The Temporary Roomie by Sarah Adams
Bliss. Utter bliss. These past two weeks with Drew have felt like a dream, one you absolutely never want to wake up from. Fantasy boyfriends, step aside and hold Drew’s beer. He’s too good to be true. Yes, we bicker and fight. Yes, he has crazy cowlicks in the morning and bad breath like everyone else in the world. And yeah…he occasionally Dutch-ovens me under the covers. But somehow, all of those things just add to why I love him.
We both go to work during the day (I can’t bring myself to stop working yet), and I literally miss him all day. He’s started doing this thing where he takes a picture of my butt (clothed, get your head out of the gutter) when I don’t know it and texts it to me randomly to make me laugh. Yesterday, in the middle of the day, he texted me a close-up picture of my backside in jeans standing in front of the stove with a heart drawn around it. He always adds “I miss you” below the photo, and the first couple of times, I replied, “I miss you too.” But then he’d send, “I was talking to your butt.” So now I know better than to reply that way anymore.
Now, we’re on the couch, he’s rubbing my feet while we watch TV, and everything just feels too right. He’s shirtless in his lounge pants with freshly showered damp hair, and I keep sneaking a peek out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to go poof. There’s this sense of foreboding that says, Things are too good, Jessie. It’s time for something bad to happen. He’s going to get tired of you.
“I see you staring at me,” he says, not taking his eyes off the TV. “Is this a good Take me to bed stare or a You have pasta sauce on your face stare?”
“Neither.”
He shifts his dark blue eyes to me and runs his hand over my swollen ankles. Seriously, little baby, get out of me already. “So it’s a freak-out stare then?”
“Maybe…” I bite the corner of my lip, feeling guilty for still doubting him even when he’s given me no reason. It’s hard to shake the feeling of loss, though, when I’ve experienced so much of it.
Drew looks down at my feet and smiles. He raises my leg to kiss my foot (true love) and then leans over, raises my shirt up so it’s exposing my stomach, and rests his head on it lightly. “You hear that, baby? She’s still got the odds stacked against me.” He rubs my belly like it will grant him a wish. “It’s so fun proving her wrong every day.”
I grin at Drew and shake my head.
He kisses the side of my belly and looks up at me. “I love you. Do you want anything from the kitchen?” And just like that, he moves on, standing up to go get us glasses of water. Not because he doesn’t value me or my feelings, but because Drew isn’t one for fluffy words. Instead, he shows me day in and day out that he loves me and is committed to us.
While Drew is in the kitchen, my phone rings, and I note on the caller ID that it’s my contractor, Rod.
“Hello?”
“Jessie! I’ve got good news for you. Your house is almost finished, and I think we should be wrapping everything up in the next day or two. I’d say you’ll be set to move in on Friday.”
Friday? As in three days from now Friday? No! It was supposed to drag on for a few more weeks. At this rate, it means I’ll be able to move back in before the baby comes. Do I want that? Does Drew want that? It would give us both a semblance of a normal dating relationship that way. He wouldn’t have to listen to my newborn crying overnight or deal with stinky diapers in his trash can. Is it wrong that thinking of leaving makes me want to cry? This was never supposed to be a permanent residence for me, and yet, Drew and I were never supposed to start dating either.
Rod and I talk for another minute and finalize all the details. When I hang up, all I can do is stare at the TV blankly. What’s the right decision here?
Drew finds me this way when he comes back in the room, and his brows furrow. “Who was on the phone?”
“My contractor.”
Drew freezes. “More bad news?”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “No. My house is done. Well, nearly. It’ll be ready for me to move back in in a few days…” I pause briefly before adding, “If I want to.”
Drew’s eyes narrow, and he leans against the door frame of the kitchen looking way too sexy for any regular human. Thor, sure. Superman, totally. Man birthed by human woman, no.
“Do you want to move back home?”
Yeah right, buddy.Nice try. “Do you want me to move back home?”
He grins, pushes off the door frame, and walks toward me where I’m still lying on the couch. “It’s pretty insane to have a girlfriend officially move in after only two weeks of dating.” Maybe those words would have made me nervous if the playful glint wasn’t present in his eyes.
Instead, I let him pull me up off the couch and allow my smile to tilt. “Completely insane. Add in the fact that I’m about to have a newborn and it’s enough to have you committed somewhere.”
Drew wraps his hand around mine and pulls me toward his master bathroom. He picks up his toothbrush, hands me mine (because at some point during the last two weeks it started living in his bathroom), and then squirts toothpaste on both of them. Shoulder to shoulder we stand, brushing our teeth, taking turns spitting and then rinsing. Drew is the first one to speak again, and it makes me jump because I had honestly zoned out staring at his abs.
“You know…I’ve been thinking…”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, all innocence.
He leans his hip against the bathroom counter and folds his arms, and now it’s hard to pay attention again. “It’s going to be a huge hassle to move all your stuff again.”
“Huge,” I say with over-the-top enthusiasm. This conversation we are having is all for show. In case our friends and family have us secretly mic’ed and they play the tapes back later, they will be able to see that we really did talk about it.
He shrugs with half of his face hitched up in a Who cares? sort of look. “And honestly, with you being so close to your due date, it probably wouldn’t be very smart for you to go back to living alone.”
I nod aggressively like no pregnant woman has ever lived alone before.
“And I have all this space. I mean…it’s a waste if no one else is occupying the other rooms.”
“And the eggs…” I say, pointing a lazy finger in the air like Don’t forget about the eggs! He squints. He’s not following my train of thought. “You’ll have to throw out the eggs you don’t use in a carton because it’s wayyyy too many for one person. This way, you won’t be wasting eggs.”
His eyes widen and he nods his head up in down in newfound understanding. “Right! You’re so right. Gosh, you know…” Drew takes my hand again and pulls me toward his bed so we can both climb in like we’ve done every night for the past two weeks. “The more I think about it, the more I feel like you have to stay here. It just doesn’t make sense for you to move right now.”
I love, love, love the way Drew looks propped up against the headboard with his dark grey sheets pooling at his waist. I especially love when he holds out his arm for me to curl up next to him. I do, and I fit perfectly—even with my massive belly. And it IS massive now. The days of Are you sure you’re even pregnant? are behind me. No one tells me they think I should eat a second hamburger anymore. It’s actually really insulting.
“I think you’re right. And later on down the line, once the baby is here, I can always move back home.”
Drew’s body stiffens, and I feel his bicep flex. “You can?”
I look up at him with a grin and stage-whisper. “I’m just saying it for the mics.”
His brow immediately clears, and he nods like Thank goodness—but then when he thinks on that statement longer, he asks, “Wait, what mics?”
“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. All jokes aside, Drew, are you serious? You really know what you’re about to get yourself into, right? I’m going to have a baby in a few weeks.”
His face falls and he looks stunned. “A baby?! I thought you had a puppy in there this whole time.”
I scrunch up my face and try to tickle him, but he knows me so well now that my hand never even gets close to his side.
“Jessie, I’ve stopped trying to rationalize our relationship because it doesn’t work. There’s nothing rational about us, but I do know that I love you, and I already love this baby, and I want you here all the time. I want to help you with nighttime diaper changes and hold the baby so you can take a bath.” SOLD! Say no more! “I want to be there for all the little milestones. I just…I can’t explain it, I just trust us. In some crazy way, it feels like we’ve always been together.”
“I feel that way too. I’m trying so hard not to trust you, believe me—”
“Gee, thanks.”
“—but I can’t help it. And when my contractor said my house was done, all I could think was how disappointed I was.”
“I contemplated sabotaging the rest of the build just so you’d have to stay.”
Drew cuts off the light and we both sink down under the sheets. I run my finger lazily over the raised skin of his tattoo and try to convince myself I’m making a mistake. I try to think of all the worst-case scenarios and ways Drew could really screw me over—but nothing. Nada. My heart won’t grab on to any of them, because like he said, somehow I know we’re meant to be together. Even when my fears sink in, there’s a louder voice that says, This is where you belong, Jessie.
