The Roommate Agreement(58)



“I’ve gone from hot as fuck to just fine really fast.”

“Yeah, but you’ve gone from liking me without pants on to marrying me for my mother, so we’re about even.”

I grinned, leaning back on my elbows. “Well I’m not ever going to marry you for your domestic skills, that’s for sure.”

“Ah, but that’s why I’d marry you. I’m good in bed; you’re good with a vacuum…”

“I could knee you in the balls right now, and then the only thing you’d be in bed would be useless.”

He laughed, leaning closer to me. “Ah, are we out of the honeymoon phase already?”

“Jay, the honeymoon phase upped and left the day you moved in here. It’ll start again when you pick up your socks.”

“Fucking socks.” He pushed off the island and stormed toward the hall.

The sound of my bedroom door opening and closing filled the air, and I laughed when he came back in, waved the socks, and stalked off to his room to toss them in the laundry basket.

“I picked up the damn socks,” he announced, coming back over to stand in front of me. “Are you happy now?”

“Would you like another Post-It sticker? I have tons.”

“No, I don’t want a fucking sticker. Honestly, woman, do you hear yourself?”

“Yes. I think I’m a genius.” I shrugged and looked up at him. “I wish someone would give me stickers. Like, ‘hey, Shelby, you hit your word count today! Have a sticker.’ Or, I answered all my emails. Or I cleared my to-do list. A girl needs some motivation, you know.”

“If I promise to buy you stickers tomorrow, will you take your pants off?” He raised his eyebrows in question.

“Depends how good the stickers are.” I wiggled my eyebrows as there was a knock at the door. That would be dinner.

I grabbed my wallet from the island and paid the guy, then took the pizza box and the salad containers and kicked the door shut behind him.

“Only one pizza?” Jay raised his eyebrows. “You surprise me.”

“Not really. It’s only pepperoni. I’m not putting any vegetables on my pizza.” I put everything down on the island and sat back down on the stool, putting the roommate agreement aside.

“Do we still need that now?” Jay sat next to me and pointed to the agreement. “I mean, I think we have it pretty figured out. I’m not the slob I once was.”

“It’s been two weeks since we put it together. You’ve done your laundry three times, and don’t think I didn’t notice you slipping t-shirts into my basket.”

“Shit. You noticed?”

“Yes. Funnily enough, I’m not a men’s large. I noticed.”

He gave me his sexiest smile. “I bet you’d look good in one, though.”

“Stop trying to charm me.” I wiggled my finger at him and prodded him in the shoulder. “We’re not in a relationship yet. We’re going to figure this out slowly. It doesn’t matter if we had sex last night—if having sex once is the criteria for being in a relationship, there are a whole lot of people out there cheating on their partners.”

He chuckled, leaning over to get cutlery for the salads from the drawer next to the fridge. “You’ve never had a one-night stand, have you?”

“No. Because according to you, that equals a relationship.”

“You’re twisting my words.” He rolled his eyes. “We’re not in a relationship because we had sex. If anything, we’re in one for the same reason most people are. Because they have feelings for each other.”

“I have a lot of feelings for you. Some romantic. Some good. Some bad.” I opened the pizza box and peered at him out of the side of my eyes. “I can keep you on your toes that way.”

“Okay, okay, fine. I understand. We’re not in a relationship. Don’t come crying to me when you want to be in one.” He shrugged one shoulder, but his lips were twitching. “I’ll be emotionally unavailable.”

I stared at him. “Really? And you think I’m the crazy one?”

“I’m playing hard to get.”

“You’re doing a terrible job.” I looked pointedly at his pants where I could see his cock was hard.

“You’re not wearing a bra!” He waved his hand at my chest. “If you don’t want me to be turned on by you, wear a bra.”

I picked up a slice of pizza. “When did I say I didn’t want you to be turned on by me?”

“Oh, so you won’t be my girlfriend, but I can walk around with a hard cock and that’s all right?”

“That’s fine by me. It’s useful if it’s hard.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head. “Of all the people I could have picked to have feelings for, it was you. Six billion people in the world, and I chose you.”

I nudged him with my elbow, offering up my sweetest smile. “And I think that means you have excellent taste.”

“You aren’t wrong.”

? ? ?

“You had sex once. Don’t you need to figure out how to be in a relationship first?” Brie dipped her fry into ketchup.

We were back at my parents’ bar for girls’ night, except we were meeting both Sean and Jay after this. So, naturally, we were taking our sweet-ass time. Mostly because I needed her opinion on all this.

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