The Roommate's Baby

“I think so,” she groans.

“How can you tell?” I lift an eyebrow. Asking for a friend. Ha.

“I think about him all the time. Jump for my phone whenever he texts. And I can’t stop fantasizing about him either.”

Check. Check. And triple check, I think. “But do you think it could be more than just a fling?”

“How should I know, Rina? Personally, I just want to have fun, but who knows where anything leads until you try it out, right?” She squints at me, suddenly suspicious. “Why all the questions? Normally you’re just gung-ho to see me getting some action.”

“No reason.” I clear my throat. “Just curious.”

“You know, not every potential non-fling hookup ends in disaster,” she points out. Her eyes narrow. “Not everyone is like… well.”

She doesn’t have to say my ex’s name. I roll my eyes and groan. “I know, I know. He was a colossal jerk.”

“And you don’t have to project these insecurities onto me, either.”

“I’m not insecure!” I protest.

“Please, when was the last time you gave any guy a chance?”

I purse my lips, unable to respond.

“Exactly. Now, about Cannon.”

My heart leaps from 0 to 60 in no seconds flat. “What about him?” I ask, my voice too high-pitched to sound normal.

Lacy frowns at me like a total crazy person. “I was going to say, can you talk to Cannon about Chris, maybe? Feel him out?”

“Oh. Right. Yeah. Of course!” She’s still staring. I clear my throat hard. “Chris and Cannon are tight. If you want, I can talk to Cannon, get him to feel Chris out—discretely, of course."

She stares at me for another minute solid. I’m just about convinced that she’s going to call me out, grill me about Cannon, when she finally sighs and breaks eye contact to run her hands through her hair. "I don't know. I'm not sure I should bother—it might be messy to mess around at work..." She chews the inside of her lip, thinking. "But on the other hand, I mean... I'm not looking for anything serious right now. And he is hot as hell."

"He's definitely that," I agree, even though I don't really think Chris—cute as he might be—can hold a candle to Cannon in the looks department.

She blows out a hard breath, which makes her bangs flip up in the front. "I guess, if you think Cannon will be discrete about it and won't totally spill the beans, maybe yeah, ask him to see if he thinks Chris is interested?"

I grin. "He's discrete as can be, don't worry about that. Yeah, I'll get him to find out for you."

"Thanks." She grins at me in the mirror. "Ugh, too bad you and Cannon aren't more than roomies, huh? Could be fun to double date." She says it without any inflections or hints, and yet, I make myself laugh harder than strictly necessary, mostly to disguise the faint flush that's rising to my cheeks.

"Yeah, too bad I'm not into the player type," I reply, as I finish washing my hands. "Come on," I tell her, aiming us toward the door. "Let's get back to losing this bowling game spectacularly."

Lacy links arms with me. "Back to losing."

I just hope that bowling is the only thing I'm losing right now—and not my mind. Or my heart.

7

Cannon

Three days. That stupid goddamn business trip lasts three days. And it's all I can do to keep myself distracted the whole time. Every time my phone lights up, I practically pounce on it, eager to check the messages, to see if there's one from Rina.

Every time it's a message from anyone else, I feel my stomach sink.

It doesn't help that all day, every day, I keep seeing stuff that reminds me of her. We went out after the first night of the conference to a bar, and just the sight of the dart board they had in the corner got me reminiscing about all the games Rina and I played back in law school. She started out slow, but pretty soon she was whooping my ass nearly every game we played. I never admitted it to her, but I found that sexy as hell.

Skills are always sexy.

I limit myself to two texts a day. Two texts a day is a normal number of texts. The amount of times you would text a friend. Any more than that, and I worry I'd start to scare her off. Start to get her thinking that maybe I'm a little too into this, that maybe our NSA isn't exactly remaining NSA.

And that's the last thing I want to do. Because I know what happens if Rina thinks I can't be professional about our arrangement. If she realizes that I'm starting to develop feelings for her, if she ever realizes how much I think about her, how crazy she drives me just by walking past my desk at work or smiling at me or fucking hell, the look on her face every time I make her come... If she ever realizes that I'm starting to fall for her, then she'll cut off this arrangement.

And I can't stand the thought of that. I can't stand the idea of not being able to touch her ever again. Not waking up with her cradled in my arms every morning, not wandering out into the apartment to find her half-dressed and making coffee, not walking home at night with her, pretending to act prim and proper until the elevator doors close on our doorman and we fling ourselves at one another, not able to wait a second longer before we start touching again.

So I have to play it cool. I have to pretend that this is still just an NSA business arrangement for me. Because otherwise, I won't get even this short amount of time with her. And even though I know it's going to end soon—whenever I manage to knock her up, whenever I manage to put my baby inside her... Even though I know there's an ending in sight, I can't help it. I want to stretch this out, make it last as long as possible while I still can.

Which is why I hate this fucking business trip with every fiber of my being.

Normally I love business trips—great excuse to hook up with some new girls in a new zip code. This time, I don't even check my Tinder account. And when a girl at the conference starts flirting with me, playing with the collar of her admittedly very sexy dress, and leaves a business card with her phone number scrawled across the back on the counter beside me when she heads off to her next meeting, I just slide it straight into the trash can.

Because I'm not interested.

I'm not interested in anyone but Rina.

In other words... I am so fucked.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, I make it through my third day away. Then it's back onto the airplane, into the cab from the airport, and the whole time, my stomach is tied in knots and my breath is coming harder as I imagine seeing her again. Touching her again, kissing her again. Grabbing her and tossing her across my bed and fucking her until we're both breathless from orgasms.

Halfway home from the airport, my phone lights up with a response to my question—asking whether Rina was home tonight, and wanted to hang out. It's Saturday, so I brace myself for the very realistic possibility that she might not. She might be doing other things. Going out with friends. Going out on a date.

She's free to date whomever she wants right now, of course. That's part of the whole No Strings Attached thing. But I have to admit, just the thought of her with another guy right now turns my stomach into an angry vat of stinging bees. And makes me want to find that hypothetical other guy, whoever he might be, and punch him in the face.

I suck in a deep breath and flick on my screen.

Yeah, sure! Movie night?

I breathe out a sigh of relief. Then I frown a little. Movie night?

Movie night has been an at least once-a-month tradition ever since we've been roomies. We both love really cheesy, terrible thrillers, so we try to make it to at least one crappy new blockbuster a month together. But it's always been very much a friend activity. We even buy our own popcorn buckets—because she likes hers sweet and I like mine salty.

Is she asking me to the movies because she wants to remind me that this thing is casual? That this is just a friend set up, tha

t we're not changing anything else between us?

Any relief I felt at her agreeing to meet up tonight just turns right back into worry the more I think about it. I've never felt like this before. No woman has ever driven me quite this crazy. She's all I think about it, and it's making me feel like I'm going insane.

And yet, I don't want it to stop. If anything, I want this to keep going as long as possible. I want her and I to keep going.

I can't tell her any of that, though, of course. So I write back, agreeing to movie night and suggesting the dumbest, most explosion-filled action thriller I can find at our local theater.

Perfect, she replies with a smiley face emoji, and I wonder what that means too. Perfect, because it's an action movie, and won't in any way wind up being accidentally romantic?

You're over-thinking this, Cannon, I tell myself. Pull it together.

We agree to meet at the theater, since she's still at work and I have to drop my luggage off at home. The moment I walk through the doors, I feel a weight lift off my shoulders, because I'm back. I'm back in our space, back in the apartment that smells like her perfume and her body wash and my shampoo and the mingled scents of both of us.

I drop my luggage in my room, then pause in the doorway to her room to gaze across her bed toward the shower. Memories play in my head. The way we fucked in that shower a few days ago, when I pinned her against the wall, the hot water steaming around us. The way we fell into her bed afterward, and I kissed her and stroked her clit until she moaned with desperation against my mouth, begged me to let her come.

I'm getting hard just being here, thinking about her. But then, she always has that effect on me.

I leave early, get to the theater long before the show time. I buy us tickets, then worry about whether she'll think that's too forward, acting too much like it's a date. Then I buy us popcorn too, because why not, since I'm already here.