The Roommate Agreement

“Okay, I get that. That makes more sense than you being freaked out about being in a relationship at all.” She shoved two fries in her mouth and tilted her head as she chewed. “Although,” she said when she’d swallowed them. “I feel like I should be surprised that you’re dating each other, but I’m not. You just kinda…fit together. You’re a lot more uptight than he is, but he’s a hot damn mess for a grown-ass man. You make him a more responsible person, and he encourages you to have more fun. Somehow, you just work.”

I sighed, trailing my chicken tender through the ketchup on my plate. “First, I resent you saying I’m uptight.”

“You are uptight.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to say it.” I sniffed. “But you’re right. We do balance each other out. I always thought that was why our friendship worked as well as it does, but maybe that’s the perfect basis for a real relationship.”

“Exactly. And think about it like this: you’ve already worked out the kinks in your relationship thanks to the roommate agreement. You both know what pisses the other person off. Like how Jay never wears pants.”

“Oh.” I held up my chicken. “We changed that yesterday. Instead of the rule being ‘must wear pants,’ it’s now ‘no pants are the best pants.’”

“And that’s how you ended up having sex twice in two days.”

“No. I ended up having sex twice in two days because sex with Jay is pretty damn great.”

“And that’s enough for me,” Dad said, turning on his heel as soon as he arrived at the table.

My cheeks flamed. Brie laughed so hard she choked on her own spit. That was single-handedly the worst moment of my life. My dad knew we’d been on a date—obviously—but now he knew his daughter had sex on the first date.

Did that rule count since we lived together?

I know one date that wouldn’t count—eating dinner at home. We did that, oh, every night?

I snorted to myself at the thought. Maybe I was taking the whole idea of dating Jay too literally. I was thinking about actually dating. Movies, restaurants, days out, nights out, drinks at a bar…

That wasn’t really viable for us. Plus, we didn’t need that time to get comfortable around each other. We already were. He’d seen me at my deadline worst with three-day-old sweatpants and hair that hadn’t been washed for five days. I’d seen him with a little too much overgrown stubble and wing sauce on his shirt after a late night watching football.

Jesus, I was overthinking this.

This was the problem when you wrote books for a living. Mostly everything had to be thought through, and it wasn’t always a good skill to bring into real life.

I blew out a long breath and looked at Brie, smiling. “I’m overreacting, aren’t I?”

She grinned. “Do you need me to answer that?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO – JAY

Communication Is Key, Unless You Ate The Oreos

“So what are you doing?” Sean asked, leaning against the side railing of the pier.

A gentle breeze whipped around me as I dropped my head back and looked at the darkening sky. “Figuring it all out. It ain’t easy, you know? It’s been four days—four fuckin’ days since we admitted how we feel about each other.”

“In other words, Shelby’s phoning it in.”

I looked at him out of the side of my eye. He wasn’t exactly wrong, but it didn’t bother me. I knew Shelby, and the fact that she’d even admitted to my face that she had feelings for me was something.

It was a fucking breakthrough, that was what it was.

“She’s dealing with stuff in her own way,” I replied. “It’s not easy for her to talk about emotion. It never has been. I might tease her, but I’m never going to pressure her into doing something she isn’t ready for. If she wants to casually date, fine. She wants to exclusively date, fine. It’s all her prerogative. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t have feelings for me.”

Sean grunted. “I dunno how you deal with it. Brie’s so open about everything. It’d drive me crazy figuring out what’s going on.”

“Man, you need to remember they’re different people. Brie is the extrovert to Shelby’s introvert. Brie could spend all night in the middle of a club, dancing with strangers. That would give Shelby an anxiety attack. She’d rather lie in bed with a book.”

“I get that. It’s why they’ve been stuck to each other like glue since they were fuckin’ eight.” He snorted. “I guess I don’t understand how you can trust how she feels.”

“She told me.”

“She told you the feeling was mutual.”

“Exactly. Do you know how hard that was for her?” I turned and looked at him. “She was terrified to tell me that. We’ve been best friends for twenty years. Shelby isn’t the kind of person to do anything on a whim.”