The Roommate Agreement(9)

I didn’t say I was perfect.

Rule four was a rule I could get firmly on board with: Sundays Are For Football. They’d long been a point of contention between us, mostly because a bunch of guys in her living room didn’t exactly help her when she had to work.

Not to mention that Shelby hated football. In fact, she despised it. She gritted her teeth every time she left her room to get water or whatever.

She’d already given me a general idea of this rule this morning, so I settled in and read what she’d written, cringing a little at some of it.

Sundays are for football. During the on-season, Shelby will leave the apartment to work if the Dallas Cowboys are playing and the game is on television.

That was specific.

The only exception to this rule is for the Super Bowl, regardless of the teams in it.

Right. Because the Cowboys were going to win the Super Bowl, weren’t they? Fucking hell, woman, don’t get my hopes up like that.

I carried on reading.

Arrangements can be made for other sports on Sundays during the off-season. If a sports event falls on any other day of the week, Jay will leave the apartment and find an alternative place to view it.

I winced.

Yep.

There it was.

The zinger.

Jesus fuck, she was striking a hard bargain with this.

Breach of this agreement will result in a one-month ban of football from the television.

My lips twitched. It was as if she was writing a fucking child’s rule list out. A monthly ban? What was I, five?

I scratched that last one right out. The rest of it wasn’t exactly bad. It was frustrating on a personal level, and that made me sigh and run my hands through my hair, but it wasn’t unreasonable. Keeping it only to Sunday was fair since she was the one who had to move her office for it.

I scribbled a note to negotiate the games—one a week regardless of the team wasn’t unfair—and moved on.

Rule five: The Feather Duster Is Your Friend.

I stopped.

What in the ever-loving fuck was a feather duster? Was it some kind of bird-based cleaner? Would I be cleaning the floors with a headless ostrich or something?

The lock on the door clicked, and it swung open, revealing a wind-swept Shelby hugging her laptop bag to her stomach.

I ran my gaze over her. Her dark hair was a disaster with strands of it flying in every direction, including over her face. Her cheeks were flushed and pink, and she blew out a long breath between her lips.

“Did you get into a fight with a tornado?”

She jerked her gaze toward me, blinking at me for a second. “No. I went to Java Jam on the front. It wasn’t bad when I got there, but the winds really picked up about half an hour ago.”

“Is there a hurricane coming?”

Slipping the strap of her laptop bag over her head, she said, “A hurricane? In May?” She rolled her eyes. “Just a regular storm coming in, probably. That’s what the forecast says anyway. What are you doing?”

I sat up straight and put the agreement down as she smoothed her hair back from her face. “Reading the agreement through. I just got to rule five.”

“The feather duster?” Her brown eyes scanned my face.

I did my best to keep my expression blank. “Yep.”

She paused. “You don’t know what a feather duster is, do you?”

“Well. I can’t say I’ve ever used one, but I’m imagining cutting off an ostrich’s head and using its body to clean the floors.”

Shelby stared at me, her expression flat. “I have no idea how you’ve made it this far into adulthood without seriously hurting yourself or someone else.”

“What? Because I don’t know what a feather duster is?”

She turned on her heel and walked to the small closet in the hallway that I’d never opened. She pulled on the door, reached inside it, and pulled out a long stick. One end of it was covered with a rainbow of… I didn’t actually know how to describe it. It was bushy and looked soft; at least in the areas that weren’t looking a little on the gray side.

“This,” she said simply, “is a feather duster.”

I looked at it then her. “But it doesn’t have any feathers on it.”

“You took that literally?”

“I just told you I thought you wanted me to use a headless ostrich to sweep the floors, and you didn’t think I took the word ‘feather’ literally?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Actually, I was hoping you just weren’t that stupid.”

I showed her my middle finger. “I’ve seen that before.”

“Why didn’t you use it, then?”

Shrugging, I got up and walked to the kitchen for a bottle of water. I shut the fridge and turned back to her. “Not gonna lie, Shelbs, I thought it was some kinky as fuck sex toy.”

“How on Earth do you confuse a feather duster and a sex toy?”

“The stick. The fluffy stuff.” I shrugged once again. “It’s not like I know what you’re into in the bedroom, is it?”

“Who the hell uses a feather duster as a sex toy?”

“Hey, some people might be into that. I mean, I’m not one of them, but for all I knew, you were.”

My best friend looked at me with confusion shining in her eyes. “You are so freaking weird.”