?”

  I nodded as she teetered down the hall toward me. “That’s right. I’m—”

  “Hayden,” she said, a glint of recognition sparking in her eye. “Hayden Hayes. He talks about you all of the time.”

  Moving away from the door, I headed toward her to take her bag of garbage. It was half the size she was. “He does?”

  “Won’t shut up about you most of the time he’s over helping me out.”

  She thanked me with a smile as I took the garbage, while I wrestled with feeling like the biggest jerk in the whole entire world. I’d been assuming he’d been hooking up with the sexpot neighbor next door, when really, he’d been helping an old woman out around her apartment.

  I needed my head examined. By a team of specialists.

  “Soren’s a good guy,” I stated, still reeling from the revelation.

  Mrs. Lopez’s head shook. “Soren’s the best type of human being there is, honey. I’ve been around a long time, seen a lot more—people like him are hard to come by.”

  I found myself leaning into the hall wall with her, feeling a surge of clarity come over me. The haze of hesitation, the fog of uncertainty, evaporated. Everything felt so clear now. So glaringly obvious.

  “It’s nice to meet you.” I smiled at the Mrs. Lopez before moving toward the stairs with both garbage bags in hand. “Finally.”

  “Nice to finally meet you too,” she replied with a wave, shuffling back to her apartment.

  The whole journey down those six flights, my head wouldn’t stop shaking. Not just because of Mrs. Lopez, but because of everything else. What was I so afraid of? Why had I been so afraid?

  Yes, Soren was a man, but that was the only quality that matched my dad. Soren went home for family dinners, even when his schedule was so busy sleep came low on the priority list. He helped out old ladies. God, he helped me out. All. The. Time.

  That wasn’t a person who ran away. That wasn’t a man who bailed when the mood struck.

  I was so buried under the barrage of revelations, I hardly noticed the cab pull up to the curb beside me as I was heading back into the building after dropping the garbage in the dumpster.

  “Please tell me you aren’t just coming back from the dumpster, tucked in the back of the building, alone, and it’s practically dark.” Soren’s head popped out of the back of the cab, giving me a look I was familiar with.

  My body instantly responded—my stomach swirling, my heart racing, my mouth turning up. “It’s barely dark.” I headed for the cab. “And someone had to take the garbage out before it started radiating toxic gases.”

  He scooted over to let me slide in. “I was planning on doing that tonight after we got back.”

  “Now you don’t have to worry about it.” As I slid in beside him, I realized what we were in. “I thought we were taking the subway?”

  Soren and I took the subway everywhere. Even though my cash flow had improved dramatically since moving to the city, we still kept to the underground for our preferred means of transportation. I was especially surprised he’d chosen a cab for tonight’s journey since his family lived outside of the city.

  He motioned at his ankle. “I broke myself at practice earlier. Figured it would be a good idea to keep as much weight off of it as possible until the swelling goes down.”

  My eyes bulged when I saw his ankle. It wasn’t just swollen; it loo
ked like someone had blown up a small balloon inside it. He was still in his practice uniform, but had slid the pant leg up to his knee and had his red sock bunched down below his ankle. When I lightly brushed my fingers across his ankle, Soren shifted in his seat. It was already starting to bruise.

  “What did you do?”

  “End of practice. We were all leaving the field and I stepped on a damn stray ball lying on the ground.”

  My face pulled up as I leaned down to give it a closer look. “Damn stray balls.”

  The corner of his mouth pulled. “They can really ruin a person’s day.”

  “What did your coaches say? Are you sure you can still go to dinner tonight? Shouldn’t you rest it or elevate it or something like that?”

  His eyes lifted. “Please. If I called to say I couldn’t make it to dinner because I rolled my ankle, my brothers would never let that go. Ever. They’d still be going on to my grandsons about the time their grandpa hurt his ankle and instead of shaking it off and getting on with things, he cried and cancelled dinner.” He motioned at his ankle like he’d barely hurt it. “And I didn’t tell my coaches. I don’t need them getting overzealous and benching me this weekend.”

  “You didn’t tell your coaches?” I blinked at him as I dug some hand sanitizer from my purse to put on.

  “It’s fine. It’ll be good by tomorrow. There was no reason to get everyone worked up over nothing.”

  “Soren, your ankle looks like it swallowed a cantaloupe. This isn’t nothing.” Leaning back into the seat, I settled the flowers beside me and patted my lap.

  When he took a moment to think about it, I gently lifted his leg and rested his ankle in my lap. At least it was elevated now. We’d just have to wait for the ice until we got to his parents’ place.

  “Sprained?” I guessed as I took another look.

  “Twisted,” he stated, shifting so his back was pressed into the door.