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.
Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! This is where it starts getting good. See you tomorrow!
