Roommaid

by Sariah Wilson

  I’d been quietly rebellious in a serious way, but it was something my parents could ignore while waiting for me to see the light and come around. Despite my recent bravery, I was not ready for the fallout of a rebellion that loud and major. There would be no forgiveness in this world or in the world to come.

  So I ignored whatever our current relationship status actually was and pretended like we were fine. My mother and Frederica feuded on a regular basis (and it was another part of the reason I suspected Frederica was helping me find an apartment: to annoy my mom), but sometimes they were the best of friends. I couldn’t risk the truth getting back to my mom. So I said, “Right. I have Brad and so I won’t be romantically pursuing Tyler.”

  Technically it wasn’t a lie. Because Brad and I hadn’t officially broken up. Although I was taking his ghosting me as confirmation that our on-again, off-again relationship was finally dead and buried.

  We arrived at the apartment building and Frederica parked right in front of it. “There’s a parking garage,” she told me. “But we’re just running in and out today. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this part of town, but we’re only ten minutes away from your school.”

  I was glad to hear it was so close. We got out of the car and headed for the front door.

  Once we entered the building, I realized that Tyler had money. Not just doctor or lawyer money, but a lot of money.

  A fact that was reconfirmed when the doorman took us up to the penthouse. I let out a sigh of comfort when we stepped inside. This felt familiar. A few months ago this place wouldn’t have impressed me. I probably would have thought of it as being cozy or cute. But now it seemed practically palatial. The entire living area was surrounded by windows that looked out over the city. I guessed it would be stunning at night. There was a large balcony, where I could see myself having my morning coffee, watching the sun rise. I turned to see the kitchen, and even though it had top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances and quartz countertops, it looked very lived in. The sink was full of dirty dishes and there were a dozen different things scattered over the various countertops. It didn’t seem like Tyler was a neat freak.

  Clearly no one had died here recently, and it had not been invaded by any kind of insect. That was enough to make it the winner.

  “What do you think?” Frederica asked once the doorman had left us alone.

  “It’s fantastic.”

  “Let’s go see the rest of it,” she said. We found the guest bedroom and I sat on the edge of the queen-size bed, bouncing up and down a little to test the comfort level. Definitely better than Shay’s couch.

  The room had been decorated in a mixture of blues and grays that I found soothing. I could easily live in this room. My aunt was saying something about hand-scraped hardwoods and Italian marble, but I ran over to check out the large walk-in closet. I practically wept with joy at the thought of not having to live out of my suitcases any longer.

  It was in that moment that I realized I would do whatever I had to do to become Tyler’s roommate. He wanted me to take care of his dog? I’d turn into Dr. Dolittle. He needed a clean home? Then I’d be . . . Marie Kondo? No, that was organizational stuff. Mary Poppins? She was the kid expert. Martha Stewart? More on the entertaining side of things.

  An image and a name flashed in my mind. Mr. Clean! I would be Mr. / Dr. Clean-Dolittle. Practically perfect in every way.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” Frederica asked me, clearly sensing how much I’d been won over, given her victorious and smug smile.

  “I have to live here. I love it.”

  The elevator doors opened and closed and I heard a man say, “Pidge! I’m home! Where are you, girl?”

  That had to be Tyler. And of course his voice was sexy, too. All deep and masculine and shiver inducing. I heard the skittering of claws on the floors and caught a glimpse of a golden, furry blur go racing by. I half wanted to run and jump into his arms, too.

  Frederica grabbed my arm. “Come on, I can’t wait to introduce you to Tyler.”

  The last time my heart had beaten this hard and my stomach fluttered this hard had been the first day of school with my very own class. When I was at the beginning of something special and important, knowing my life was never going to be the same again.

  I just knew that the same was true here. Standing at a precipice, everything was about to change.

  Time to meet Tyler Roth.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I stepped out into the hallway and made eye contact with him. The thumping and fluttering increased. Frederica had not lied. Tyler was a hundred times better looking in real life and I still didn’t understand how that was possible. It also allowed me to notice some things that the picture hadn’t revealed. Like how tall and broad he was. Lean and athletic, like a professional swimmer.

  Yum.

  “Close your mouth, sweetheart, before you catch some flies,” my aunt murmured as she brushed past me. I obediently snapped my jaw shut.

  “Hellooo!” she called out, waving her arm as she walked toward Tyler. “So good to see you again!” She reached up and planted a kiss on his left cheek and I’d never been so deeply jealous of her, ever.

  “Hello again, Mrs. Johnson.”

  She slapped him gently on his upper arm. “Oh, stop that. I told you to call me Frederica.” She was shamelessly flirting with him while I stood in the hallway like a mannequin. I cleared my throat, intending to speak but not quite able to.

  As if that reminded my aunt that I was in the room, she turned toward me. “This is Madison. Like I said in my text, I think she’d be the perfect person to live in your spare room.”

  Part of me was irritated that I hadn’t been allowed to even introduce myself. Once again, someone in my family was speaking for me. To be fair, my throat felt like it was stopped up by a big ice block and speech seemed highly improbable.

  He came over, hand extended. “Nice to meet you, Madison. I’m Tyler.”

  When he said my name, every nerve ending inside me sparked to life. The picture also hadn’t prepared me for how good he smelled. With all my senses in overload, I briefly wondered what would happen when I touched him. I reached for his proffered hand, and when my hand made contact with his, those same nerve endings exploded into roaring fireworks. My knees might have buckled slightly.

  I nodded silently at him, wanting to say it was nice to meet him, too. Talking would be good but what I needed to do in that moment was let go of his hand before I seemed creepy.

  It was harder than I would have thought, but I finally managed it.

  “Madison is a second-grade teacher,” Frederica said, interrupting my awkward moment. My annoyance was gone, and I was just thankful that she could talk for me. Or I was, up until the moment she said, “She’s very responsible and tidy and she just loves animals.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. Two of those things were untrue. I might have been responsible, but since moving out of my parents’ home I had quickly discovered that I was kind of a slob. I’d never noticed it earlier because there was always someone picking up after me.

  Animals had not been allowed in my home growing up. I’d begged for a kitten, but my father had said animals were for working. Our ranch had all sorts of horses and goats and chickens, but we were always too busy to go there.

  “Good to know.” He nodded.

  “She also loves your apartment. How could she not? It is divine,” Frederica added, running her hands along the books on one of his bookshelves. She stopped at one and pulled it out. “Is this a photo album? Do you mind?”

  “Uh, no. Go ahead.”

  Well, what else could he say? No, creepy older woman with an inappropriate crush on me, put that back?

  “Aw, look at you as a baby. So sweet,” she said. Lacking the strength to intervene and not wanting to participate in her invasiveness, I stayed put. Even though I desperately wanted to stand next to her and see all the pictures of him. I bet he was adorable.

  She went on: “Oh,
what happened here?”

  Now I got to feel jealous as he stood close to her, in order to look over her shoulder. “The brace? One of my legs was shorter than the other and they had to lengthen it. Bunch of surgeries throughout my childhood. I still have some metal parts in my leg that set off metal detectors, but on the positive side, it’s aiding me in my quest to become a modern-day Frankenstein.”

  The humor in his voice melted something inside me and I found myself saying, “No way. You should aim higher. Bionic Man. Cyborg. RoboCop.”

  His attention was on me, his eyes sparkling with delight, and it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. I couldn’t breathe. “I could have used that kind of optimism when I was a kid. Back then I was just mad about always being picked last for PE.”

  I’d pick him first for PE. “They didn’t let you join in any reindeer games?”

  He grinned. “Nope.”

  Maybe this penthouse was deceiving and Tyler was more of an underdog than I’d thought. Having never been an underdog until recently, I felt an unexpected kinship for him.

  Frederica put the photo book back on the shelf. If I moved in here, it was going to be the very first thing I’d be borrowing. Just for . . . informational purposes.

  Tyler gestured toward the couches. “Should we sit? And can I get you something to drink?”

  “Aren’t you sweet and so well mannered,” Frederica cooed as we sat down. “Your mama raised you right.”

  A strange, haunted look flittered across Tyler’s face, then was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. “At the moment I have water and some kefir. Maybe some orange juice.”

  “We’re fine,” she assured him. He sat down across from us and I tried to tell myself to look away from his face, because it was like staring into the sun. Like how every time there’s an eclipse scientists are constantly warning the public not to stare at it so as to not go blind, and everybody stares at it anyway.

  Or how that woman in the Bible got turned into a pillar of salt because she couldn’t stop looking back.

  That was me. About to be blinded and salinated.

  “So I should probably tell you a little about me. I’m twenty-six years old, work in finance, am relatively neat, enjoy making lists, and travel more than I’d like. Because it takes me away from this good girl. This is Pigeon.” The dog was lying on the floor next to his feet, intermittently whimpering but stopping when Tyler petted her head.

  I wondered why she hadn’t challenged us when we came into the penthouse. Didn’t dogs usually bark at strangers?

  Tyler smiled at me and it was then I realized that if I didn’t say something soon, he was going to throw me out for being a quiet weirdo and I’d lose this apartment. I needed to speak. I cleared my throat and settled on, “Is she okay?”

  “Pidge is just anxious around people she doesn’t know. The shelter I adopted her from thinks she was abused in her last home. It takes a while for her to warm up, but when she does, she’ll be the best buddy you could ask for.”

  Why did the idea of him rescuing and loving an abused dog make my heart heat up and glow like a five-hundred-degree oven?

  “That’s one of the reasons why I wanted a roommate. So that Pigeon isn’t left alone for four or five days at a time. I’ve tried taking her to a kennel or a doggy day care, but she’s terrified of the other people and the other dogs. She needs someone here in her home, where she feels safe.”

  “You wouldn’t have to worry about that,” Frederica said. “Madison is not the kind of girl who will be out all the time. She has a serious boyfriend, Brad. They’re high school sweethearts.”

  I tried not to flinch when she said that. It was sort of technically true, I reminded myself. Brad and I were high school sweethearts, and for all I knew, he might think we were together and he was still my boyfriend. Even though we hadn’t spoken in months.

  “In fact,” she continued, “we’re all expecting an announcement from these two any day now.”

  Again, still true. My mother had decided that once I graduated from college, Brad and I should get engaged. From what I’d heard last, she was still waiting for that to happen.

  I couldn’t miss the relief that was evident on Tyler’s face. “That’s great!” I wondered if it was great because it meant I wasn’t going to throw myself at him, like that girl from college. Although now that I’d met him, I felt very empathetic toward her. I wondered how many women he had to fend off on a regular basis.

  Probably thousands.

  Then, as if to answer my unasked question, he said, “It’s important that I have that boundary established with whomever I share an apartment with. That we agree to be roommates and friends and nothing more. I was in a bad situation when I was younger that got worse and worse, and I don’t want to go through that again.”

  From what he was saying, the last thing he needed was another woman throwing herself at him. I decided then and there that I would put my shallow, massive, and recent crush aside so that I could live in this apartment. It was close to my school, and an actual penthouse with no vermin and still-living people in it. I could control my starved hormones that, given the weird and limbo state of my last relationship, seemed to be desperate for affection and attention.

  Tyler would not be the guy to fix things.

  “I’m on board for that.” Even though my agreeing to keep my distance was stabbing tiny little knives into my heart.

  “Good. I know this situation is a little unusual,” he said. “And I hope you don’t think I’m trying to take advantage of you or anything. You won’t be my employee. We’ll just be roommates with you picking up the slack while I’m gone.”

  I nodded. It all sounded perfect, but yes, a little unusual. I was concerned about the total absence of cleaning anything ever in my life and wanted to know more about what he expected. “Frederica mentioned that you’ve had to let housekeepers go in the past. Can I ask why? Were they not cleaning up to your standards?”

  “What?” he asked with a laugh. “Oh, I’m not a neat freak or anything. I don’t have to be able to eat off my kitchen floor.” He swung one of his arms toward the kitchen to the mess in there. “As you can see. I’m not looking for it to be pristine, just kept up. And I do clean up after myself; I need someone who can help me out with that and get to the deeper cleaning I don’t have time for. I could make you up a list, if that would be okay.”

  “Yeah, that would be great.” Having his expectations laid out would definitely help me. I also loved a good list. I used them all the time in my classroom.

  “I’ll do that. And to answer your earlier question, the last few people I employed to clean have stolen from me. When you grow up poor, you pay attention to everything you own. I’m sure they thought I wouldn’t miss the things they’d taken.”

  At that Frederica let out a little laugh, letting me know that Tyler’s “poor” was probably like when my sorority sisters in college complained about being broke because they could afford only a new Kate Spade bag instead of a new Prada.

  I filed this new information in my brain under something I now knew about Tyler Roth. He considered himself “poor” growing up, had done well for himself, had pieces of metal in his leg, and loved his dog. It felt good to have some new additions in there besides the one folder labeled Insanely Hot.

  “Madison is from an excellent family,” Frederica said after she finished laughing. “Her people don’t steal.”

  Ha. Rich people stole all the time. Just ask my great-aunt Ida, who never failed to collect an expensive “souvenir” from every home she visited. Whenever Ida planned to come over, my mother used to have her staff spend hours clearing out anything small that Ida might try to pilfer.

  “I hope you don’t think I was suggesting . . .” Tyler’s voice trailed off and he looked so uncomfortable I wanted to fix things.

  “No one thought you were suggesting anything.” My tone was firm, mostly as a warning to my aunt, who seemed ready to defend Huntington
honor, even though she wasn’t one herself.

  “Good.” He again sounded relieved. “Because you seem nice and you come so highly recommended that I think this could work. Do you think it could? I never asked you what you’re looking for in an apartment.”

  “Mostly I’m looking for a place to live where I have my own bed, I don’t have to worry about catching the bubonic plague or becoming the victim of a deranged killer.”

  He laughed, and his laughter was like a thousand perfect sunsets combined with the happiness of a hundred seven-year-olds’ surprise birthday parties. It was warmth and joy and exuberance all rolled into one, and it lit up the butterflies in my stomach, making them dance and swirl.

  “That’s . . . oddly specific,” he said when he finished. “I definitely think I can promise you those things here. It’s also important to me that we have an equitable situation. Like I love to cook, so I’ll be happy to do the cooking for us when I’m home. I want us to have a good quid pro quo arrangement.”

  I would quid his pro quo any day of the week. But instead of saying so, I settled on, “That works for me.”

  “Fantastic!” He got up, walked over to a dark wood credenza, and pulled open one of the drawers. He came back with a key. “In my personal life I’m a handshake-and-keep-my-word kind of guy, but I’m happy to have the legal department at work draw something up if you’d prefer. That is, if you’re in.”

  Tyler gave me the key. He wanted me to move in!

  And have his babies, my inappropriate inner vixen whispered. I told her to be quiet.

  Then my rational brain had its own thoughts—about whether I should be so quick to agree to become his roommate. There was something inherently trustworthy and honest about him. He seemed to be exactly who he presented himself to be. Maybe that was my deprived hormones taking over again, and all drooling at his attractiveness aside, this was the first apartment besides Shay’s that I had felt comfortable in since I’d started house hunting. Not to mention that he had Frederica’s mark of approval—which might have been due to her own hormones, but I decided that I’d count it.