The Roommate Agreement(8)

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.

Even if it was a good idea. Something I’d never admit to her. The last thing I wanted her to do was to start thinking that she was normal.

Last month, on a deadline, she chopped a pencil into a salad and stuck a carrot behind her ear.

She hadn’t noticed that I’d thrown it out and made a run to the grocery store.

That’s when I knew she really was crazy.

Still, I was going to humor her. I’d read her little agreement, sign it, and really try to be a better person to live with. I was also going to offer up some of my own suggestions because no matter how fair Shelby thought she was being, this was going to be skewed in her favor.

If I had to pick up my socks, she had to stop leaving her bras all over the place.

I didn’t need any more encouragement to think about what she looked like not wearing them.

Wanting to see her naked was an unfortunate side effect of being her roommate, that was for sure.

Never in my life had I been attracted to her until I moved in. Not that I was blind to her—she was beautiful, in my opinion, but I’d never really wanted to grab her face and kiss her when she pouted in annoyance.

That…

That was a recent development. One that I wasn’t entirely sure I was comfortable with.

So yes. She needed to pick up her damn bras.

I sighed and leaned back on the sofa, opening the agreement up. She’d stapled the damn thing together and everything. I was half tempted to pick up my phone and text her to see if she had a lawyer look it over, but she was at her favorite café writing.

And you did not want to interrupt Shelby when she was writing. Not if you wanted to keep your balls, and I most definitely did.

Instead, I smirked as I scanned the first rule. Must wear pants. She’d written it in big, bold capital letters and underlined the word ‘must’ three times. Thankfully, this was a rule I whole-heartedly agreed with. As comfortable as I was while just wearing boxers, this applied to us both.

Shelby had a habit of running to the bathroom in her underwear when she thought I was in my room. I’d caught a flash of her white ass more than once as she sped down the hall, and all that did was put my dick in an uncomfortable situation.

Lusting after your best friend was more hassle than it was worth.

I clicked the pen I was holding and skipped to question two. This one was also in capital letters: Get The Fuck Off My Oreos. I just about choked on my own spit as I continued reading.

Jay will ensure that he does not eat Shelby’s Oreos. If he does, he must replace them within twenty-four hours with the added interest of one packet of double-stuffed Oreos.

Laughter burst out of me. What was she going to do, put a label on each packet to make them hers?

Actually, you know what? That wasn’t a bad idea. I drew a little arrow pointing to this section and wrote that down at the side of the page. How else would I know which ones were hers? And the answer of “They all belong to Shelby” was, sadly for her, not the right one.

By now, she should be keeping them in her room. It’s not my fault if she leaves them in the cupboard and I’m hungry.

Like I said: put a label on them.

Compromise, see?

Rule three: The Washer Will Not Kill You.

That was debatable. I didn’t know how to use the damn machine, so there was, in fact, every chance it might kill me. It wasn’t that I was a lazy-ass guy who’d never done any of his own chores, but my old apartment building was just that—old. It didn’t have a laundry room, and my grandma wouldn’t hear of me using a launderette, so she’d washed my clothes once a week when she’d dragged me around for dinner.

All right, it hadn’t been dragging since she was an amazing cook, but still.

I sighed. This rule was one I couldn’t actually argue with. She had been taking my laundry down with hers and leaving it on my bed when it was dry, and that wasn’t fair.

In my defense, she just kind of took it out of the basket and did it.

Again, see the fact that she didn’t like mess. Apparently, clothes in a laundry basket was mess.

I guess it was time I learned how to use the washers and dryers in the laundry room in the building. And where the room was.