I nodded. “Fine.”
Sydney snickered at me but sighed. “She’s probably going to be keeping an extra close watch on this room tonight. It might be best if we sleep in our own rooms tonight.”
Devon nodded. “That’s fine. It’ll help keep the facade going, too, if she actually sees you in here from time to time.” He looked at me and winked. “Pleasure doing business.”
With his phone in his hand and a smile on his face, Devon turned and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. The second he was gone, I melted onto the floor. Sydney dropped down next to me with a squeal.
“Oh my god. How was it?”
I wanted to lie and tell her I hated it. For my first kiss, I wanted it to be with someone I was dating, someone I was invested in. The truth was, those things considered, it was still exactly how I wanted my first kiss to be—amazing.
“It was amazing,” I responded, and Sydney clapped.
“Ha, ha, ha!” she sang. “Step one, kiss him. Check. Step two, sleep with him—”
“No,” I said, but it was less confident than when I’d said it earlier.
Sydney laughed. “We’ll see.”
I couldn’t deny that with that kiss on my brain, not letting my mind wander to a more lurid place was going to be difficult when Devon was sleeping just one bed over. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about that for the time being since Sydney would be in the other bed tonight. Yet, when I finally dozed off that night, Sydney was still muttering about how things with Devon might be meant to be, and my brain did bring him and his kiss to me in my dreams. It started with his strong arms wrapped around me and his lips on mine, and I couldn’t deny that I was waiting for him to take things one step further.
6
Devon
I woke up the next morning to the sudden sounds of slamming and banging. Maybe I was just spoiled because Nina was always very quiet in the morning until she woke me up, but I couldn’t remember Henry being that disrespectful of me in our previous roommate days. I was relieved to be back in my own bed for a night, but with Henry’s noise, I’d welcome returning to the other room.
“Hey,” I grumbled. “Why don’t you be a little louder? I don’t think Sydney heard you from seven floors down.”
“Sorry,” Henry spat.
I blinked my eyes awake to get a clearer look, and Henry wasn’t doing anything particularly out of character, but he was exuding a foul mood.
“What’s your deal?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” Henry said. He continued walking around the room, engaging himself in a variety of miscellaneous activities that seemed to carry no real weight. He looked at the clock and then growled. “Why is it only five-thirty?”
“It’s five-thirty in the morning? I don’t even believe in this time.” I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes. “It’s Saturday. Why are you like this?”
“I’m ready for breakfast.”
I furrowed my brow. That simply wasn’t true. Henry wasn’t a breakfast guy, and he never had been. He ate breakfast by force. With Nina and Sydney in the mix, he’d been eating breakfast in the dining hall every morning, but in our prior years as roommates, we traditionally slept through breakfast. If we had morning classes, we set our alarms to wake us up with only enough time to travel to class. He didn’t care about breakfast, but there he was, stomping his way around the room like an angry troll, and it hit me.
It wasn’t about breakfast. It was about Sydney. “Do you miss her that much?” I asked.
Henry turned around and looked at me, shocked at first, but then he let out a sad sigh. “God, I don’t even know how I got this useless. She stayed with me almost every day for the last couple of months, and now I’ve had her here this week. I guess I’m just used to having her here, so it’s fucking me up to not wake up next to her.”
It made me sad in an instant. Here I was, supposed to be giving Henry this single thing that he’s asked for so that I could at least try and give him back a piece of what he’d given, and I let my ego get in the way and risk that.
“I’m sorry, man. I promise to be more careful next time so that we don’t run into this issue.”
Henry’s expression went from sad to serene. He let out a little chuckle. “No, it’s not your fault. If anything, it’s that strict RA. I’m sorry. I woke you up and then made you feel like you’d done something wrong. I’m a shit friend.”
“No,” I replied quickly. “No, you’re not. You’re an amazing friend. I’m the shit one for messing up yesterday.”
Henry laughed. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
I joined him in laughter. “Yeah.”
“I’ll be quiet, so you can get some more sleep.”
I shook my head. “Nah, it’s okay. I think I’m up.”
I grabbed my computer off of the bedside table and opened it. I navigated to my email and saw that I had responses to two applications I’d submitted the week prior. One of the applications was for a job cleaning the East Tower on the weekends throughout the school year. It took me a couple of years to get a handle on being a student, and I was finally ready to get a job so that I could start paying Henry back for the money he shelled out for my bail. I applied for the open position after seeing it on the student job board when I moved in, and I’d just received an email from the dorm manager that I was being offered the job.
“Sick,” I said out loud.
“What?” Henry said, having settled down at his desk and started clicking through his computer, as well.
“I got that janitorial job.”
Henry turned around in his chair to look at me. “Did you actually apply for that? I told you not to. You have to focus on school.”
“It’s fine. It’s just on the weekends, and the manager said that he understands studies are important, so if I need to swap weekends for weekdays or take weekends off around exams, that’s fine.” I scrolled through the email and saw that he was going to pay me sixteen dollars an hour for eight-hour days every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’d be pulling in just under four hundred dollars a weekend. Not bad. Thank god the guy wanted to give a student a break. “It pays really well. I’ll be able to make my first payment to you in a couple of weeks.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “I don’t want it.”
I scoffed. “Come on, man. I feel bad that you damn near emptied your savings for me.”
“It was my choice, and I’d do it again.” He turned back toward his computer. “You’re gonna be exhausted doing school all week and then working all weekend. Just quit. I don’t need the money. I’m fine.”
I didn’t respond. The truth was, it wasn’t the first time Henry and I had fought our way through that argument. He insisted that I repaid my debt by fixing my life and coming to college, but I just didn’t feel good with the debt hanging over my head. It cost him close to five grand, and it would have been even more had it not been my first offense. I made a quiet decision to accept the position, and when I received my first paycheck, I’d just hand him the money and move on.