The Roommate Agreement

Then there was the time I shaved it right off and she’d stroked my chin and called me a babyface for four days until it came back properly.

Never once had her touching it felt like it had tonight.

I had to face facts. I had very real feelings for my best friend, and that was one hell of a fucking problem. Nothing good ever came of falling for your best friend, but it looked like I had a one-way ticket to I’m-Fucked-Ville.

I didn’t know what it said about me. Shelby was the weirdest person I knew—not necessarily personality-wise, but because she was such an enigma. One minute she was onto me about picking up my socks, and the next she was putting pencils into salads while muttering to herself.

She’d tell me to do something, then do it herself ten minutes later. She had no qualms about banging on the bathroom door and shouting at me while I was taking a shit. She’d bring me lunch then yell at me for something later that night.

She’d make me watch her stupid shows while talking to herself. I’d seen her burn food because she needed to write something down in a notebook that had to be done right the hell now. Heck, I’d come in from a night out and found her sitting at the kitchen island with her laptop open at two in the morning, typing furiously, because the people in her head only talked in the middle of the night.

Shit, it made her all the more perfect. She lived in her own little world that was largely in her head, but she wasn’t ditzy or forgetful.

No.

Shelby Daniels was the sanest crazy person I knew, and I knew I was falling in love with her.

Slowly. It was a little more every day. Every time she looked at me or laughed or did something that someone else might find annoying, I fell a little deeper.

And that was not fucking good.

She was my best friend. She was my roommate. Dating her was out of the question. Telling her how I felt was the biggest mistake I’d ever make. I needed to get the fuck over this puppy love thing before it went too far.

I couldn’t even tell anyone. Sean would take the piss out of me, and Brie was far more loyal to Shelby than she was me.

I didn’t begrudge her that, for what it’s worth. Girls would be girls. Their loyalties would always lie with one another, and that was fine. It was just a shame my best friend was such a fucking little shit.

I leaned forward and buried my head in my hands, slowly dragging my fingers through my hair.

Three months ago, moving in with Shelby had been the easy option. My building was being sold, and I was about to be homeless. She needed a roommate to help her pay rent, and I was right there. I didn’t need a roommate since I earned good money thanks to my dad, but she’d needed someone.

I hadn’t been perfect. I owned that. That was why we had this stupid roommate agreement. It was to draw lines and create boundaries and make sure we both knew where we stood.

I guess there was no such thing as an agreement that kept the heart in check.

Fuck.

Why’d she have to walk around in little bright pink shorts and no bra, huh? Why’d she have to make me want her?

Wait—no. It wasn’t on her. She had the right to wear whatever the hell she wanted and using that as an excuse for my want to kiss her wasn’t okay. I was attracted to her because she was fucking attractive, and that was all there was to it.

It wasn’t her fault that I saw her in a different light now.

It was mine. It was on me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t delighted that the roommate agreement stated that, like I had to wear pants, she had to wear a bra.

Equality and all that.

Fuck. I needed to do something to get her off my mind. Usually, working out was my escape from it all. It was the way I removed stress from my life, but that hadn’t been working.

All it’d done was get me eyed up by women in the gym.

Not that it was a bad thing. I was a human after all, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t like the attention. The problem was that none of them were an option for me—staff and clients were off-limits to me.

I ran the gym and I was the one who’d set those rules.

That didn’t mean I didn’t need a distraction.

And I did. One of the female kind. I needed someone who’d take my mind off Shelby for one night so I could reset and go back to normal. Back to seeing her as my best friend and nothing more.