Roommates With Benefits

  I held up the pair of heels I was still clutching. “Just missed them.”

  “Good. I can’t have a girl roommate who’s taller than me. It might emasculate me.”

  “More than you already are?”

  “A fellow smartass.” He made a face of approval as I moved inside the apartment. “We’re going to get along just fine.”

  “So long as I don’t wear heels when you’re nearby?”

  “See? You get me. Two and a half minutes into our relationship and you understand me. Why can’t the rest of the girls on the planet seem to get it?” He didn’t give me a chance to fire back my idea on that topic. “Seriously, though, how tall are you?”

  “Five ten.” Once I rolled my suitcase inside, he closed the door behind us.

  “Liar, liar. Designer jeans on fire.” He waved his finger at me as he moved into the apartment.

  These were designer jeans. The one pair I owned and would be living in until I could afford a second pair. It had taken me three months of mucking out stalls to make enough to afford them.

  “Fine. Five eleven.” When his brows disappeared into his ball cap, I sighed. “And a half.”

  “My six one is suddenly not feeling so big and bad.”

  The inside of the apartment was an improvement on the outside. Somewhat. Paint wasn’t chipping off the walls, and the funky odor wasn’t quite as strong in here. Although there was a different one—that sweat-and-dirty laundry man smell with the faintest hint of aftershave or cologne mixed in.

  “So. Here it us. My humble abode.”

  Emphasis on humble.

  There wasn’t much to see. A shoe-box-sized kitchen was right inside the door—at least there was a stove and a fridge—with a same sized bathroom across from it, and what must have been the main living space, which we were standing in now, was made up of a line of windows, a couch I would not sit on unless a sheet of plastic separated me from it, a couple of room dividers, and a rectangular metal table with four mismatched chairs.

  It was semi-clean and super small.

  “Where’s the rest?” I asked when he stopped beside me, nodding at the space like it was the definition of opulent.

  “What do you mean? This is it.” He indicated the room.

  My gaze circled the space again. A secret hallway. There had to be one of those hiding in here somewhere. “Where are the bedrooms?”

  He made a clucking sound with his tongue, leading me to one corner tucked behind a sad divider. “Here’s mine,” he said, letting me peek behind the divider.

  My heart did that hiccupping thing again when I noticed a twin mattress lying on the floor, a whirl of blankets and pillows scattered on it. There was a big plastic bin too, which looked like it served as a dresser.

  “And yours is over here.” Guiding me to the corner across from this one, he proudly waved at the empty space behind the second divider.

  There was nothing there. Unless you counted the dust bunnies.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I blinked, frowning when I found the exact same scene in front of me.

  “About what?” he asked, straight-faced.

  “This being a bedroom.” My arms flew toward the empty space. “This is a stall. Actually, I’ve mucked out stalls twice as big back home.”

  His brows pinched together. “Like a bathroom stall?”

  “No, like a stall inside a barn. A horse stall. A cow stall. Shoot, even the pigs get a better deal than this.” My voice was rising, as I realized he wasn’t messing with me. This was supposed to serve as my bedroom, and there were a few big things missing to make it my definition of a bedroom—for starters, a door.

  “Wait. So you’re one of those small-town girls?” He appraised me with new eyes, like everything was finally making sense.

  “Yes, I’m one of those small-town girls, but not small town enough to realize I’m getting the big city runaround.”

  “The runaround?” His arms crossed. “What do you mean the runaround? I didn’t say anything about there being a private bedroom straight out of the Four Seasons, girlie.”

  I tried to remember the “roommate wanted” ad I’d seen online last week. Specifically, the wording. “Yeah? And what about the penthouse views?” I crossed my arms just like he was. “This is the opposite of a penthouse, and the view sucks.” I glanced out the row of windows, where there was a view of the building across the street.

  Soren’s eyes lifted before he moved toward the windows. He waited for me before pointing his finger up. Way up. “Penthouses.” His finger was aimed at the tippy top of the buildings around us. “We have a view of penthouses.”

  My mouth opened. “That’s not how you meant it to be taken, nice try.”

  “How do you know how I meant for it to be taken? Penthouse views. That’s the truth.” He was still pointing out the window. “You make a lot of assumptions. Might want to work on that if you plan on surviving in the city.”

  Turning away from the window, I scanned the apartment. Had it shrunken in size when I’d turned my back? “You said it was a generous living space.”

  He indicated the same apartment I was looking at. “Are you kidding me? This is a generous living space.”

  “Compared to what? A cardboard box?”

  His mouth snapped open, but he closed it before whatever was about to come out, did. He rolled his head a few times, his neck cracking in a way that made me cringe. “Listen. You are obviously from a different world than I am. I grew up in Brooklyn. My definition of generous is clearly different than yours.”

  “I grew up in Hastings, Nebraska, raised by a single mom with a high school education after dear old dad bailed on her and his three daughters.” I paused, staring at him. “I was not raised in the lap of luxury, nor am I a spoiled brat, but this . . ..” My hand waved between his and my “bedrooms,” my stomach churning when I counted off maybe ten feet of separation between them. “This is not generous living space.”

  “Then fine. Don’t move in. It’s not like you’ve unpacked your things. You’re the one looking for an apartment, not me. Go find some other place to live in the heart of the city for less than eight hundred dollars a month. Good luck with that.”

  When he started toward my suitcase, I intercepted him. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. No friends. No family. No money. My first rent check here wasn’t due for a couple of weeks. Accepting that should have made this place seem much more appealing, but instead I felt more like an inmate resigned to their cell.

  “It’s been a long day. There have been lots of surprises. I’m feeling overwhelmed.” I rolled my suitcase toward my barracks so he didn’t roll it out the front door.

  “You’re not in Nebraska anymore. You’re in New York City.” He indicated out the windows before storming toward the kitchen. “Buck up, buttercup.”

  I bit my tongue when I wanted to fire something right back. My life had not been easy, and I hated that he assumed it had been because I was shocked I’d be sharing a room with a strange boy. This wasn’t normal. This was five thousand percent not normal.

  “You want a sandwich?” he called from the kitchen as he started tossing things onto the counter.

  “A sandwich?” I repeated. Hadn’t we just been in a moderately heated conversation? And now he’d moved on to sandwich-making twelve seconds later?

  “You know, meat, cheese, condiments? Two slices of bread holding it all together?” He shot me a smirk as he twirled open the bag of bread.

  My stomach answered for me. “Actually, yeah. Thanks.” Leaving my suitcase behind the divider, I moved toward the kitchen.

  “What brought you to the biggest city in the country from Nebraska?” he asked, glancing at me.

  I stopped behind one of the plastic chairs around the table. It didn’t feel right to just make myself at home . . . even though this was my new home. “Modeling.”

  He made a sound like everything made sense now, then stalled with the knife in the mayo jar. “So when you say yo
u want a sandwich, you mean two pieces of celery smashed together?”

  My eyes lifted. I’d been called a stick, a twig, a pole, a beanpole, accused of being anorexic, bulimic, a drug addict, you name it, because I was genetically predisposed to having a thin frame. Now that I was officially a model, it was only going to get worse, I guessed. “I hate celery.”

  Soren spread a thick layer of mustard on one piece of bread. “Too many carbs?”

  “You’re annoying.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Of course my roommate would be one of the few people on the planet who was capable of getting under my skin. Who better to share a six-hundred-square-foot space with than someone who couldn’t look at me without triggering mild irritation? The more he talked, the less cute-hot he became. Silver linings. I didn’t need to harbor some minor attraction to the guy I was sharing an apartment with.

  “Don’t you have any questions for me?” I asked after a minute.

  One shoulder rose as he layered on what looked like pastrami. “You don’t smoke?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t stay out late partying, getting your drink on, and come home smelling like the city barfed on you?”

  “Definitely not.” I wasn’t straitlaced, but I wasn’t a hot mess either.

  He pulled a couple of plates from a cupboard, tossed the sandwiches onto them, and moved toward the table. “You aren’t prone to stealing other people’s property? Namely my Nutter Butters?”

  It didn’t seem like a serious question. The look on his face told otherwise. “No,” I answered.

  He held one plate toward me. “Then we’re good.”

  When I took the plate, my stomach growled. The last thing I’d eaten was the pretzels on the plane.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling a stab of guilt for the way I’d acted since meeting him. He was the only person in New York who’d offered me a place to live, and he was giving me a free meal.

  “You don’t look like you could afford to miss one more meal,” he said. I didn’t miss the way he inspected my arms as I took a seat. “So now that you’ve had the grand tour, do you have any questions for me? And by that, I mean actual questions, not accusations.”

  When I shot him a look, he gave me a big smile right before stuffing his sandwich in his mouth. Let’s see. I knew his name, his gender, where he’d grown up, that he was a smartass, and that he was cute-hot when he wasn’t talking.

  “What do you do?”

  He lowered his sandwich. “I model,” he said, his expression flat. “Men’s underwear mainly. Sometimes women’s. If they pay me enough.”

  I smiled at my sandwich as I lifted it. “I thought you looked familiar. I just didn’t recognize you without those big wings and the million-dollar diamond bra.”

  He chuckled, tearing off another bite of his sandwich. “I play ball,” he said, still chewing.

  “Like dodgeball?” I took a small bite of the sandwich he’d made me so it wouldn’t seem like I was starving.

  He shot me a tight smile. “Like baseball.” He waved his sandwich toward his “bedroom,” where a big red duffel was, a mitt and bat hanging out of it. “I play at one of the junior colleges close by since none of the D1 schools wanted to take a risk with me.”

  “A risk?” I took another bite, this one bigger. I wasn’t usually a fan of pastrami or mustard, but dang, this was the best sandwich I’d ever had.

  “Let’s just say I was a bit of a hothead in high school, and D1 schools would rather have the golden boy with some talent than the wild card with mad talent.”

  “Hothead . . .?”

  “I got into a few fights at some games.”

  I circled my sandwich in the air. “Like pushing, name calling type fights?”

  “Try fists flying, dust spinning type of fights.” He must have guessed where my mind was taking me. “Don’t worry. I never have or never would put my hands on a woman like that, and I’ve calmed my shit down a lot since then. Nothing like being forced to eat a slice of humble pie at junior college to get a player in line.”

  Nibbling off a corner, I curled my legs up onto the chair. I’d been too busy freaking out over my new living arrangements to notice how chilly it was in here. I couldn’t see my breath or anything, but it felt only a few degrees away from that.

  “What are you studying?” I asked.

  He dropped the last piece of sandwich into his mouth before wiping his hands on his jeans. “I’m just banging general requirements out of the way right now. I don’t care about becoming an accountant or a project manager or whatever the hell else other guys go to college for. I want to play ball. I go to school because it’s a package deal.”

  “So your plan is to transfer to a D1 school to play ball after you’re finished?” I asked, like I knew what I was talking about. Which I didn’t. Sports weren’t my thing. Watching or partaking in them.

  “I want to get drafted by the best professional baseball team in the whole wide world. That’s my plan.” He shoved out of his chair, carrying his plate into the kitchen.

  “You want to play professional baseball?”

  “No. I’m going to play professional baseball. And the one good thing about playing at a junior college is that I can be drafted any time they want me. I don’t have to wait until I graduate like I would have if one of those D1 schools had recruited me.” He rinsed his plate in the sink before setting it on a drying rack. He hadn’t used soap, but I supposed it was better than licking it clean and sticking it back in the cupboard. “Want anything to drink? Another sandwich?”

  I lifted what was left of my first sandwich. It was only halfway gone and I was already feeling full. It wasn’t because I was a small eater either—he made his sandwiches like he was entertaining a team of linebackers. “I’m good, thanks.”

  He lifted a package of Nutter Butters, one hanging from his mouth, a half dozen clutched in his other hand.

  “I just promised I wouldn’t steal your Nutter Butters.”

  “But I’m offering you one. There’s a difference.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. Looks like you need them.” I eyed the stack in his hand as he stuffed the package back on the top shelf.

  “I play ball two to four hours a day. I go to school four to six hours. Homework on top of that, and a part-time job in between. I have to take advantage when I have a minute to stuff my face.” He padded back to the table and set one cookie from the pile in his hand on my plate. “For dessert.”

  I thanked him, even though I wasn’t a fan of Nutter Butters. I was more a chocolate person than a peanut butter one.

  “You want a hand bringing up the rest of your stuff? I’ve got some time before I should hit the books. I have a biology test tomorrow morning.” His nose crinkled as he stuffed another cookie in his mouth.

  For his apparent love affair with cookies, he sure didn’t have the body of a cookie enthusiast. Thanks to his light-colored tee, which hugged particularly nice parts of the male anatomy, he looked like the type who ate egg whites and kale in his sleep.

  “Oh, I don’t have anything else. Just my big suitcase and me.” I set my sandwich down after taking one more bite.

  “So you don’t have any more stuff to move in?” When I shrugged, he frowned. “No more stuff as in a futon or mattress or . . .?”

  My head shook as I moved toward my suitcase. I needed to throw on a sweatshirt before I gave myself frostbite. “They don’t let you check mattresses or futons on the airplane. But I brought a pillow and a sleeping bag.” Setting down the suitcase, I unzipped it and pulled out those very items.

  “Hardwood floors.” His foot tapped the floor.

  “I’ve slept in barns, train depots, and the backseat of a ’77 Malibu.” Shaking the sleeping bag open, I shot him a smile. Whatever had happened or was about to, I was chasing my dreams. Life was pretty damn good. “Buck up, buttercup.”

  Today would be a great day. The best.

  That was what I thought a
s I stirred awake . . . right before my heart stopped mid-beat. My alarm wasn’t going off. And I was awake. That was my first warning sign.

  I did mornings if I had to, but I didn’t have fond feelings for them. Especially when I hadn’t slept well and I’d set my alarm for six New York time, which was five Nebraska time.

  Lurching awake, I grabbed the tiny alarm clock I’d set beside my pillow last night. Blinking to clear my eyes, a shriek squeaked from me when I saw the time. Just after seven. “Crap!”

  Throwing the sleeping bag off of me, I dove into my suitcase and tore out a fresh pair of underwear and a clean camisole. I’d be wearing the same pair of jeans I’d worn yesterday because, yeah, one designer pair of jeans.

  “What’s the matter?”

  The voice surprised me, making me jolt. I’d momentarily forgotten about my new roommate.

  “My alarm. It didn’t go off. I’m going to be late.”

  When Soren stuck his head out of the bathroom, I ducked behind the divider so he couldn’t see me changing. “Yeah. I turned it off. It kept blasting and you weren’t waking up, so I figured you needed a little more rest.”

  I froze in the middle of yanking my jeans up over my hips. “You turned it off?”

  From the sounds of it, he’d moved on to brushing his teeth. “Yeah. It was seriously going off for ten whole minutes, twelve inches from your face, so I did you a favor. Feel better?”

  I stuck my head outside of the divider, my eyes already narrowed. “No, I do not feel better. At all. I’ve got to be at Park Avenue on the twenty-second floor in under an hour. For my very first meeting with my new agency. It’s one of those times I planned on making a good impression instead of, oh, I don’t know, showing up late with my hair a mess and morning breath.”

  Soren was gargling in the bathroom. “You’ll make it, no problem. The subway station’s just down the block, and it’s a five-minute ride from there. That gives you time to brush your teeth and hair.”

  My jaw ground as I wrestled into my cami then grabbed my jacket from where it was hanging over the divider. “You had no right to turn off my alarm like that.”