The Roommate Agreement

He snorted but didn’t say anything else. I kept casting glances over at the pan to make sure he didn’t burn my bacon—he could have his burned if he wanted, but he wasn’t going to sacrifice my bacon like that.

“Take mine out!” I flipped the final pancake onto the stack. “Now, Jay!”

“Wow,” he said, taking the pan off the heat. “Is this the kind of nagging I can expect now that I’m officially going to be a tenant here?”

I glared at him and split the pancakes in two, giving myself the extra one. “It’s the kind of nagging you’ve been getting since you moved your lazy ass in here; it’s just that you’re actually listening to me this morning.”

“Ah, so that horrible noise that sounds like cats fighting in an alleyway has been you nagging me this entire time?”

I set our pancakes on the small dining table and sent yet another dark look his way. “You know, I can poison pancakes when I make them.”

“Yeah, but then you’d have to pay all the rent again, and that’s the only reason you’re letting me stay here despite your better judgment.” He grinned and joined me with the bacon, then slid my plate across the table toward me with a wink.

Keeping my glare in place was impossible when he was in this mood. Playful and borderline flirty was Jay’s sweet spot, and it was how he got out of trouble with just about every woman in his life.

Except his mom.

I smacked my lips together and kicked at him under the table. “Brat.”

“Yeah, but you love me.” His grin widened as he grabbed the syrup bottle from the center of the table.

And that was the problem. I damn well did love him, and unless I got a handle on my little crush, I’d probably be in love with him, and that wouldn’t be a good thing.

Nuh-uh.

No way.

And it was time to stop thinking about my totally inappropriate crush on my best friend.

I cleared my throat and took the syrup to put on my pancakes. “So. This agreement. You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Oh, you’re crazy,” Jay said around a mouthful of food. “But I already knew that, and I still moved in.”

“You moved in because you waited so long to find a new apartment you were about to be homeless.”

“Good point. But still, I could have moved in with Sean.”

“And Brie would have killed you.”

“Another good point.” He clicked his tongue. “I know you’re crazy, Shelbs. Sane people don’t have voices in their heads or mutter to themselves as they wander around the apartment.”

“What else am I supposed to do? Let the fictional people take over? Do you know what would happen if they were allowed to assume control of my brain?” I tapped my temple. “Anarchy, Jay. Anarchy.”

He pointed a rasher of his over-done bacon at me. “If you’re trying to convince me you aren’t crazy, you’re not doing a very good job.”

I snatched the bacon from his hand and threw it at him. He laughed, throwing his head back.

He was such a shit.

“Are you done?” I asked after a minute, stabbing my fork into my pancakes.

He wiped under his eyes.

Was he crying? Oh, my God, he was. He laughed so hard he cried.

It wasn’t even funny.

“I hate you.” I put my bacon on the plate with my pancakes, grabbed the plate and my cutlery, and stormed off to my room.

He was insufferable.

CHAPTER FOUR – JAY

Sundays Are For Football

I knew she was trying to make a point.

The worst part? She had one.

I was a terrible roommate. Living on my own made me lazy, and it was easy to forget that Shelby was my polar opposite. I could handle mess, but it made her antsy.

Unless it was the desk in her room. That damn thing was the messiest fucking thing I’d ever seen in my life, but God forbid anyone tried to organize it.

She swears blind it’s organized chaos.

I just think it’s chaos, personally.

Everywhere else had to be tidy. And clean. God, it had to be clean. She could smell a watermark on a glass from the laundry room downstairs. I swear she’d once gone into the bathroom immediately after me to bleach the toilet and spray the room.

Still, she was my best friend. She had been for as long as I could remember, and I understood that it was her apartment and she liked things her way. We clearly couldn’t live together without making a shit ton of compromises.

Which was why I was sitting on the sofa with ESPN on in the background, looking at the fucking roommate agreement.

I meant it when I asked her if I needed to ration her on The Big Bang Theory. It was clearly where she’d gotten the idea from, and it was absolutely ridiculous that she’d actually made one in real life.