Roommates With Benefits

  For as upset as I was getting, Soren stayed totally chill. Eating his dinner, his expression indicated he was having a normal conversation. “If I was two centuries behind, I’d expect you to do the cooking and the cleaning. Instead, I’m asking if you’d consider doing the cleaning since I did the cooking.” His eyes moved from his dinner to mine. “Any questions?”

  One by one, my arms folded over my stomach. “I’m not cleaning the kitchen.”

  He made a face that indicated he didn’t care. “Fine. Then I guess that’s the way it’s going to remain until somebody does because after I finish demoing my dinner, I have to finish a lab and study for a test.”

  My shoulders lifted. “Fine by me.”

  Soren’s head tipped. “Then why did you bring up the messy state of the apartment in the first place if it’s ‘fine by you’ that the kitchen stays looking like a crime scene?”

  When he smiled in gloaty victory, I let out a frustrated groan I hadn’t wanted him to hear. I didn’t want him to know he was getting to me or irritating me or making me want to create my own crime scene.

  “I take it back. You are a child.”

  As I marched toward my partition, he chuckled. “And who’s the one marching away after throwing a tantrum?”

  My teeth ground together to keep the next scream of frustration to myself. The moment I got behind my partition, I adjusted it so it concealed more of my area than before. It wasn’t even eight yet, but I didn’t know what else to do besides go to bed. I didn’t want to hang around where I could see him or he could see me. I sure as hell didn’t want to clean the kitchen. What I wanted was a real door I could slam and lock, a room of my own I could escape to when I needed to cry it all out. What I wanted was a different apartment and a different roommate. One that didn’t make me jealous of a splatter of sauce that had touched his abs one minute, and emotionally unstable the next. I was used to being the low-key, even-tempered one, but Soren had a way of bringing out emotions I hadn’t known I was capable of expressing.

  I had to make it big. I had to make it happen soon. The sooner I could get away from Soren Decker, the better off I’d be.

  My head was still throbbing the next morning. I’d fallen asleep to a headache and waken up to one. I beat my alarm this morning, so after turning it off so it didn’t disturb my “roommate,” I grabbed my outfit for the day and moved toward the shower. It was dark outside, but there was still one light on in the apartment—the torchiere beside the dining table. Soren was in the same chair he’d been in last night, books and notebooks scattered around. He’d fallen asleep studying.

  His head was on an open book, a pencil still clutched in his hand. He was doing his typical heavy mouth breathing. Every time he exhaled, he made the sheet of paper he’d been working on rattle. Still shirtless, his cap was sitting backward on his head, that light fringe of hair still curling beneath the brim.

  Seeing him like this, I almost had the urge to drape a blanket around him or something. He was cute when he was sleeping, sweet when his mouth was shut. Too bad he couldn’t stay like that for the next six months, I thought as I noticed the kitchen. It was in the same condition it had been in last night. The milk that had been left in the gallon had now turned from white to some shade of greenish-gray.

  Gross. It was a miracle the place wasn’t crawling in rats yet.

  Moving extra fast today so I could escape before he woke up, I was out the front door a little before seven. I had another meeting this morning with Mr. Lawson to go over how my go-sees had gone, and hopefully he’d actually be there for this one.

  By day three, I felt like I’d already mastered the art of the subway and felt like I almost blended in with the rest of the hardy New Yorkers ready to tackle another day. The wide-eyed Nebraska girl was becoming a city girl. I still had twelve dollars left over from the twenty Soren had left me yesterday, and when I took it out to pay for my subway ticket, another one of those guilty pangs hit me hard in the gut.

  He might have been a barbarian, but he was a decent enough one where it counted. So he left the toilet seat up and dried his jocks from the ceiling fan—he also cooked me dinner (when I couldn’t have afforded a package of ramen on my own) and left me a twenty-dollar bill taped to the front door. And helped me navigate the subway. And . . .

  I didn’t want to think about it. I needed to focus on getting through the day, doing my best, and booking some jobs. I could work out all things Soren later.

  The K&M Models office was buzzing at seven thirty in the morning. A cluster of models was lining the chairs in the waiting area, and the same young woman who’d helped me a few days ago was there to greet me when I strolled up to the front desk.

  “Hello again,” I greeted. “I’m—”

  “Right this way, Miss Hayes.” The girl slid out of her chair and came around the side of her desk. “Mr. Lawson is ready for you.”

  She knew my name. No one had referred to me by name yet in this business. It was more of a “you” or a pointed finger. “My appointment isn’t until eight.”

  “It’s okay. Mr. Lawson asked that I bring you back whenever you arrived.”

  The girl moved down the long hallway like she was working an actual catwalk, with four-inch heels and everything. Five more inches, and she would have been one of those models on the covers. Genetics had so much to do with the people we became, the positions we were put—or forced—into.

  We didn’t stop until we’d reached the end of the hall. The smoked glass door was closed, E Lawson etched in large, bold lettering. For some reason, I suddenly felt more nervous to meet my agent than I had at any go-see I’d been to.

  “Mr. Lawson?” The woman rapped on the door a few times. “Miss Hayes is here to see you.”

  “Send her in.” The voice on the other side of that door had an air of authority, the kind I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard rivaled.

  The woman opened the door halfway, stepping aside to let me pass.

  “Thank you,” I said. I wanted to say, “Aren’t you coming in with me?”

  She gave a little curtsy then closed the door the moment I’d cleared the threshold. I felt like I was being trapped. Or herded.

  The first thing my eyes were drawn to was the man looming behind the desk. Like his voice, everything about him exuded the kind of confidence that demanded to be acknowledged. He hadn’t said a word since I’d stepped in—he hadn’t even looked my way yet—but I already knew this was a person who didn’t often hear the word “no.”

  Ellis Lawson must have been in his forties, but he didn’t look it. He’d clearly been a model before starting the agency. He had the chiseled sort of face that screamed couture, and he filled out a suit the way designers envisioned when creating their designs.

  All this, and he had yet to lift his gaze from his sleek gunmetal laptop.

  “Miss Hayes.” Finally, he rose from his chair and moved toward me. “Nice to finally meet you. I apologize for my absence early in the week.”

  “It happens. Nice to meet you too.”

  I held out my hand as he approached and was totally taken by surprise when he leaned in for the hug. My arm kind of got lodged in between us, my other one hesitantly moving around him to pat his back.

  Awkward.

  It was one of those longer hugs too, tight squeeze and all.

  Super awkward.

  Rubbing my back one last time, he finally stepped back. I’d been so distracted by the hug, I hadn’t noticed how tall he was. Like, the kind of tall that almost had me feeling short. In my heels and all.

  “How has the city been treating you so far?” he asked, his eyes roving up and down me.

  “It’s been good. I like it.” I took a few steps back because again, he didn’t seem to get the personal space concept. Being as big as he was, with as much confidence as poured off of him, he really should have been respectful of people’s bubbles.

  “Homesick?” He backed up to his desk and leaned into the edge of it.

>   “I miss my family. I don’t miss Nebraska.”

  His smile suggested he knew how I felt. He had a nice smile, one that had probably cost tens of thousands to perfect. He even had nice lips, which was just strange to think about a guy. But Ellis Lawson did. He had nice everything. Even the silver that was starting to streak through his dark hair was nice.

  “That’s good to hear, because your family you can move. A Midwest state, not so easily transported.” Mr. Lawson rolled his fingers along the edge of his desk, fighting a smile, though I wasn’t sure why. It was like he was in on a secret. “I’ve heard back from almost all of the clients you had go-sees with the past couple of days.”

  My stomach hiccupped. I wasn’t sure if I’d booked a single client; that was how much any of them had indicated their like or dislike of me. Fashion designers could have been the world’s best poker players, I swear.

  “Would you like to know who you booked?” Mr. Lawson prompted as my silence continued.

  “I booked someone?!” My voice went higher.

  He gave me an amused look, still rolling his fingers along the lip of his desk. “You booked them all,” he said, a dark eyebrow lifting. “Well, all except for Zelda Zhou, but I don’t think ‘Her Highness’ has ever once booked a model who didn’t look like an emaciated little boy.”

  My mind was struggling to catch up to what he’d just said. “I booked them all?” I echoed, my feet starting to bounce. “Except for Zelda Zhou, I booked them all?”

  When I looked at him, needing the confirmation, he pointed at me. “You did.”

  “Holy crap,” I whispered, feeling light-headed and heavy-headed at the same time.

  “I hope you’re a hard worker, because I’m going to be asking a lot of you over the next few months. I’ve seen a dozen supermodel’s careers go from nothing to everything, and this, right here, is how it starts.” His finger moved to point at the floor between us. “If you already have this many designers seeing something in you when you’re a nobody, every major designer in the world will want you for their campaign next year. You’re going to be an icon. The kind of model the whole nation knows by name.”

  My head was definitely moving more into the light-headed territory, so I slid to the side to fall into the chair in front of the desk.

  “I’ll have Jennifer print out your schedule for the next couple of weeks so you know where you need to be when, and I’m going to give you my private number so you can get a hold of me whenever you need to, day or night.” Grabbing a business card on his desk, he flipped it over and scribbled down a number. “Text me later so I have your number on my personal phone as well.”

  Taking the card, I shifted in the chair. “Actually, I don’t have a cell phone. Yet,” I added when he gave me a look that suggested I’d just confessed to not being able to read.

  “Why not?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “You’re a professional model now. You need a cell phone. You need a way for people to get a hold of you.”

  “I promise, it will be the first thing I purchase once I cash my first check.” After paying this upcoming month’s rent, utilities, and stocking up on ramen. And a winter coat.

  “Your first check will take weeks before it’s issued.”

  Heart-stopping moment number two of the meeting. Though this one wasn’t brought on by the warm happies.

  “Weeks? But I thought you just said I booked all of those clients. They’re going to pay me, right?” I didn’t mean to sound so stressed, but I couldn’t hide it. Rent was due in ten days, and there was no way I could ask Soren for another favor, especially not one as big as covering my rent next month. Provided he even could, which was assuming a lot of a college kid working a part-time job.

  “Yes, they’ll pay you, but first, you have to do the job. Then they have to write the check. To us. Then we take our cut, draw up a new check, and that’s when you get paid. These things take time. It’s not like you’re working at Burger King and getting regular checks every two weeks.”

  Thankfully, I was sitting down. I’d just gone from feeling like my dreams were falling out of the sky into my lap, to having them stolen away a moment later.

  It was quiet in the office for a minute. I felt Mr. Lawson watching me, trying to figure out if I was in as tight of a spot as I was making it seem.

  “Tell you what? I’ll pay an advance on your first check.” He pulled a money clip from inside his jacket. I didn’t realize people carried that much cash on them at one time. I’d felt like a baller the one time I had fifty-three dollars in my wallet after I’d worked all day in a cornfield last summer. “Would a thousand be enough to get you by for a while?”

  When he held out ten hundred-dollar bills, all I could do was gape at it. I’d never seen that much money in one person’s hand at one time. Not once. Here he was, holding it out for me to take.

  “Of course not, this is an expensive city.” He pulled some more bills from his clip to add to the pile. “Here. A two thousand-dollar advance on your first check. If you need more, you know my number.” When I didn’t move to take the money, he reached for my hand and placed it on my palm.

  “Mr. Lawson—”

  “It’s Ellis, and yes, you can take it.” He put his money clip away again—it still looked just as thick. “Might I suggest you make a stop by a cell phone store as soon as you leave here? Text me your number right after.”

  My eyesight was going blurry, which meant I was getting close to crying, but I wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of my agent. “Mr. Lawson—” I tried again. “Ellis, I think I’ll be giving you my next ten paychecks to pay this back to you.”

  He was grinning at me, almost smirking. “Believe me, your first one will more than cover this little cash advance.”

  It was impossible to conceive of that kind of money—the kind that could change the course of my family’s lives and my own.

  “You’re going to be big. I’ve never been wrong before, and I won’t be wrong with you. Just do what I tell you, and this city will be chanting your name by this time next year.”

  Wandering the streets of New York with two grand in my purse made me feel like I was trying to make it through Sherwood Forest without running into the Merry Men. I swore everyone who passed me could read on my face how much money I had on me. On the subway, I clung to my purse like the mothers clinging to their toddler’s hands.

  After stopping at a cell phone store, I made a quick stop at a pizza take-out place. Exchanging money for something felt so good. It was the first thing I’d been able to pay for with my own money as an official resident of the city.

  By the time I reached the fourth floor of our building, I could smell the scent of cleaners. It became stronger with every stair I took, until I realized where it was coming from. Juggling the giant pizza box in one hand, I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  The smell inside was intense. A combo of fake lemon, Windex, and vinegar. Still, it was better than eau de dirty underwear.

  “Soren?”

  I heard him talking, but I didn’t realize he was actually singing until I moved a few steps far enough inside to peek into the kitchen. With a pair of headphones covering his ears, he was humming along to some song and moving his body in ways that had me close to blushing. In one hand he held a bottle of cleaner. In the other was what looked like an old shirt he’d turned into a rag.

  The sink was spilling over with suds and dishes soaking, and the old food and boxes had been tossed into the garbage. He was scrubbing the stove right now as he started to belt out some lyrics. At the same time, he moved against the stove like it was a dance partner who liked to get freaky.

  So my roommate knew how to move his body. So he knew how to dance. Why was I feeling that fluttery stomach sensation from watching him grinding against an outdated appliance? I didn’t really want to answer that question, so I dropped the pizza on the table and stepped into the kitchen to help. He was singing again, twirling his shirt-rag in the air.

/>   When he finally noticed me, he didn’t jolt or seem surprised to see me.

  “Nice dancing,” I said, loud enough I thought I was speaking over his headphones. “And singing.”

  Soren slid his headphones behind his neck, continuing to dance. “I’m a double threat.”

  “Not a triple?” I asked doubtfully.

  His head shook once. “I can’t act for shit.”

  “Really?”

  “Do I seem like the type of guy who’s good at pretending?”

  Moving toward the sink, I pushed up my sleeves. “Double threat it is.”

  He chuckled and got back to scrubbing a crusty spot in one of the burners. When he saw me dip my hands into the sink to start washing, he moved up beside me and tried to hip-check me out of the way.

  “I got this,” he said, bumping his hip against mine again when I refused to budge. “You were right last night. This mess is all on me. Pretty sure this is the first time you’ve stepped foot in the kitchen.”

  “No, you were right actually. You cooked your food for me. The least I could do in return is clean the kitchen after.” I started scrubbing the first dish my fingers touched.

  When he accepted I wasn’t going anywhere, he stationed himself as the rinse-and-dry guy. “I’m not going to tell my mom you just said that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I just spent two hours this afternoon being lectured by her on things a guy can and can’t say to a girl, and according to her, I committed one of the great offenses of all time last night when I suggested it was your responsibility to clean the kitchen.” He winced like he was remembering the conversation. “Apparently it’s very not okay for a guy to suggest it’s a woman’s job to clean a kitchen. Even if he didn’t mean it in any antiquated, gender-profiling way.”