The Temporary Roomie by Sarah Adams
Jessie’s head is in the crook of my shoulder, palm heavy against my chest, leg slung over mine. I’m not sure when this happened and I’m 100% sure it is unintentional on her part, but I’m soaking it up. I woke up about ten minutes ago to her in this position, and I have barely breathed since. I’m afraid I’ll wake her up if I do, and then she’ll shoot out of bed and curse me for tricking her somehow. No tricks, Jessie. You just like me.
Last week was torture. She thought I was angry and moody because of the fundraiser prank. And yeah, I was pissed about that for all of one night. Then I went on a date (unashamedly to gauge her reaction) and Jessie showed up outside the window in her pajamas. That’s when I knew she was full of it.
She does like me. She’s just scared to death of me.
So the rest of the week, I kept my distance while trying to figure out what my next step should be. Deciding to go after Jessie is like deciding to go into war—you can’t take it lightly, and you must formulate a plan. Turns out, I’m moody while drawing up battle plans. Do you know what it’s like to live with a woman you’re crazy about but have to hide every thought, every desire, every hope from her on a daily basis? She’d come out of her room in her little athletic shorts and I’d growl. Don’t come out here in those. She’d sit down next to me on the couch and I’d grumble. Scoot over unless you want me to kiss your neck.
But now it’s time Jessie knows I’m here for the taking if she wants me, and I’ve got loads of time, so I’ll wait as long as she needs. Well, until it starts to get pathetic, or she gets a restraining order. I do have some dignity. But in the end, if she decides I’m not the one for her…okay, that would suck, and I’m not actually ready to prepare for that yet. It might be stupid, but I’m choosing to remain eternally optimistic until she tells me to get lost.
I’m staring down at Jessie’s soft face when I feel a swift kick to my ribs. It wasn’t Jessie; it was the baby. I’m smiling from ear to ear realizing how incredible it is that Jessie is pressed up against me enough that her baby is able to kick me. I know Jessie is concerned to start a relationship with a newborn. I know she’s scared we’ll get close while she’s pregnant and then I’ll take a hike after the baby arrives. What she doesn’t know is that part of me feels made for this—prepared. I love babies. I even loved helping my sister raise Levi. I know I can do this if she’ll give me a chance.
Again, I feel a little foot nudge me. This time it wakes Jessie up, and she stirs with a sharp inhale. I know better than to be awake when she realizes she ditched her pillow to snuggle me all night, so I swiftly clamp my eyelids shut and wipe the smile off my face. Jessie’s head tilts slowly up to me, and it’s so freaking hard not to smile. Somehow, I manage it, and she believes I’m the heaviest sleeper in the world. Ever so gently, she extracts herself from my body and rolls over to her side. It jostles me a bit, and eventually the mattress springs let me know she got out of bed. I’m cold now. I miss her already. I’m pitiful, and greedy, and I want to pull her back down beside me. Stay.
I peek an eye open ever so slightly to see Jessie walking on tiptoes to the bathroom. She hisses when she bumps a shoe and it clunks loudly across the floor. My ability to maintain a straight face is beyond impressive. Jessie shuts the door to the bathroom, and I hear the water turn on. She’s taking a shower. Yeah, that’s fine. I’m fine out here not thinking about her in there. Tohhhh-tally fine.
Nope.I get out of bed and quickly throw on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a hat. I need to brush my teeth and put on more deodorant, but that’ll have to wait, because right now, I need to do everything I can to distract me from the woman softly humming a song in the shower.
I grab my laptop and catch up on patient emails. I have forty-five new messages from worried women afraid their periods are too heavy, their period is too late, they might be in labor, is it normal to throw up so much in early pregnancy, is it okay to take headache medicine while pregnant? I work my way through the inbox, reassuring where needed, instructing when I think she should make an appointment, and answering frantic questions, all while listening to Jessie hum. I could get used to this.
Once I’m done, I can’t distract myself any longer. I need to get out of here, because I’ve never been more attracted to anyone than I am to the woman in that shower. I grab my boots and try to hop into them on my way to the door. My hand is on the knob when Jessie’s scream rips through the air. I’m already halfway to the bathroom when she starts yelling, “DREW, DREW!!!!!”
My mind is everywhere. It’s gone to horrible worst-case scenarios, and my body is propelling itself toward her. I’m prepared to find Jessie dropped down and giving birth. I’m NOT prepared to fling open the bathroom door and find a long snake stretched out across the ledge of the shower. Jessie is definitely naked (although I’m not looking at her…more than once) and backed into the far corner.
“DREW, A SNAKE! Get the snake! AH—DON’T LOOK AT ME THOUGH!”
I should not be laughing at a time like this, but I am. Jessie is screeching at the top of her lungs, but she can’t decide if she’s more upset that a snake has invaded her shower or that she’s standing naked in front of me.
“Oh my gosh, you butthead! I’m about to die of a snake bite in here and you’re doubled over laughing!! I SAID DON’T LOOK!!!”
“Chill out. I’m not looking!”
“I know you can see me naked right now.”
“Only in my peripherals. I won’t look at you, okay? I have to get closer, though, to get to the snake. Want me to throw you a towel?”
“NO!!! You might startle it, and it will lunge at me! Oh my gosh, he’s going to bite me while I’m exposed and naked. This is going to traumatize me, and I’ll never be able to be naked again!” That would be a tragedy. I can’t let that happen.
“Everything okay in there?” Richard calls from outside the open bathroom door.
“We heard screaming,” says Henry in a worried tone.
“Oh, super. The gang’s all here,” Jessie says, sounding like she’s close to hysterics. “Does the rest of the neighborhood want to come in and see me naked too?”
“No one but me is going to see you naked.” Ever again. “I’ll make sure they don’t come in.” I hold a hand out toward Jessie. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“WHERE WOULD I GO?!”
I turn around and peek my head out at Richard. “Uh—so, we’ve got a snake problem in here.”
“AHHHHH HE’S GETTING CLOSER. DREEWWWW.”
“Oh heavens!” Henry says, sounding like a 1950s housewife who’s never heard a swear word. His hands are balled up under his chin and his face is contorted into full panic.
I give him a reassuring head shake, because I’m slightly worried for his blood pressure. “It’s just a garden snake, but I’m going to need a pillowcase, please.”
Henry runs to the bed and tears one off before throwing it at me. I nod my thanks and go back into the bathroom. Richard asks if I need his help, but then Jessie screeches again that no one but me is allowed to come in there, so he just smiles and nods like I’m going into war. Luckily, when I was a kid, I loved catching garden snakes, so this will not be a first for me.
Back inside the bathroom, I keep my eyes on the snake—but let’s be real, I can tell Jessie is still in the corner using her hands to cover everything she deems unseeable. It’s adorable, and I’m crazy about her.
“Don’t look—I mean it!” she warns for the hundredth time.
“Are you talking to me or the snake?”
“Ha-ha, you’re so funny!” She does not think I’m funny. “Please just hurry! That creepy tongue of his keeps sticking out like I’m lunch.”
I cup my hand over the side of my face, cutting Jessie out of my peripheral vision, and go toward the shower.
“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh,” Jessie chants in a high-pitched voice with every step I take. I don’t want to move too quickly and startle the snake for fear that it would then startle Jessie and make her slip and fall.
So, I move in slowly and whisper, “Will you be quiet?”
“Don’t tell me what to do! I’m the one being held hostage by a snake. You’re not peeking, are you?”
“If you don’t zip your lips, I’m going to turn and look fully at you.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I would. So hush until I have this snake in the bag.”
I hear her gulp, but she doesn’t say a thing as I approach. Moving nice and slow, I set the pillowcase down and open a few inches in front of the snake. It starts hissing, and Jessie whimpers. Finally, using her curling wand I found on the counter, I wave it toward the back of the snake, getting it to startle and slither into the bag. As soon as it’s inside, I pick the pillowcase up and cinch the top closed with my fist. The snake throws a fit inside the bag and Jessie immediately lurches forward, grabs the shower curtain, and pastes it to her body like a scandalous dress.
I finally make eye contact with her and smile. Her cheeks are bright red, whether from the hot shower, the embarrassment, or the snake, I don’t know. Either way, she’s beautiful.
“Thank you,” she says in a snooty, wobbly voice and then points toward the door. “Now get out.”
I shut the bathroom door behind me, and Henry apologizes profusely like he had something to do with a snake somehow making it into his house. Richard thanks me for removing it. I laugh the whole way down to the dock where I let it go near the lake.
Once the snake is taken care of, I sit down on the edge of the dock, still laughing over the sight of Jessie squealing with a snake hissing at her, and I wait. I know she will come find me, and I’m right. I hear her feet shuffling over the dock, and I look over my shoulder to see her wearing jean shorts and a lavender top. Her hair is wet, and her arms are crossed tightly over her chest, shoulders bunched up to her ears.
“Are you seriously still laughing at me?”
“Yes,” I say, not bothering to hide my amusement.
“You’re a jerk.”
“A jerk who saved you from a naked snakebite.”
She stops a few feet away from me and groans into her hands. “Oh my gosh, please don’t say that word!”
I hop up and go to stand in front of her. “Snake?”
She drops her hands, a humiliated-pleading look on her face. “Naked!”
I chuckle and put my hands on the sides of her arms. “It’s really not a big deal.”
Her eyes widen. “Not a big deal?! Drew!! I’m eight months pregnant, and you…you saw me…” She shakes her head. She can’t bring herself to say the word naked again. This is ridiculous. I can’t believe she’s even giving this a second thought.
“Jessie, you know what I do for a living right? I have seen one or two naked pregnant ladies in my day.”
Her face is serious as a heart attack. “First of all, that doesn’t help even a bit. And second, this is different and you know it.”
It is different, but I’m just trying to make her feel better. I’m honestly not sure what to say here. It feels sort of dangerous, like my only options are to say too much or too little.
I try to duck down and catch her eyes, but she’s not having it. “Jessie, what can I say that will make you feel better?”
“I want you to say you didn’t see anything and you will completely forget this ever happened!”
I’m a good liar—but I’m not that good. “I saw everything.” She drops her head and makes sounds of lamenting. I smile and lift her chin up so her pretty green gaze is forced to look into mine and see the truth for herself. Her watery eyes blink at me. “I saw everything—and I loved everything I saw. You are gorgeous. Every inch. And I have seriously never seen a more beautiful woman in all my life.”
The corners of her mouth turn down in a sort of sad smile, and her brows knit together. “Really?” she asks, in an insecure voice that’s brimming with hope. Don’t lie to me, her tone says.
“Really.” I wrap my arms around her and let Jessie bury her face in my chest.
“Thank you,” she says, words muffled by the fabric of my shirt, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been so thankful for the existence of snakes as I am now. “But I think you have to go skinny-dipping now so I can see you naked and even the score.”
“I would, but I think Henry is watching us from the window, and I don’t want to set the bar too high for Richard.”
