Copyright © 2021 Stephanie Van Orman
Al right reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of written quotations in a book review.
Any reference to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters and places are products of the author’s imagination.
ISBN: 978-1-990217-15-9
Front cover image by kirigaya_project
Cover design by Stephanie Van Orman
Webpage: https://tigrix1.wixsite.com/stephanievanorman Email: tigrix@gmail.com
A Romantic Comedy Novelette by Stephanie Van Orman
Other Books by Stephanie Van Orman
His 16th Face Collection
His 16th Face
If Diamonds Could Talk
Sleeping Beauty Inc. Books
Rose Red
Sleeping Prince
Spell Book Series
Behind His Mask
Hidden Library
Stand Alone Novels
Whenever You Want
Kiss of Tragedy
If I Tie U Down
The Blood that Flows
Children’s Books
The Boy Born with a Key
Cece and Her Scrunchie
Novelettes
Tiny Wishes
Upcoming Projects
Octavia Girl
Born in January
Heart’s Key
“Listen,” she said, turning around to face him. “I don't like having a male roommate. I think you will agree that getting shacked up with a woman you don't know isn't your idea of a good time.”
Raif did not agree with her. He had had twelve roommates over the past five years and the clean, sensible, beautiful woman in front of him had nothing in common with any of them. He was not at all opposed to having her as a roommate. Her name was Wyntessa, which was not at all normal. Most of the time he heard her called Wyn, sometimes Wynny, though the two ys rubbed him the wrong way.
In any case, she was spectacularly pretty with gray eyes, twisted cedar hair, and a kitchen that had no dirty dishes in the sink. He kept involuntarily glancing in the kitchen. She had fresh-cut flowers in a vase and a scented candle burning in the center of the dining room table.
Wyn kept talking like Raif had agreed that the situation was bleak. “It's unfair to you and it's unfair to me.”
She was referring to what happened to her roommate and his roommate. Two women had moved into apartment number 201 on the first of September (that had been Wyn and Muriel). Two men had moved into apartment 202 on the first of September (that had been Raif and Trevor). By the twenty-first of September, woman number two, Muriel, and man number two, Trevor, had fallen deeply in love. They decided they wanted to move in together and since the ladies’ apartment had two bedrooms and the fellers’ apartment had one, they came to a simple solution where no one had to be overly inconvenienced and Trevor and Muriel could start playing house immediately. All they had to do was trade Raif for Muriel and all would be well.
Except all was not well as Raif was staring down a very angry Wyn, who did not want to room with a man.
Raif started talking slowly and quietly so he wouldn’t scare her or turn her fury toward him. “I'm very clean,” he began. “I'm not loud, and I don't have parties. I may stay out late, but you don't have to keep tabs on me. I'll be sensitive and not hang out in the common rooms if you have company.”
Wyn pouted beautifully. “You are not the problem. Though us rooming together is obviously what we have to do, I will find you a new place to live and get new roommates for both of us. If all goes well, you won't have to live here longer than a week.”
“If you don't want me here, I can find my own place. I don’t need your help,” Raif argued.
“No. I know Trev was a pretty good roommate. I mean, if he was trash, Muriel wouldn't be at Ikea buying lamp shades with him, now would she? I can't make you so desperate for a new place to live that you move in with just anyone. We have to find someone of quality. And I'll help, at least.”
Raif nodded. He motioned that he wished to move past her to the bedroom behind her. She swished a hand in assent and let him enter Muriel's freshly emptied room.
He looked around the bare room and noticed where the power outlets were, what kind of light bulb was in the overhead light fixture, and how many holes there were in the drywall. He opened the closet door and looked inside.
Wyn leaned against the door frame, her arms crossed protectively, and trembled slightly.
“I'm harmless, I assure you,” Raif said as he closed the closet door. “Nothing funny is going to happen, and hey, maybe having me around will be fun.”
“What could be fun?”
“Oh, I don't know. Say you're on a date and end up not liking the guy. At the front door, you tell him off, but he’s not listening. You open the door and he ducks under your arm, only to run into me watching TV. You come in and ask me what I'm doing here when we broke up all those months ago. I
say I couldn't stop thinking about you. You appear to gush. Boyo leaves, annoyed and humiliated. You and I smack a high five.”
Wyn cupped both hands under her face. “That's quite the imagination you have. Never once in my life has a man 'ducked under my arm' or done something I've asked him not to do.”
Raif scanned the beautiful, yet severe, line of her lips. She had to be telling the truth. As alluring as she was, she was also completely terrifying, and yeah, he bet none of her dates disobeyed her if they wanted a second date. Over her shoulder, he could see the clean sink. For more than one reason, all of her dates would want a second one.
He sighed. “I'll find a way to be useful to you. I'm handy and well organized. I'm good at carrying very full laundry baskets, and grocery bags.”
“Please stop,” she groaned. “I need some alone time.” She rounded the corner and vanished into her bedroom.
While she was having her 'alone time' Raif brought over his things. Trevor helped him move his bed frame, mattress, computer desk, and drawers full of his clothes. Normally, they would have talked, and they did, right up until the moment they entered Wyn's apartment. Raif put a finger to his lips and Trevor nodded. Upsetting Wyntessa by making a racket would not help anything.
After everything was arranged in Raif's room, he came out to find Wyn sitting at the kitchen table.
She was cutting strips of colored paper, scribbling on them, and then rolling them around a pencil.
When the paper was tightly rolled, she tied the tiny scroll with a string and pulled out the pencil.
“Are you having a good time?” he asked, pulling up a chair. “Want my help?”
“No!” she said, covering up her work with her hands, and grasping at an unbroken sheet of paper.
“Okay. I won't intrude, but we need to talk about how we're going to split some things.”
“Like what?” she barked.
“The fridge.”
She frowned and looked downcast.
“You don't even want to share a fridge with me?” he asked patiently.
It obviously took considerable effort for her to say her next words. “I suppose we could just split it down the middle.”
“Wait,” Raif said. “Why does this seem like a brand new idea to you? You're what? Twenty-one?
This can't be your first time having a roommate.”
“Of course, it's not. I just usually did all the shopping and all the cooking and my roommate would clean up after.”
“So, Muriel is the one who cleaned the sink?” Raif asked with bated breath.
“No. I cleaned the sink.”
He let out a sigh of relief.
“She's been out dating Trevor every night since we got here. I have been cooking for myself and cleaning my own sink. I kind of got used to doing everything myself. I suppose I see why we need to come to a temporary arrangement about splitting things.”
“Halving the fridge is fine with me.”
“And you'll wash the dishes you dirty?” Wyn asked suspiciously.
“Yes.”
“And you'll pay half the utility bills?”
“Naturally.”
She picked up her pencil with an air of finality. “Then I guess there's nothing else for us to talk about.”
Raif got up and started for his bedroom when suddenly Wyn said, “Before you go, will you pull that
jar down from the cupboard for me?”
Tall as he was, he didn’t question her, and obediently looked above the cupboard. “There are a lot of jars up here. Which one do you want?”
“The biggest one,” she said casually.
“The biggest one it is,” he mouthed as he easily hefted it and sat it down on the table next to her.
“Thanks,” she said, though it seemed like it somehow hurt her to say it.
“It was the least I could do,” he said because it actually was the least he could do.
In the morning, Raif got up as the sun was rising. He had a shower and made his way to the kitchen. He was only planning on getting a drink of water, as he didn't own anything more than condiments in the fridge. He planned to get a bite in one of the food courts between classes and go grocery shopping after school. He was about to leave when he saw a little meal set out on the table covered by adorable glass domes. His initial response was that the meal had nothing to do with him, but he was curious. Did Wyn always set out her breakfast the night before? However, on closer examination, the breakfast was for him. There was an envelope on the table in front of the dome covering a cinnamon bun. He opened the envelope. It was filled with confetti and a crisp piece of stationary.
Dear Raif,
I'm only calling you 'dear' because that is how a proper letter ought to begin. You get confetti because none of this is your fault.
I need to explain why I don't want you to live with me. I have an older brother. When he was in college he moved in with a girl, thinking that it wouldn't be different than having any other roommate. He was wrong. He ended up marrying her. However, they are all wrong for each other.
They have nothing in common and being in the same room as them is a punishment for all involved.
They yell, disagree, fight, refuse to talk to each other and the time spent with them is nightmarish.
Proximity is not love.
I don't want to repeat their mistake, but since we have both been landed in this situation, we have to make the most of it.
I have thought of a system to help avoid us relying on each other emotionally, or even becoming friends. We will cooperate, which is all I want. If you want to talk to me in person, you will need to take a paper out of this jar and do what it says. If you can't do the task, you can email me. I want to pretend we’re miles away from each other under different stars.
Sincerely,
Wyn
P.S. I'm giving you my email address.
P.P.S. Enjoy breakfast. Welcome home.
Raif folded up the paper and thought about the contents of it for twenty seconds before he stuffed the bun in his mouth, left the rest of the food on the table (there was cut melon and a carton of apple juice), and departed.
On his way to school, he thought about what Wyn wrote. She said she was afraid to fall in love with him and it wasn’t personal? Horsefeathers! It was personal. It couldn’t be anything but personal.
When he was younger, girls falling for him was an almost daily occurrence. The frequency had ebbed as he’d aged, partly because he had less interest in chasing random girls and partly because he kept his flirting at such a low level, it didn’t arouse expectations.
He kicked upturns in the pavement as he walked. He wished he’d brought her note along with him so he could read it again and find hints to the truth. She didn’t want to talk to him. What had he done
to make her not want to talk to him? He’d done something. Sometime in the past, he’d done something to anger her. If only he could figure out what.
In class, he couldn’t focus on the lecture. Raif gazed out the window, thinking about what he looked like and wondering if Wyn found him attractive. He was ordinary with an average build, average face, average money, average all over, except for maybe one thing. He had a good nose. He'd been told repeatedly by girls that the cartilage in his nose was where it was at. Dark hair, hazel eyes, and excellent nose cartilage. But that couldn't be enough to win over Wyntessa.
He always thought his ability to win over girls came from his charm. He was a man who wasn’t afraid to say whatever needed to be said, do whatever needed to be done to get a girl to like him, and when he was a teenager, it had been easy to give the girls what they wanted.
He’d given his attention to every girl who wanted it. Needless to say, he had had exactly as many flirtationships blow up in his face as he deserved, but he was certain he hadn’t done or said anything out of line when dealing with Wyn. He had been perfect. He had been better than perfect.
Grown women were another matter. Grown women wanted to be mysterious. They wanted physical proof that there was some cosmic connection between them. So, they didn’t say what they wanted. They wanted him to guess, figure it out, have the same goals, and want the same things.
Once he had been on a date where she wanted him to choose a dessert for her. If he chose the thing she wanted, he’d get a second date. If he chose wrong, he could never take her out again.
He chose wrong… but not because he meant to. There had been eight items on the menu, thus only a 12.5% chance of success. It was a shame too because she had beautiful legs.
Without a doubt, he knew he could get along with Wyn. She was a superior sort of woman.
Fighting typical female stereotypes, he felt that Wyn had played no games in her letter. She’d been honest about her feelings and been ladylike enough not to insult him to his face by explaining how much she objected to him personally. She didn’t want to shack up with a player, end up in bed with him, and regret it for the rest of her life.
If that was all it was, everything would be fine. He just needed a little time to prove to her that he deserved that clean sink.
He hadn't had a chance to read any of the little scrolls she’d put in the jar, but he felt that didn't matter. If she wanted space, he’d give her space. What mattered most was the clean sink.
Most of the apartments Raif had lived in didn't have dishwashers. Whoever lived there had to do the dishes. The thing was, Raif had never had a roommate who did the dishes. Raif would wash his dishes, but he did not have a generous enough spirit to do the dishes for other grown men. Every night, the dishes would stack up. They would smell and after a certain point, no one wanted to wash them, and there was a stinky eye-sore in the middle of the apartment while everyone wasted their money eating out rather than becoming real adults.
He felt he couldn't let this opportunity slide. He had seven more months of his program and when he graduated, his job would pay the whole rent. Then no more roommates forever. If only he could convince Wyn to let him stay that long.
Wyn was a liar. She had written thirteen and a half versions of the letter she gave Raif and the one she presented to him was the most palatable, but it was still a lie. The part about her brother was true enough, so the whole thing was coated in enough truth to stop anyone from guessing what the lie contained in the letter could be.
The lie was that it wasn’t personal. Actually, her discomfort had everything to do with Raif. The thing was, when they moved into the same building on September first, mere steps from each other, it wasn't the first time she'd met him. She had met him exactly three times before that.
The thing was, Wyn was beautiful like an anime girl, except better. Tactless young men were always telling her that she looked like Sailor Moon, except not Sailor Moon herself because she was a brunette and Sailor Moon was blonde. It was a little hilarious because once the guy started scrambling for the other sailor scouts, he would look at Wyn's reaction and realize he had failed epically. One guy even put up his hands in surrender, shook his head, and wandered off.
What all this added up to was that Wyn had huge eyes, an expressive mouth, and terrifying manners that were so superior she had never once been dumped by a boyfriend or stood up by a date.
That's where Raif entered, oblivious of having entered the scene at all. She first saw Raif in that classic way people see each other for the first time... across a crowded room. There was a blue spotlight on him as he weaved his way through the club and even though another man had been paying her a compliment, she didn't hear him. She only saw the man who looked better than an elf out of Middle Earth crossing the room. His face was very pointed with three points all in a line: one for his widow’s peak, one for his nose, and the last for his chin.
Wyn told herself she was not in love, because to be in love with a person you knew nothing about was completely stupid.
When she was introduced to him later that night, he looked through her. It wasn’t that he was looking at another girl behind her, he wasn't. If she was beautiful like an anime girl, he saw something else about her… something boring.
At first, she didn’t take it personally that he’d shown such little interest in her. Maybe he wasn’t interested in women, but the occasional glance across the room showed that he liked women.
Maybe he was already in a relationship. Yet, that didn’t seem quite right either as he noticed various women throughout the night. Wyn watched him let his fingers rest on the waist of one woman. He kissed the hand of another, though it might have been a joke as they both laughed. He twirled another girl before taking her out to dance. For them, he was all smiles and interest.
For her, there had been nothing.
She felt her charms desert her like dry leaves swirling in the breeze, probably the way anime girls felt when their admirers left them for real girls.
When the night was over, Wyn found the meeting disconcerting. In the past, even if a man was not particularly interested in her, he was at least polite to her. It would have been easy to chalk Raif up as a rude man, but that wasn’t true either. He hadn’t been rude. He’d been uninterested. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t been so attracted to him. It was a surprising disappointment.
She thought she wouldn’t see him again.
However, she was mistaken. At last year's Christmas party, she was the date of a student in Raif's faculty (agriculture and forestry). She didn't expect to see Raif there, though she was aware it was a possibility.
When Wyn got ready for the party that night, she simply knew she looked better than she had ever
looked before. The roommate of the season was a hairdresser in training who did her hair up in the most exquisite winter braid, so there was a photo session before she left for the party. It proved what Wyn thought, she would never look better again in her entire lifetime. Not in her graduation pictures and not on her wedding day. She was at her peak.
When she ran into Raif at the party, not only did he not remember meeting her the first time, he also did not appear to think anything about the way she looked. She had blinded every man she’d met that night, but Raif didn’t look at her twice. She wouldn’t have minded his lack of admiration if he’d had a date that night, but he didn’t. He moved from circle to circle, seemingly chasing no one except a good time, dancing with this girl and flirting with that girl. If he was playing the field, if he was flirting with all the girls… then why not her too?
The last encounter had been in the university library. It was like a scene out of a terrible rom-com.
She’d been browsing and saw him on the other side of the bookshelf, looking at her over top of the books. He was tall, so he had to bend down to accomplish it. Then, like she wasn’t even there, he leaned forward and tugged a book loose on her side that had been shelved with the spine inwards. He could see the title from his perspective.
He hadn’t been making eyes at her through the books after all!
It was the third blow-by.
When she met him moving into the same apartment building, Wyn wore no warpaint, wore black sweatpants with cat hair and dog hair clinging to them (the sad aftermath of staying with her sister the week before), and her hair tied into a messy bun that could have rightly been described as a dirty bun.
They bumped into each other and he had no idea who she was again! Regardless, he offered to help her carry in the things that were too heavy for her. So, this man who was not gorgeous, but somehow much better than gorgeous, because of his incredibly striking looks, his complete inability to fall for the superficial, and the kindness to help anyone, even on his moving day, had not found it in his heart to date her, flirt with her or even make small talk with her.
He must not like anything about her! Not her looks or her quick wit or even her incredible availability since she was one door down the hall. Not even one thing!
And now, through some incredibly backward twist of fate, he hadn’t stayed down the hall from her but moved into her very apartment.
Wyn felt sick to her stomach. If they lived together, shared warm drinks in the middle of the night, watched TV together, bumped into each other in their towels or housecoats, and saw each other when they were least prepared to face the world, she would fall in love with him. Maybe, through some warped scheme of the universe, he would fall in love with her too, but not because he would have under any other circumstance.
Well, Wyn did not want to be moved around like invisible forces controlled her life. Raif never would have fallen in love with her if they had carried on the way they were. It had already been incredibly serendipitous that he had moved into the apartment next to her. It was unbelievable that things had progressed as far as they had.
At least, she'd thought of the jar. That way he didn't have to talk to her if he didn't want to. Nothing quite like a well-placed hoop for him to jump through to see exactly how he felt. In this case, a hundred hoops. With the help of the internet, it was easy to come up with a hundred dumb tasks to keep him at arm’s length. Some of them were entirely too difficult, too demanding, and there was no rule that said she couldn’t refill the jar with more requests any time she wanted.
Unconsciously, she put her nose higher up in the air and didn’t think about the thing she feared most—the idea she kept locked deep inside her. What if he shared those warm drinks with her,
helped her clean the windows, went grocery shopping with her, and did all the things she’d done with her other roommates and, at the end of it, was still not in love with her? What if he didn’t even like her? What if she was still unappealing to him?
Anime girls weren’t anything after the show was over.
Raif had been busy that day. Classes had been more demanding than he’d expected, and afterward, he had to go grocery shopping.
At seven-thirty that evening, he sat at the kitchen table in Wyn’s apartment eating an oversized sandwich he bought at the deli. Wyn was watching TV in her room. He could hear the laugh track through the door.
He wasn’t lonely. Actually, he was delighted. So far, her arrangement suited him just fine.
He got out his phone and composed an email to her where he thanked her for the bun, apologized for not putting away the plate of sliced fruit, which was no longer on the table, and told her he would be more than happy to go along with her plan. He emphasized that he wanted to be a good roommate and would stay out of her way as much as possible. He sent the email and felt like a saint.
With nothing to do, but finish his sandwich, he glanced at the jar that remained on the table.
Curiosity bit him. He opened the jar and pulled out one of the scrolls.
It was on blue paper and when he unrolled it, there was a blue flower print on the inside. He was impressed she had used two-sided paper on the project. Then he read the request.
Bring me a glass of ice water that is filled with ice first and water second.
He looked around the room like it had to be a joke. Adult women did not ask for glasses of water.
They asked for nothing and got ticked off when they got it. A woman asking for something directly was unheard of and very curious.
All he had to do to get Wyn to talk to him was get her a glass of water? Well, he didn’t know if he had anything to say to her, but here was a woman saying exactly what she wanted and he would be damned if he wasn’t going to give it to her.
He put down his sandwich, went to the freezer, and popped it open. There were ice cube trays, but they were empty. In that case, a glass of ice water was a little trickier to procure than he’d originally thought. He filled the trays, but they wouldn’t be ready for hours, and he needed ice now.
Raif put on his shoes and left the apartment. He tapped on Trevor’s door, but no one answered.
The nearest grocery store was ten blocks away and he’d already been there that night. The closest convenience store was two blocks away, but expensive.
He was about to give up when he thought of the request the girl made. It was small. Under normal circumstances, it would have been nothing.
He cringed. He’d already seen the note. He couldn’t ignore it.
He smacked his back pocket to make sure his wallet was still there and then hoofed it to the convenience store to buy ice.
By the time he made it back, his sandwich had melted, meaning the green peppers and dressing had oozed out, but he didn’t even look at it. Instead, he went to the cupboard, examined all of Wyn’s cups until he found the one he considered to be the prettiest, and pulled it out. He filled it with ice, then water, added a detail, and took it to her room.
He lightly tapped on the door.
Wyn heard his knock and answered it.
He handed her the water with the note skewered like a cocktail umbrella on top.
“Thank you,” she said, a little dumbfounded. Somewhere in her mind, she thought that he wouldn’t follow the instructions on any of her notes. She took a sip. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing,” he said with a dazzling smile before he returned to the kitchen.
She followed him, vexed and disappointed. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”
He put the leftover ice in the freezer, sat back down at the table, and tried to salvage the remains of his sandwich by rolling it back up in the wax paper it had been sold to him in.
“Why did you pick a wish out if you didn’t want to talk to me?” she persisted.
“Because I wanted to know what kind of requests they were, and then it seemed unkind to ignore your request on the first day we’re living together. I told you, I want to be a good roommate. Finding another roommate strikes me as exhausting and stupid. It’s a really bad time of year to find someone new to live with. You’ll give me a chance, won’t you?”
She looked at him for a moment, clearly as uncomfortable as she’d been the day before with no improvement. “Let’s take turns buying toilet paper,” she said, not answering his question directly, but skirting it. “Obviously, I’m going first. It’s your job to notice when we need our next pack and to buy it.”
He nodded.
She went back to her room.
The next day Raif tried not to look at the jar. The jar was not important. He had no reason to talk to Wyn. He ought to leave her alone. The sink was still clean and he was still happy.
Yet, when he sat down to a dinner of bacon and eggs, with no one around, he got curious again.
He opened the lid and pulled out the next request. This one was on green paper and unlike the scrolls, it was folded up into a tiny fortune teller. He opened it and read it.
Vacuum the inside of the couch. Muriel was supposed to do it before she left and she neglected her responsibility. The vacuum is in the linen closet.
He turned the paper around in his hand and pondered the meaning of the note. She was not requiring him to do it. She was leaving it as an option. It wasn’t even much of a request. It was ordinary roommate stuff!
He had been stupid not to see it before. With the jar, she had provided him a way to prove that he was a good roommate. Doing everything she wanted in one week would be the kill shot he needed to make her want him to stay.
He looked at the jar and patted its lid affectionately.
It was inefficient for him to pick a paper out and then do what it directed. He needed to know what all the papers said so he could do as many as possible before the end of the week.
He finished his dinner, washed his dishes, and took the jar into his bedroom.
Wyn had been out the night Raif had his epiphany at the kitchen table. She spent the evening telling her sister about how unfair all of it was and how mad she was at Muriel for not being able to date Trevor quietly. Instead, she had to move in with him.
Wyn’s sister, Tanya, had laughed and said, “Come on! That isn’t going to last. She and Trevor are going to have all the fun you can have being grown-ups ‘living together’ in less than two months.
She’ll be back living with you before the end of the term. Don’t throw Mr. Middle Earth out. He’s going to need to move back in with Trevor in a few weeks. From what you said, he is neither a slob nor a letch. That’s rare. Why don’t you marry him?”
Wyn groaned.
Tanya waved it away. She believed strongly in Wyn’s charms and did not see that any man her sister set her sights on should be able to resist her. Lots of men craved what Wyn had to offer. It wasn’t the typical hair-flipping, lollipop-licking, bubblegum-popping fun a lot of guys went for in college. It was grown up. It was homemade soup on a cold night. It was a well-organized apartment. It was a clean car and perfectly applied lipstick. Any man feeling homesick might just cry real tears when Wyn set the table with a roast beef dinner.
“Cook for him. He’ll be putty in your hands,” Tanya advised.
Wyn defensively stuck her nose in the air a second time. She had actually already cooked for him.
She’d made the cinnamon bun she laid out for him the morning before. He’d thanked her for it, but she was unsure if he knew she’d made it (and the other five in the freezer) herself.
“He hasn’t done anything to deserve my cooking,” she said snottily, unwilling to mention the bun.
“Whatever. From what you said, Muriel was an okay roommate. Just wait for her to get Trevor out of her system. Six weeks tops.”
Wyn shrugged and thought about what her sister said as she went home. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that she wasn’t going to have to wait six weeks. Muriel and Trevor would tire of each other sooner. During the time that Wyn had lived away from home, she’d seen dozens of relationships surge to existence only to crash into nothing only a few days later.
By morning, she’d decided to let Raif stay until the end of the term. There was always a little reshuffling of roommates at the change of term and so it would be the perfect time to adjust their living arrangements. That was… if Muriel and Trevor had not broken up by then.
Besides, she was starting to suspect that Raif was actually kind of boring.
There.
She’s said it.
He was boring.
It felt good to say it. On the way back to her apartment after her classes finished, she said it over and over.
“Raif is boring. He’s boring. Super boring!” She was bouncing on the sidewalk like a little girl, trying to miss the cracks and not caring who heard her.
But someone did hear her and shouted at her from an apartment above. “If you’re talking about Raif Laurant, he’s not boring. He’s hot like cinnamon hearts on Valentine’s.”
Wyn looked up only to see a head retreat over a balcony rail.
Repenting, she started walking like an adult.
She had been talking about Raif Laurant.
When she got home, she saw him emerge from his bedroom while she took off her shoes.
He was holding a package. It was a box-like present with a separate lid and a bow.
She looked at it and then looked at him. “Is that for me?”
He nodded and said casually, “But it’s not for keeps. It’s only for the afternoon. I borrowed them from a friend.”
She set down her bag. “And you bothered to wrap them, whatever they are?”
Raif grinned. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
She moved to take the box from him.
“I’ll hold it. Open the lid.”
By this point, Wyn was not impressed or interested. She did not want a present or anything. After talking with her sister and now looking at the man in front of her, she felt that she had behaved childishly saying anything about her brother and her fears. She shouldn’t have made the jar, told him that she didn’t want to fall in love with him, or even asked him to move out. The more she thought about it, the more she felt sure that Tanya was correct and Muriel would move back very soon.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you want to talk to me about?” Wyn said dryly, as she looked around for the jar.
It wasn’t on the table.
She turned back to Raif, who hadn’t answered her. He was making a visible effort to keep the box steady. She hadn’t started tapping her toe yet, but she was about to start.
“I don’t have anything I need to talk to you about,” he confessed sheepishly. “Can you open the lid already? I’m trying to give you something.”
“Is it that heavy?” she asked, stepping forward.
“It’s not heavy at all.”
The lid popped up.
Wyn yelped in surprise. “Something’s alive in there?”
“Don’t ruin everything,” Raif said calmly, as he moved the package to one hand and opened the lid for her.
There were two white furry things inside. At first, Wyn thought they might be bunnies, but as she got closer, she saw they were kittens. She thought back to the jar. On one of the pieces of paper, she had asked him to get her a cat or a dog to play with for an afternoon. She had thought it was one of the most outlandish requests that she’d put in the jar and he had done it for her on the second day?
She dropped her pretensions and scooped up one of the fur babies. “Aw,” she mouthed as she cradled it next to her heart. “How did you do this?”
“My cousin fosters kittens to keep them out of the shelter to stop them from getting sick. I asked her if I could borrow a few of her houseguests for the afternoon. This one is called Tommy and that one is Mark One. These boys will be put up for adoption next week. When they get adopted, they’ll get new names.”
Wyn felt a little sick. “So, you did this for me? Why?”
“Because your note asked me to.”
“And why are you doing nice things for me when you don’t need to talk to me?”
Raif had been surprised at how much his gesture moved her. In his experience, women were generally happy with the things he did for them, but they weren’t moved to tears. Wyn looked like she might start crying.
Suddenly, he was struck with the stark difference between polite acceptance and genuinely making someone happy. Had he ever made anyone happy before? He thought he had, but when he saw Wyn’s face, he began to wonder.
“Uh…” he hesitated. “I know you’re not pleased with this situation… with me being here, but I…
like you.”
Wyn’s eyes, which had been brimming with unshed tears, abruptly dried. She didn’t believe that for an instant. “You like me?” she repeated, incredulity in her tone.
Raif couldn’t help but glance at the sink. Without thinking, he told her the truth. “I’m not a slob.”
“I’ve noticed,” she agreed calmly.
“I’ve never had a roommate who kept a clean apartment before.”
The sound that came out of Wyn’s mouth was halfway between a raspberry and a snort.
“You don’t believe me?” he challenged.
“No, I believe you.” She took the kitten and sat down on the couch. “I’ve never dated a man who didn’t keep his apartment a secret from me until at least the fifth date. Even then, he didn’t want to show it to me.”
“Was it a deal-breaker for you that they didn’t know how to clean an apartment?” he asked, sitting in an armchair.
“I wouldn’t say it ended the relationship. I would say that it took the magic out of the romance. It was like I had only been seeing what I wanted to see about the guy until I saw the mess he lived in.
Once I saw that, his other flaws were a lot more obvious. Have your dates considered it a deal breaker even though it wasn’t your mess?”
“I could always take a woman into my room if I was comfortable doing that. My room isn’t a sinkhole, but it’s never been inspiring. I keep my room like it’s an army bunker. It’s not my home. I’ve been very much aware that every place I’ve lived while going to school is temporary. I’m not putting down roots, I’m going to class.”
Wyn nodded. “I guess I can understand why you’d feel like that. I mean… I don’t feel like that.”
“I know,” he said, with a breath full of understanding.
But Wyn had rarely felt understood by a man and immediately resented it. “How could you know something like that about me?”
“Just by looking around. You’ve lived here for a month and you’ve already decorated. There are beautiful, well-chosen pictures and accessories everywhere. They don’t belong to Muriel or she would have taken them with her to cover the bare walls of the apartment down the hall. Trevor and I didn’t toss elegant throw pillows on our couch. I bought our couch off Craig’s List and it is an absolute piece of garbage. The only upswing for it was that it was clean enough that I felt like I could sit on it without contracting a disease. I said Trev could have it.”
“Aren’t you going to need it?”
“No.”
“Why not? This situation living with me can’t last.”
Raif looked at her. She was holding her breath, waiting for him to agree with her, but he wasn’t going to. He was thinking that he hadn’t been fast enough on the uptake. He thought he had taken every opportunity to win her over. She’d like having him as a roommate and he’d have a nice time living with her for as long as it could last.
He had been dead wrong.
He shouldn’t have been aiming for roommate status. He should have been trying for something more.
“Why don’t you want to fall in love with me?” he suddenly asked.
She averted her eyes and dove for her lie. “It’s not personal.”
He didn’t contradict her. “Maybe I’d like it if it was personal,” he said, keeping his voice and eyes steady. “I like you. I would not have moved in here if I didn’t, no matter what Trevor said.”
She smirked. “You don’t know me.”
“Not intimately, of course, but I know you.”
She didn’t drop the smirk from her face. “When? When did you meet me?”
“I met you at a high school grad party in Colhurst. I was in grade eleven and I was escorting Kimberly Maxwell. You were in grade ten and you were escorting Brad Williams.”
Wyn almost choked as the memory flooded her. She had forgotten all about that.
Wyn had been sitting by the bonfire. Kids were drinking. Her date, Brad, was very drunk, and he was lying in the back of a pickup truck on a mattress explaining to an equally drunk boy that high school was rigged.
She hadn’t known anything about grad parties, and all of her classmates had been so jealous of her because she had been asked to go as a date. She had been excited too. She had fussed over her dress, her shoes, her makeup, and her hair. She’d driven herself nuts making sure that she was the prettiest date there.
It hadn’t mattered.
She had only had a month to prepare. Some of the girls who were graduating had been making plans for their outfits their whole lives. In the end, Wyn looked good, but she wasn’t shattering any records.
She also didn’t know Brad very well. He was from a different town and no one at the party knew her. Not even the chaperones knew her. That meant they didn’t know she was under eighteen, couldn’t drink, and shouldn’t even be there. She hadn’t been prepared for the night to be so sour. It turned out, she didn’t like Brad and she was tired of listening to him talk. Seeking escape, she sat down near the fire because it was warm there and she was away from Brad. She wanted to leave, but she wasn’t quite prepared to admit to her parents or her friends that she was extremely bored, and it was only midnight. On grad night, no one expected her to come home at all.
That was when a guy came up to her. He had dark hair, hazel eyes, and a pointed face.
“I brought you a stump,” he said, thumping it down next to her. Then he extended his hand to her and helped her off the grass.
“Thanks,” she said, sitting down on it.
He came back a minute later with a stump of his own. Sitting down on it, he asked her, “Where’s your date?”
“Over there.” She gestured vaguely in Brad’s direction.
“Yeah…” the boy said, rolling the word around in his mouth. “He’s not your date.”
“Why not?”
“Because, it’s past midnight… just barely.”
“I’m pretty sure dates don’t expire like parking passes,” Wyn said stiffly.
“No. They do,” he said, with a smile. “My date is making out with our host’s older brother. Your date has about 20 minutes before he passes out cold. It’s his first night drinking, huh? He doesn’t realize he’s overdoing it because he’s drinking like they do on TV. And I’m glad.”
“You’re glad?”
His eyes gleamed with fun. “Because I’ve been watching you all night. You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No. I live in Wellspring.”
“Thought so. Let me ask you a question. What’s your idea of the perfect date?”
“Location or person?”
“The location is here. The person is me. What would you like to do? Are you a prankster? Do you want to play a joke on the graduates?”
“No!”
“Do you like kissing? I could kiss you all night.” The way he said it made it seem like he was not serious, but a second look said he might be. His eyes sparkled with amusement and mischief.
She was more tempted than she ought to have been by his invitation. Instead of kissing him, she
said, “That’s not without its appeal, but wouldn’t you only be doing that to get revenge on your wayward date?”
“No. She brought me to grad for the pictures. She wanted to have an impressive-looking guy by her side and, though I don’t see it myself, she said I fit the bill. Let it never be said that I didn’t help a girl when she asked me.”
Wyn cocked her head. She had an idea. “Do you have a car?”
He nodded.
“And you’re sober?”
“Dead sober. I’m only seventeen.”
“Can you drive me home?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
“And you won’t feel bad about deserting your girl?”
He stood up. “Not at all. She planned to sleep here tonight and she’s already disappeared with what’s-his-name. Don’t worry about it. I’ll drive back here after I’ve dropped you off.”
Wyn stood up too. “Just let me tell Brad that I’m leaving.”
“Yup. Go tell him.”
When Wyn got in the car, she realized she was getting into a vehicle with a stranger. She hadn’t asked him his name. She had even considered making out with him and she didn’t know his name, but as she sat down, she felt like a fool and like she couldn’t. Instead, she asked him to tell her about himself.
He started the car. “I like to date.”
“So you’re a heartbreaker?”
“Not at all. I’m friendly… and though it is true that I have been called a player, I don’t do it because I’m trying to hurt them or get another notch on my belt. I do it because I’m friendly and I like to date. I like to start a date by telling them that, so they don’t think that the attention I’m giving them signifies anything special.”
Wyn smiled. “I like how you worked that in, phrasing it like a conversation you had once with another girl and it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Very clever.”
“Wasn’t it?”
Wyn leaned back comfortably in her seat. “How many girls have you dated?”
“How many Fridays and Saturdays are there in a year?” he quipped.
“A hundred and four.”
“Well, probably triple that and then cut it into quarters. I don’t take a different girl out every time.”
“Your math is dizzying.”
“How many guys have you dated?”
Wyn didn’t want to reply. She hadn’t dated that much. That had been part of the reason she had been so excited to go out with Brad. “Let’s put it this way, I’ve never gone out with a guy I wanted to kiss at the beginning of the date… until tonight.”
He smiled and turned on the radio. “Did my offer to drive you home mean that much to you?”
“Yes,” she said in the darkness.
“It’s understandable. They were loud and gross.”
In the darkness of the car, they talked. The drive was over an hour and they used the time well. She told him about herself and he listened like he cared. When they pulled up in front of her house, he turned off the car and got out.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He came around and opened her door. “I’m walking you to your door.”
She stepped out and stood in front of him. “You don’t need to be that gallant.”
“Never tell a man you don’t want him to treat you well,” he said, suddenly taking her hand and rubbing it with his warm one. “I really enjoyed driving you home. The party will be a different kind of madhouse at three o’clock in the morning than it was at midnight. Wouldn’t it be nice if I lived down the street and I could just stay here? In the morning, we could meet up, and I could take you on one of the dates I plan. I’ll bet you look beautiful when you play tennis.”
She kissed him.
She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, pulled his mouth on top of hers, and kissed him.
She told herself she was going to do that when he stopped the car. She had completely forgotten that he still hadn’t told her his name and she hadn’t asked. She didn’t know where he lived or get his phone number. She knew nothing. She was kissing a stranger on the street.
The spell was broken when he kissed her back.
She realized instantly that she was dealing with a boy who had done an incredible amount of kissing and he knew far better what to do than she did. Why hadn’t she picked that up from his conversation? His hands were in the right places and she had never had that happen to her before.
Suddenly, she felt twelve years old and hopelessly outclassed. Her mouth froze and he got the cue that she was finished.
He let go of her and shot her a smile. He gripped her hand tighter and pulled her gently to her front door. He touched her shoulders and gently kissed her forehead. “You are something special. Come find me when you’re ready.” He got out a pen and wrote his phone number on her hand. Then he let her go and went back to his car.
Inside, she was more tired than the one-thirty on the clock suggested she should be and she went straight to sleep.
When she woke up, she smiled and looked at the pen mark he’d made on her hand. To her surprise, it wasn’t his phone number. He’d written the words, “I could have kissed you all night.”
“Why didn’t you say you knew me when we met at the club?” Wyn demanded, glaring at Raif across her living room.
“Look, I don’t hunt women down. I gave you an invitation. I told you to come find me. If you wanted to, you could have. When I didn’t hear from you when we were teenagers, I assumed I’d freaked you out with my kiss. It wouldn’t have been the first time. I was a bit hurt, but I really don’t hunt women down. I’ve never even kissed a woman first because I want it to be a hundred percent clear that she wants me.”
Wyn was losing her patience and the kitten she was holding was clawing at her. She put it down.
“You could have said something at the club.”
“I thought you recognized me. Didn’t you?”
“No. I thought it was the first time I’d met you. Good grief. Five years have passed. Do you know how much you have changed in five years? I only saw you in the dark at that grad party and then it was dark again in the club and at the Christmas party. I probably didn’t get a good look at you until we moved in here together.”
Raif huffed. “Well, I guess that explains it. I thought you were giving me the cold shoulder and you had no idea who I was.”
“I also thought you were writing your phone number on my hand that night. It turned out to be no such thing. I was really disappointed, but I thought it was just one of those tricks players play. You had your fun with me and then you were finished.”
“Wyn… we kissed once. How could I possibly have had enough fun with you to be finished with you? Even if I was a complete creep, I’d want more than just that one kiss. You really could have found me if you’d wanted to.”
“I didn’t know your name,” she countered.
He laughed. “That’s never been an obstacle for me. I can always find out someone’s name. After I dropped you off, I went back to the party. Brad had less to drink than I’d supposed and he was looking for you. I told him I’d taken you home. He was relieved and I asked him to tell me more about you. I got your phone number from him, but I already had your name and address.”
“You sound like a stalker,” Wyn remarked sourly.
“Girls expect that kind of attention. Perhaps you’re just annoyed I didn’t call?”
She was. She was really annoyed he didn’t call.
“Wyn?” he asked seriously. “Did you want me to call you?”
For a second, she couldn’t move. Frozen, she couldn’t lie and shake her head, or tell the truth and nod. She just stared angrily into a corner of the room.
“I get it. You like me, but you’re unhappy I’m a player. That was what bothered you that night when I kissed you. It was too smooth, too experienced, and it felt too good for you to handle.”
He was right, but Wyn did not like that he understood and said it so clearly, even before she understood it herself. She was too stunned to answer.
He bobbed his head like he heard a beat she couldn’t hear. “Bingo, huh?”
She managed a nod.
Raif cleared his throat and continued. “I’m not sure if you’re interested, but I haven’t had a date in over a year.”
Wyn gawked at him. “That can’t be true.”
“It is,” he said pleasantly. “I like flirting, and playing around, but the women I’m attracted to don’t enjoy that aspect of me. You are not the first woman to feel annoyed that I like women so much and
enjoy dating a variety of them.”
“If you like it so much, then why aren’t you dating?” she asked in a raspy voice.
His eyes traveled the room like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer her. “I’m graduating this spring.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have a job set up that starts on May first.”
“And?”
“It’s in a territorial park, outside Yellowknife.”
Wyn gasped. She had never even met anyone who had visited Yellowknife, let alone someone who would move that far north voluntarily.
“It’s a good job,” he continued, “with interesting work, excellent salary, and good benefits. It’s what I want to do and the people there are willing to hold it for me. Nowadays when I tell women that’s where I’m headed, it kills the romance. I’m super appealing until I tell her I’m going to live in a place that experiences twenty-four hours of darkness. Then she smiles and I might as well have told her I was chosen as part of the first Mars colony. My honesty is killing my dating prospects.”
“You’re not worried about not being able to find someone to date when you get up there?” Wyn asked.
“Are you kidding? I’ll be fresh meat. It’ll be great…” his voice petered out. “Okay, I’m a little worried, but I can’t ask a woman to move up there or to have a long-distance relationship with me when I’m there. I’m better off seeing who already lives there and is cool with it.”
Wyn nodded, the wheels in her head turning at a frantic rate. “I think this might work out better than I thought it would,” she admitted.
“You’ll let me stay here until grad?”
“I don’t think it will come to that. My sister says Muriel and Trevor will get bored, fight, and they’ll want to switch back before the end of term.”
Raif nodded. “That’s a very real scenario.”
Wyn picked up the soft kitten for the second time, her mood improving. “We’ll wait.”
Wyn was feeling better about living with Raif by the second. He would not be bringing his dates by.
She hadn’t wanted to admit it before, but that had been one of the things that bothered her about rooming with a man she had a crush on. What if she had to play nice with his real love interest? What if she ran into her in the morning? The thought of it made her sick.
By Friday, it was clear that Raif had no prospects, exactly like he said. One thing especially convinced her. She saw him in the hall in the Cousins Building at the University and approached. A young woman was standing in front of him all a-blush and the pitter-patter of her heart on display.
“What year are you?” she asked in time for Wyn to hear.
“I’m a fourth year,” he replied.
Wyn watched his stock rise in the reflection of the girl’s eyes. She was thinking he’d graduate, get a job, and have money before she did.
“Hey, Wyn,” he said, drawing her closer toward them with his eyes. “This is my roommate,” he told the girl.
She hesitated. “Uh… you live with a girl?”
“I live with the best girl. Do you know how clean she keeps her sink?”
“Sorry,” the girl muttered, backing away. “I thought you were single.”
Raif let her back away and didn’t call her back.
Wyn had to stifle a snort. “Even if you are leaving in seven months, you probably still could have had a date with her tonight, if you’d wanted.”
He flopped his head toward her. “I told you. I don’t want to get into anything. I’ll just disappoint her. I’m dead sick of disappointing girls like her.”
“So what are you going to do tonight?” Wyn asked as they started walking down the hall.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s a little early to start internet dating women who already live in Yellowknife.” His head drooped a little as he clutched the straps of his backpack.
“You look like you’re not even looking forward to that,” Wyn observed with a little laugh.
“I sort of stretched the truth when I said that it was near Yellowknife,” he admitted slowly.
“It’s not?”
“No. It’s not. It’s at Aulavik National Park on Banks Island way above Yellowknife. The likelihood I’ll be able to get a woman from Yellowknife to want to go that much further north is really iffy.”
Wyn got out her phone and looked up where Banks Island was. She’d never even heard of it. When she saw how much further it was, her heart nearly stopped. “Why do you want to go there again?”
“Because I want to live my life. I don’t know how long I’ll work that job, but I am not going to prioritize dating. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to date, meet women, whatever, but working in a place like that is not an opportunity that comes along every day.”
Wyn grabbed the elbow of his shirt. “Are you bored with dating?”
“There’s more to life than just getting a woman to like me, and I’m more than just a player. I’m done with that.”
“So you grew up?” she asked hesitantly.
He glanced at her. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
“Seriously, what are you doing tonight?” she repeated.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“Because I’m going to make you dinner.”
Wyn arrived home and immediately began preparing dinner. She told Raif it would be served at seven so she didn’t have much time.
She didn’t know why exactly, but it seemed like everything he said was made of gold since their conversation with the kittens.
She hummed to herself as she cooked and told herself that he deserved to have a little fuss made over him. He’d brought her kittens, vacuumed the couch, and for the first time in her adult life, someone else had put ice in the freezer. He’d also given up his player ways, however temporarily, because he wanted something more. She was inspired.
She was also a very good cook, so the meal went off without a hitch. Except that it was five minutes to seven and Raif was not back yet.
Tapping her toe and looking around, she wondered if there was anything else she needed to do.
The appetizers were warm in the oven. The salad was chilling in the fridge. There was no dessert that night, but she had fizzy drinks getting a quick cool-down in the freezer. Dinner was in the warming drawer and the table was set.
Suddenly, she thought of the jar. It wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. Doubtless, Raif had taken it into his room. An impish thought occurred to her. If he wasn’t home, maybe she could snatch it back from him. He no longer needed to jump through hoops to talk to her, so she felt a little silly with him having it. Some of the requests in the jar were pretty embarrassing.
He wasn’t home, so she quietly slipped into his room and kept her ear open for his key in the front door.
The first thing she noticed was that his bed wasn’t made. There was a blob of bedding in the middle of the mattress. She looked around for the jar, but it wasn’t on his nightstand, his desk, or his dresser. She looked inside his closet and didn’t see it. Then she crouched on the floor to see under the bed.
It was there.
Before she could reach for it, Raif popped out from under the covers. “What are you doing?”
Wyn grabbed at her heart and jumped to her feet. “Nothing. Dinner’s ready. Hungry?”
Raif knew it was a quick evasion. He also knew exactly what she had come in for. She was looking for the jar and it was under his bed, but she didn’t really want the jar. She wanted the notes that had been inside, and they weren’t there anymore.
“Yeah, I’m hungry,” he said, moving the blanket aside. He had been enjoying the aroma of her cooking for the last half an hour.
He followed her back to the kitchen and saw the table she’d set. Raif hesitated. He had had girls cook for him before and they had tried to make it special. There had been candles lit on the table and proper place settings, and the flavor of romance had been in the air. With the other girls, the food had been dressed-up take-out or her best attempt at cooking. He always felt obligated to eat those best attempts and he tried to see other things about her that were pleasing. It usually wasn’t too hard if her neckline plunged at all.
However, the table Wyn set was not organized to romance him. There were flowers on the table, but they were the same ones that had been there the day he moved in even if they were holding up beautifully. Instead, the table was set in a practical, beautiful way, without even the slightest trace of seduction to it.
“Do you need any help?” he asked, tentatively.
“Nah,” she said, fetching the appetizers from the oven. She served wings with a side of salad.
“No. These are the first and second courses. I just serve them at the same time because I think they complement each other. There’s less walking back and forth for me, fewer dishes… it’s just a better way to present the meal as far as I’m concerned. We’re having chicken mozzarella pasta with sundried tomatoes.”
She set his plate down and he smelled perfectly cooked food, saw a perfectly prepared plate, and looked across at Wyn. She wasn’t wearing a dress and her neckline did not plunge. She wore a white shirt with buttons up the front, and most of those buttons were done up. It was the sort of thing your server wore at the restaurant, not the sort of thing your date wore.
He suddenly realized he may never have had an interaction with a woman that wasn’t doused in pretense. For a moment, he felt small and like the world might not be his oyster.
“When was the first time you were in love?” he suddenly asked, curious if her experiences had been similar to his.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not convinced I’ve ever been in love. I’ve had little crushes, been curious about men, been kissed all night.. since you made that sound so appealing… I must have chosen the wrong guy for it though because it wasn’t very much fun. I don’t know. I’ve never been in a relationship where I was willing to let my whole world get turned upside down, which is why I’m so annoyed with Muriel. Couldn’t she have kept it together until the end of the term?”
Raif signaled that he agreed that it was strange she and Trevor hadn’t been able to wait, though it didn’t annoy him.
Wyn took a drink from her glass. “What about you? Ever had your heart knocked out of the park?”
“A couple of times. I wouldn’t exactly call what I felt love, but more like the seeds of love… if I wanted to plant them.”
“And how did planting them go?”
Raif hesitated. “I didn’t do it.”
“No?”
He shook his head. He was thinking of the time he drove Wyn home after grad. When he held her hand in his, he was going to write his phone number and then he reined himself in and wrote the other line instead. “The first time,” he said slowly. “I thought of doing it and then I didn’t. It wasn’t that I was scared. It was that I thought I would feel differently later. I had to stick to the system I’d made for myself. I couldn’t go off track.”
“Are you sure you weren’t scared?”
The way her face looked, if they had been in candlelight, Raif would have been completely undone, but as it was, there was a fluorescent light above them that offered no romance. Instead, what he saw was not seduction, it was sympathy.
Players never got sympathy.
And she was right. He was scared, but he put his feelings away and picked up one of the wings she’d cooked. It was perfection.
“Did you buy these somewhere and then just heat them up here?”
“You want to know my secrets?” she asked as she licked her fingers.
“Do you not tell how you make things?”
She giggled. “I guess I don’t care. I bought some seasoning at the grocery store, so I didn’t blend the spices myself, so I guess I’m not hardcore.”
“If you seasoned them yourself, you are hardcore compared to the ladies who usually cook for me.”
Conversation ebbed as they finished their appetizers and she brought out the pasta bake she’d put together.
When Raif tasted it, he knew he was going to be a mess. He was not used to defending against sincerity and wholesome food.
“You’re not telling me much about your love life,” he ventured. “What was your last boyfriend like?”
“I don’t like to talk about it. I broke up with him and he was pretty upset. The thing that was the most disappointing about it was that there was nothing wrong with him, I just didn’t want to go any further down the path of life, or love, with him. I want a different kind of man.”
“What do you want?”’
“An adult.”
Raif wrinkled his nose. It seemed like an incredibly low bar. “He wasn’t?”
“He was very reliant on his parents, which I didn’t like. They gave him so much money, I knew that if I continued to be with him, eventually marrying him, I’d have to do everything the way his parents wanted because they held the purse strings. I don’t want to do what people expect of me. I want to do my own thing. I also like to read advice columns and parents who pay for everything are worse than parents who pay for nothing.”
“What are your parents like?”
“Oh… they’re gone. It’s just me and my two siblings.”
Raif looked down. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t mean my parents are dead. I mean they’re living abroad in Singapore. Dad’s doing business and mom goes with him. Regardless, they don’t have much say in what I do or where I go. I claimed my adulthood ages ago, so I couldn’t approve of Winston and the sappy way he went to his parents when he had problems.”
“Do you approve of me taking that crazy job on Banks Island?” Raif asked with a satisfied smile.
“Of course I approve,” she replied heartily.
“Would you go somewhere like that? I mean, if you were offered a job like mine with good pay, a cabin, and the lot?”
She looked down. “I’d have to think about it. The darkness and the temperatures there are really something to consider, but would I go somewhere crazy to exert my independence? Yes.”
Raif smiled. “I have to thank you. I haven’t eaten that well in… I don’t remember.”
Wyn started gathering up the dishes.
He put out a hand to stop her. “Don’t do that. I’ll do them.”
She gawked at him. “You’ll do the dishes?”
He didn’t want to make much of his offer. “Yeah. You told me that that was how it worked with your other roommates. You cook and they do the dishes. I’ll do them… but not yet.”
“Why ‘not yet’?”
“Because I have a surprise for you.”
“What?”
“Come on,” he said, easing the dishes out of her hands and leading her into the living room.
Wyn was very aware that he was touching her hands. Friends did not lead her into rooms by her hands like they had to guide her because they were afraid she’d run.
“What are we doing?”
“All the things you wanted,” he replied.
She looked around. “What do you mean ‘all the things’? I put one hundred things in that jar. It was very kind of you to do any of them.”
“Yeah… I did some more.”
Wyn allowed Raif to lead her to the couch. She sat down and stayed put while he retrieved
something from his bedroom. When he came back, he had a scrapbook with him, which he laid out on the floor.
Inside were all the papers she’d written her wishes on. They’d been organized according to category and glued down. Wyn was astounded. She had enough stamina to crazily write down each of those wishes, but she didn’t think anyone else would have the stamina to think about them, categorize them, glue them down, and make an action plan. She suddenly remembered that he had offered to help her with them that first night and she thought he was just being friendly, but what if he was the type of guy who made action plans the way she did? Her blood started humming.
Raif began talking. “The first category is housekeeping. Naturally, you’d want a clean roommate.
Sweep and mop the kitchen floor? Done. Scrub the toilet inside and out? Done. Dust the lighting fixture in the living room? Done.”
Wyn’s eyes raced upwards. Had he really taken apart the light and washed the inside of it?
He kept listing the cleaning items. Wyn didn’t know it, but there were eighteen of them and he had finished them all.
In her stomach, she felt fluttering.
“Then we move on to things you asked me to buy. Rubber gloves? Tea lights? Matches? Lysol wipes? Wet Swiffer cloths?” He went on to list twenty-four things she’d asked him to buy for the sake of keeping their apartment clean. He’d purchased all of them and arranged them on an empty shelf in the linen closet.
Wyn felt a little bad hearing the list. Had she asked for so much? “What’s the next section?” she asked shyly.
“The next section lists repairs and improvements you want me to make around the apartment.
There are six.”
She remembered. She wanted mountings put in the walls for pictures and she wanted two shelves hung.
“We can do that tonight if you want. I have a toolkit in my room.”
Wyn was flustered. “I don’t know if tonight’s a good night for that. It’s enough to know that you’re willing to help me with that sort of stuff.”
“I am,” he said confidently. “Let’s move onto the next section.”
“What’s this one?”
“It’s all ridiculous stuff no one would do. There are thirteen items, basically intended to humiliate me. It starts off with me wearing a clown nose--”
Wyn interrupted by putting her hands up. “You don’t have to do any of that stuff. I was being very immature when I wrote that. You certainly do not have to wear a clown nose.”
He pulled one out of his pocket and put it on his face. “Very little embarrasses me. I already owned one.”
Wyn’s blood had been thrumming, her stomach flipping, but when he put the clown nose on his outrageously pointed nose, it all came out of her mouth. She laughed. “You already had that?”
“I have more than one,” he said, splitting open a second one and putting it on her face.
She leaned into it.
Looking back at the book, he continued. “I’m also supposed to wear suspenders with no shirt?”
“Don’t do that!” she spazzed.
“I own a clown nose, but I don’t own suspenders,” he confessed. “Do you have a pair?”
Wyn looked at the floor and tried to make her face blank. She did have suspenders. She shook her head no, but it wasn’t his first rodeo and in the next second, he was on his feet, moving toward her room.
They were. They were in her belt box, but she couldn’t let him take them. What had she been thinking when she asked for that? She didn’t believe he’d do any of the stuff she’d put on the papers, let alone study them and catalog them. She thought he’d read a few and move out.
She hurled herself ahead of him and threw herself between him and the door.
He smiled at her, still wearing the clown nose.
She smiled back at him, with her hand on the doorknob.
He didn’t ask her to get out of his way. Instead, his hand came out on the opposite side of the doorknob and he grabbed her ribs. She convulsed to the tickle so completely that she let go of the knob and he side-stepped her.
He had found her belt box before she had recovered enough to follow him. “How did you find that?” she gaped, staring at him as he selected the suspenders that were most likely to fit him.
“Your room is so well organized. I don’t know how you expect to hide anything,” he said pleasantly as he adjusted the straps to their maximum length.
“I should not have asked you to do that!” she bit.
“This isn’t different from cleaning the toilet,” he said, attaching the back strap to his pants. “We’re roommates. We’re supposed to have fun together.”
She dropped her smile. “Maybe you shouldn’t do it because it was a joke of mine, because I didn’t think there was any way in hell you’d take your shirt off for me.”
He clipped the front of the suspenders to his pants but left them hanging around his hips. “It’s too late to stop it now,” he laughed. “The jar has spoken!”
He whipped off his shirt and pulled the suspenders over his shoulders. He turned to look at himself in her full-length mirror. “Looks pretty good. If I went to a cowboy club like this…”
Wyn was covering her face, hoping to cover her embarrassment.
“Don’t be like that. I’m giving you what you asked for,” he said warmly, putting his arm around her shoulder.
Her hands were still over her face, but his laughter quieted.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said softly, his lips almost touching her ear and another set of suspenders brushing her arm. “If you put these on, I’ll toss the rest of the requests on that page.”
That sounded quite appealing to Wyn, who remembered some of the other requests she’d made.
She’d asked him to dress in drag and post a love letter to a sandwich on social media. There were more and she couldn’t let him do them!
She took the suspenders he offered. “I won’t go topless.”
“Of course not, but I do hope you have something embarrassing enough to match this challenge and satisfy me that I’m not the only one being humiliated for someone else’s amusement. A red bra?
A spotted bikini top. Surprise me.”
He closed the door behind him and left her alone to change.
Only then did Wyn take her other hand away from her face. Why had she asked for something so outrageous? What had she been thinking? And what right did he have to look so good with no shirt on? No wonder he wasn’t embarrassed. In two minutes, she’d be in her living room with her male roommate wearing a clown nose, a bra, and suspenders? She thought she’d die.
Whatever.
He wouldn’t have done any of this if she hadn’t suggested it herself. Ultimately, she was getting what she deserved.
She found a horizontally striped tube top and put it on under the suspenders.
When she hesitantly came out of the bedroom, he was reclining on the couch with his phone in his
Click!
He’d taken a picture of her.
“Hey!” she protested. “I didn’t take a picture of you.”
“You can take a picture of me if you want to,” he offered, getting up and posing for her.
She took her phone out and took shot after shot of him until he got bored.
“Let’s take a selfie,” he said, getting behind her and pointing his camera at them both. Her face was very red with his bare chest pressed up against her back, his breath in her ear, and the wide smile on his face.
And it was at that very moment that there was a knock on the door.
“Get a shirt on!” Wyn hissed when she heard it.
“No. Half the fun of dressing like this is getting caught,” he said, dragging her to the door with him.
He opened it and Muriel was on the other side with tears streaming down her face. “Can I come in?” she mouthed timidly.
Raif and Wyn took their clown noses off in unison and stepped aside to make room for her.
Raif and Wyn were dressed in normal clothes as they listened to Muriel tell the story of how she and Trevor broke up. Wyn was surprised that Trevor had not been cheating. Raif was surprised that Trevor had been so careless.
He’d hit her.
When Raif heard the story, he knew it was an accident. Trevor was an amateur boxer and he often punched the air. It was just that when Raif had been his roommate, Raif hadn’t been trying to cuddle with him, which was what Muriel had been doing. Trevor hit her so hard she had a forming bruise on one side of her face from where he hit her, and another angry bruise on the other side of her face from where her head bounced off the fridge.
Now she was crying, claiming she had a concussion and asking if she could sleep on Wyn’s couch that night.
Raif was listening to her sobs and complaints when his eyes met Wyn’s. Without saying it, he knew exactly what she wanted. He got up and casually went over to Trevor’s to see what the damage was.
He stopped in the hallway, putting his hand on the fabric of his shirt over his heart. He had never had that moment before, where his connection with a woman was strong enough that she could tell him what to do with a glance. Maybe it wasn’t anything.
He kept walking.
Wyn listened to Muriel, called Healthlink on her behalf, and then took her to the hospital. It was a concussion. A little before midnight, the doctor decided to keep Muriel at the hospital for observation and sent Wyn home.
When she came through the apartment door, she expected to find it black with Raif in bed. To her astonishment, a few lights were on in the living room. He had been watching TV. When he heard her he turned it off and rose to greet her.
“How’s Muriel?”
“Trevor really knocked the stuffing out of her.”
“He knows. He’s a mess and he couldn’t be more sorry. Do you think she’ll forgive him?” Raif asked gravely.
The corners of Wyn’s mouth pointed downwards. “Yes, but I think they’re finished living together.
She wants me to move you out before she gets out of the hospital tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go back to living with Trevor,” Raif said.
“Scared he’ll hit you?”
Raif scoffed. “No. It’s simple. I would rather live with you.”
She glanced at the table. The dishes were done.
“I’d like to live with you too,” she said. From the way she said it, Raif knew her meaning was as friendly as it could be.
It bothered him immensely that she only wanted to be friends. Maybe they weren’t meant to be together. He’d thought it himself enough times, but he was through thinking that way. Suddenly, he decided to put it all out there.
“No,” he said, covering the distance between them. “You want to know why I got bored with dating? Because it was boring and pointless. I hated dating women I didn’t love.”
Wyn looked at him disbelievingly. “Are you saying you love me?”
“I’m saying I could love you, which is more than I can say for any of them. If I move back to Trevor’s like you want, will you date me?”
She looked at him. “Even with you moving to the far frozen north at the end of the school year?”
“Yes,” he replied sternly.
It was her turn to be a player and she answered in sugary tones, “What if I feel the same way all the other girls feel? Like dating a man who’s on his way to the North Pole is a mistake?”
Raif swallowed and the blood drained from his face, but Raif was the kind of man who would do or say anything to get what he wanted. He grabbed her hands. “This is a perfect opportunity to try us out. Why couldn’t we have a trial just like Trevor and Muriel? Let me keep living here. We could tell Trevor and Muriel that they started this mess and now they have to finish it, and we could go on here…”
“...until you have to go?” Wyn finished for him in quiet tones.
His shoulders drooped. He couldn’t ask anyone to go to Banks Island with him. “It’s a huge opportunity for me.”
“I know,” she said. The expression on her face and the tone of her voice saying she felt sorry but she was rejecting him the same way she’d sent her last boyfriend packing. Everything wasn’t perfect, so he had to go.
His head hung limp. “Anything I can say that will make you change your mind?”
“Come on, Raif, you don’t have to look like someone just took your arm off. I want us to be friends.”
For a second, his glare could have cut her in half. Then suddenly, he blinked, straightened, and put
out his hand in an apparent offer to shake hers.
He looked so dangerous at that moment that she kept her hand to herself.
“You don’t want to be friends with me,” he said crossly. “You don’t even want to shake hands with me!”
“No. I do,” she said, putting out her hand.
Raif frowned. “Why don’t you try telling me the truth? What’s your big objection to me?”
She gritted her teeth, then blurted, “I’m scared! If I fall in love with you, it will change everything.
I’m not ready for everything to be different!”
“Going on a couple of dates with me will probably not change everything.”
“I… I… am not…” she stuttered between awkward pauses.
At a glance, he saw something he’d never seen before. He was insightful that way. What he felt for her, what she felt back for him, it was just too much that was too right too suddenly. What they felt for each other was everything. She wasn’t wrong about them being friends. They were friends, and everything beyond, lovers and soul mates. And if he was right, even though it happened suddenly, it couldn’t be undone suddenly.
“Okay,” he relented. “Let’s stop there. I get it. Come here.”
His tone had softened so completely that she felt comfortable taking those few steps forward. He bent and selected a pen from beside the scrapbook. He took her hand in his and said, “Come find me when you’re ready,” exactly the same way he had said it all those years ago. Then he wrote his phone number on her palm and whispered in her ear, “I could have kissed you for the rest of my life.”
It was snowing. Wyn looked out the window at the snowflakes. It was the first snowfall of the year and Wyn felt lonely.
Raif had moved out. He was back down the hall with Trevor, and not a day went by that Wyn didn’t think about how that day could have gone if he hadn’t had to go. She didn’t call him. She didn’t know what to say. If she thought it had been annoying to have him ignore her before they moved in together, it was far worse to have him notice her after he had moved out.
His hazel eyes fixed on her and his gaze took all of her in. Sometimes his eyes were so inviting, she accidentally took a few steps toward him. Sometimes, he looked so lonely, she wanted to sit next to him. His desire to have her near him was all over him, like nothing else about him mattered anymore.
She resisted him completely.
Muriel came into the apartment. “Wyntessa, are you here?”
“Yep.”
She handed her a parcel.
“Where did this come from?” Wyn asked.
“It’s from Raif. He stopped me in the hall and insisted that I give it to you.”
Wyn tore the brown paper. It was a pair of white mittens with a note attached that read, ‘For the first snowfall. And number five under the list I named ‘Acts that Prove I’m not a Selfish Jerk.’’
Wyn chuckled. He was still making her tiny wishes come true.
She slid the soft knitting over her fingers.
He’d get bored. He found her boring once, she was sure he’d find her boring again. He might even start dating again.
That was what she thought until the next item arrived. It was earmuffs and though she didn’t want to admit it, she loved them and wore them every day. He sent her hand-warmers, slippers, and socks.
He sent her packets of hot chocolate and apple cider.
The next time she saw him looking at her across the library, she couldn’t ignore him any longer. She stumbled over to him, and the couch he sat on. Without any word escaping her lips, she sat next to him, dropping herself into the crook of his arm. That first time, she cried a little. He tightened his arm around her and said nothing. He just held her and felt what she was feeling with her.
She stayed until an alarm on her phone rang. Having someplace she had to be, she rose from the sofa. Raif helped her stand. He hugged her, she hugged him, and without a word, she wandered away.
She wanted to thank him, for thinking of her, for still trying to fulfill his promise to her, for loving her from a distance, and for giving her space to think.
If he knew everything, just by looking at her, then he certainly knew she wanted him to stop sending her presents. They made her want him… badly.
Wishes continued to come true.
One time, she went to the library, intending to pay her library fees only to find that they had been paid by a very attractive young man. The librarian gushed. She’d never witnessed such a romantic act in all her years.
Neither had Wyn.
Paying her library dues had not been an item she had listed in the jar.
Truthfully, he had barely scratched the surface of the food she’d asked him to bring her and over the weeks, he brought her giant cookies, muffins, strawberry shortcake, and a dozen other treats. He must have been making a study of it because each item was better than the last.
It climaxed at Christmas when he decorated her balcony with Christmas decorations so wonderful,
Wyn thought her heart would burst.
She couldn’t ignore him any longer or try to pretend that what happened between them wasn’t special.
From that point onwards, if she caught him looking at her, she no longer tried to hide or run away.
If he was on a couch, she’d drop next to him and rest her head on his shoulder. He’d put his arm around her and place a kiss on the top of her head. If he was standing in line somewhere, she’d come up beside him and put her hand in his.
But she didn’t talk to him. She couldn’t talk to him when she didn’t know the answer. He knew and didn’t press her. He continued giving her gifts, sometimes he wrote her letters he pushed under her door. They were full-on love letters, but they never asked for anything, just breathed his love for her.
One time, a few of Raif’s friends were there for their ritual. They saw each other. Wyn shuffled over. Without saying hello, he caught her and held her with an air of tragedy surrounding them.
“What is happening?” Raif’s friend, Jonathan asked their other friend, Andy.
“They’re in love, but he’s moving to the north end of the Northwest Territories at the end of April.
They don’t want to get too attached, so they don’t date and they don’t talk. They just look at each other all hungry and then cuddle for a bit.”
“That doesn’t seem healthy,” Jonathan observed.
“It might not be,” Andy replied. “But I’ve never been in a relationship that’s lasted as long as theirs.”
“She should just go with him.”
Andy snorted. “Would you go with him?”
“Heck no, but I am not that chick, who is looking at him all dewy-eyed and biting his shirt. Like she’s going to notice twenty-four hours of sunlight or midnight.”
Wyn heard Jonathan talking. Yes, she was biting the shoulder seam of Raif’s shirt, but that level of intimacy felt so normal by Valentine’s Day that she didn’t realize it was a symptom.
She slowly gathered up her things and left. She went home to Muriel, who was dating Trevor again, although not living with him. She opened her laptop and decided it was time to embrace something different.
On the day before Raif was set to leave for Banks Island, he saw Wyn across a crowded room. If she came over to him, he was going to kiss her. He was going to kiss her right up until the moment when he had to leave. His bags were all packed. Every arrangement had been made. He had nothing he had to do, except pull her into his arms and give her all the love he had.
Except, she wasn’t looking his way. She was hurrying down a hallway.
Later, she was running to a car.
He raced home.
He knocked on Wyn’s apartment door.
Muriel answered.
Hot and sweaty, he demanded, “Where’s Wyn?”
Muriel looked confused. “She moved out. Didn’t she tell you? All her stuff is gone. I don’t know if you remember, but like none of the furniture was mine. This place is a wasteland.” She stepped aside to show Raif the empty apartment.
“Where did she go?”
“Seriously? Didn’t she tell you? You two have been ridiculous, mooning over each other for months. What happened in those few days when the two of you were alone? From my perspective, it looks like you created a secret cult with blood oaths to ensure your silence. You two are so weird!
Why didn’t you just move in together, or date? Surely, you guys could have dated!”
“I don’t even have her phone number,” Raif admitted sadly. “Please, tell me where she’s gone.”
Muriel put a hand to her head like she had a concussion all over again. “Look. I’m sure she had a reason for not telling you. I’m not spilling the beans. Goodbye, Raif. Travel safely tomorrow.”
“Wait!”
She closed the door on him.
Raif stood there, panicking, feeling each beat of his heart like it would break. He should never have taken that job. He should have written to the people at the park and told them that he couldn’t take the job because he needed to be with Wyn and she couldn’t come with him.
He wanted to do it now, but it was too late. He had to go. At least, he had to work a few months.
During that time, he would find Wyn on social media, find a job near her and go to her whether she wanted him or not.
On the plane the next day, Raif got out a notebook and made a plan. He knew how to make plans.
He scribbled down all kinds of crazy ideas for how to stay in touch with Wyn. Ideas for videos to make and send her. Ideas for cards to send her in the mail. If anyone knew how to do a long-distance relationship… it wasn’t Raif, but that didn’t matter. He’d figure out how to win her over from a distance.
His plane landed in Yellowknife, where he had to get on his connecting flight. He was being met by a private plane that was to take him on to his final destination.
The Yellowknife airport was not like the Edmonton airport and when he saw its shrunken size, he realized that the one on Banks Island was going to be even smaller.
In front of him, there weren’t many gates, and he wandered down the one hallway, thinking about Wyntessa and wishing that he had done something different that would have made her want to be with him. Why hadn’t he thought of anything more than what he’d done?
He took a seat on a bench under a window. Suddenly, he had the feeling that someone was watching him.
Slowly, his eyes met the eyes of a woman standing across the hall. Her gray eyes arrested him. How many times had he stared at her until she saw him? During those times, he drew her to him with nothing more than his expression. Now she was doing the same thing to him, lifting him out of his gloom and pulling him toward her.
He ditched the bench, his bags, and everything else and ran to her. Without waiting for her to say one word to him, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. All his deft experience kissing vanished.
The only thing that was left was how much he needed her and only her.
When he pulled off, she said, “Don’t go deserting all your dignity at once.”
“Who needs dignity? What are you doing here?”
“I applied for a job working at Aulavik National Park. I’ll be a tour guide for the summer. Do you approve?”
“Yes. Yes. I approve. What made you decide to come?”
She looked down and admitted hesitantly. “I was never going to get over you. I’m ready for everything to be different, and I’ve come to find you.”
He kissed her and kissed her again. He kissed her right up until a voice boomed above them, “Raif Laurant and Wynessa Marks? Please report to the information desk.”
“We’re missing our flight,” Wyn said breathlessly as they pulled apart.
“It wouldn’t matter if we did,” he said, the sound of ecstasy in his words. “All my wishes have already come true.”
