“You know,” Birdman said. “I don’t remember.”
“Mr Hill shooed it out with a broom,” Zac said, his mouth full.
“Where did you get that?” Alex asked.
Zac pointed. “Tiny food table.”
“You mean hors d’oeuvres?” I clarified.
Zac nodded. “Yep. Them.” Then he noticed Fret sitting next to Kayla. “Oi,” he said, kicking his head to Birdman. “You do that?”
“A gentleman doesn’t meddle and tell,” Birdman said.
Zac rolled his eyes. “I’m getting more food.”
We sat through dinner, chatting and laughing. We took pictures. So many pictures. There was dancing. There were balloons. It was a great night with great friends. It made me miss Flick and Leah and Marsh a bit, realising that I’d never get to do this with them after all the years of friendship.
So, I sent them a picture of me with all the boys and captioned it ‘wish you were here’. I felt my phone buzz a few times after, but knew that they’d wait until morning. But, I resolved, no longer. I’d been slacking in the friendship department with them that year and was determined to make up for it going forward.
Had Alex and the boys somehow infected me with some of their extrovert tendencies?
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Later on, Alex and I snuck away to get a picture of the two of us but, when we were done, we noticed that all four of the boys were standing there waiting for us.
“Something you two would like to share with the group?” Zac asked.
By the looks on their faces, they already knew what the something was.
“All right,” Alex said, bringing them all I close. “Lottie and I are dating.”
There was a collective sigh of relief.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alex asked them.
“We have been trying to get you two to admit you like each other for weeks,” Birdman said.
“Weeks?” said Fret. “Try months.”
“All that malarky with the condom,” Zac sighed.
“How did you two not notice it was the same one?” Luke asked. “It honestly didn’t take a genius to work it out.”
“How would you know it was the same one?” Alex asked, indignantly.
Fret smirked. “We marked it. Checked on it now and then. We had bets going.”
“Who was going to actually use it,” Birdman said.
“Who’d notice it had a Sharpie star in the corner,” Luke added.
“How long it’d keep changing hands,” Zac added.
“Hey,” Birdman said. “You guys can use it together now.”
“Naw,” Fret said with a little clap of his hands. “How poetic.”
Alex and I exchanged a glance that was clearly a silent gag.
Although, I had to admit that I felt pretty good that he wasn’t actually sleeping with as many girls as his condom requirements had suggested.
“You weren’t sleeping with other guys?” Alex asked me.
I shook my head. “And you weren’t sleeping with other girls.”
He shook his head as well. “No.”
“He’s still a virgin,” Birdman hooted.
“Like you boys aren’t,” I scoffed.
“Ah,” Zac said. “But we’re not the ones who pretended we were sleeping around just so we could deny our feelings for the one person we actually wanted to sleep with.”
Alex thumped him as he cleared his throat. “Yeah. All right. Thank you.”
I snorted. “When you put it like that…”
Alex looked up at the ceiling. “Mistakes were made, Elliott. Idiocy occurred. Can we move on, please?”
“Hey,” I said, willing to put my dignity aside to make him feel better, “it’s not like you were the only one.”
When he looked at me, his face brightened. “True. You were also an idiot.”
I exchanged a look with the other boys and we all laughed.
“Sure, Sasha. I was also an idiot.”
“Does this mean I can go and spend some time with Kayla?” Fret asked, his hands clasped together.
“Yes!” I told him. “Yes. God. And apologise to her again!”
Zac waved a hand as Fret dashed off. “They grow up so fast.”
“I’m sure he knows how to make it up to her,” Birdman said and Luke shoved him.
It was like nothing had changed.
Nothing except now Alex held my hand and it meant something different than before. Something bigger. Something more. Something that felt like it had been there all along.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I still couldn’t believe it.
Alex was nothing I thought I liked in a guy. But then, we got along so well it kind of made sense I’d fallen for him at the same time.
The fact we’d both been hiding behind pretend hook ups was hilarious and it made me feel better to know I hadn’t been the only one who’d done it to make sure my behaviour couldn’t be misconstrued by either of us as romantic. Instead of making me wonder if that meant we weren’t really suited, it made me feel like we were. We’d both put our friendship first. We’d both put what we thought the other one wanted first. And if that wasn’t a good sign, I didn’t know what was. It did, though, make me more resolved to be better at communicating in future so we didn’t have any more stupid, easily avoidable misunderstandings.
The renovations to Callistemon House were finally finished and they found me a brand spanking new room a week before Term Three finished. It was weird to go from the hustle and bustle of Banksia House to the relative quiet of Callistemon House. Very few people were moved given there wasn’t really that much time left until Christmas, so it wasn’t a surprise when I ended up without a roommate for the rest of the year.
It would have been lonely, which was something I wasn’t used to feeling after so many months in Banksia Room 605, but the boys popped by unannounced more often than not. It probably said more about my introvert tendencies that I just holed up in my room and assumed they’d come find me if they wanted to hang out instead of going to find them. It probably said a lot about their extrovert tendencies that they were perfectly happy to come and find me without a second thought.
Alex came and visited me and Mum in the holidays for a whole week.
I took him to all the typical haunts; Rundle Mall, The Parade, Glenelg. We did touristy things, forcing me to experience my own home city in new and exciting ways. It wasn’t like Alex had never been to the city and hung out before but, when it was usually for competitions, there wasn’t an awful lot of time for exploring.
I almost thought having him in my house for a week would be annoying, but I found that it was actually quite similar to the way we’d been living for the previous eight months. After a few weeks without it, I was surprised to find I’d missed it.
We tried to keep our relationship on the downlow, thinking it was probably a bit early to be letting the adults in on it after they’d let us share a dorm for nearly three whole terms. Last thing they needed was to be worried about shenanigans. I don’t think we were totally successful, but Mum didn’t say anything about it either.
Term 4 was full on.
There were exams.
Zac was back into baseball.
Birdman was back into basketball. And basketball meant I was reminded of Zahra. So I wheedled our way to one of the girls’ games to watch her.
“I heard they broke up,” I said to him.
He nodded. “I heard that, too.”
“So…?” I prompted.
He grinned. “So maybe I don’t want to be a rebound guy.”
“You basketballers and your fancy terms,” I teased and he laughed.
“Pardon the pun.”
“So, you’re not going to ask her out?”
He rubbed his chin. “Not this year.”
“Why not? A lot can happen in six weeks!”
He no
dded. “Exactly. What if I ask her out, she says yes, then over Summer she forgets why she said yes and breaks up with me before we’ve even really had a chance?”
“Wow,” I breathed. “You’ve really thought this through.”
“Why?” he chuckled. “What did you and Alex do?”
“Uh,” I took a second to recall. “We got all jealous. Both pretended we were sleeping around to avoid suspicion. Kissed pretty much by accident. Twice. Then I didn’t talk to him which made him really grumpy and we kinda argued until we realised we both wanted to date?”
It was his turn to say, “Wow.”
“Yup.” I nodded. “We didn’t think about it at all. In fact, had we spent less time actively not thinking about it, then we might not have made such a mess.”
“Could be worse,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“He could have just been pissed with you, not made you both confront your feelings, then you’d be in Callistemon all by yourself and we’d all have lost you.”
“Ugh,” I muttered. “Don’t remind me what could happen if this doesn’t work.”
Birdman shook his head. “Too late now.”
“For what?”
“If you guys break up, we’re gonna draw straws to work out who gets to be friends with who.” He grinned at me cheekily.
“Really?”
“Well, that’s what we’ve said.”
“I’ll bet no one wants me, though.”
He snorted. “Everyone wants you.”
“Instead of Alex?”
“Ideally, we won’t have to choose.”
I nodded. “That would be ideal.”
Which I did realise could be my way of saying I hoped or wanted Alex and I to be together forever, but my brain didn’t have the capacity to think that far ahead at that point. I saw no current future where I didn’t want to be with him, and that was enough. For now.
“Remind me why we’re at the girls’ basketball match?” Alex said as he sat next to me on the bleachers.
I looked at Birdman and failed to hide my smile.
He sighed heavily. “I’ve got a bit of a thing for their point guard,” he said.
Fret hooted. Although, he could talk. Him, holding hands with his girlfriend who had, thankfully, not held a grudge that he’d ditched her to go stag with me and the others.
“Aw,” Kayla said. “Zahra’s sweet.”
“Don’t tell her!” Birdman said.
Kayla mimed sealing her lips. “I won’t.”
“How long have you liked her?” Zac sang.
“Like…all year,” Birdman admitted.
Alex whacked him. “So, why haven’t you asked her out?”
Birdman shrugged. “I’d never really talked to her. She was dating Angus Curry–”
“Now she’s broken up with Angus Curry,” Alex finished for him. “So why not ask her now?”
“Next year,” Birdman promised.
“And if she finds someone else before then?”
“Then it wasn’t meant to be.”
“I really don’t approve of the healthy outlooks you guys have,” I said.
“I agree,” Kayla said. “It’s kind of unnerving to find well-adjusted teenagers.”
It was nice to have another girl in the group who was as self-deprecating and sarcastic as I was.
“She’s a keeper,” I told Fret as I pointed to her.
He was bursting with joy. “Yeah, she is.”
“You’re a keeper,” Alex whispered into my ear.
“Mushy much?” I laughed.
I felt his smile against my cheek. “Sometimes, that’s allowed.”
I turned to him. “All right. I’ll allow it.”
“Good.”
I kissed him. At school. In front of who only knew. Where anyone could see.
Because we weren’t roommates anymore. We were dating.
It was weird.
It was wonderful.
It was.
And I wasn’t going to worry about things I didn’t want to change.
Epilogue
The next year when I walked into Acacia Academy, I felt like a markedly different person than the one who’d first seen those hallowed halls.
Not only did I have actual friends that I could barely go five minutes without talking to, I had a bona fide boyfriend. And a ‘captain of the swim team’, ‘happy to get up at the arse crack of dawn’, ‘falls asleep during most movie nights’ boyfriend to boot.
Not being new meant I arrived directly to my dorm like all the other old hands. Mum and I hauled my suitcases up to my dorm room in Callistemon House. There was no way I could room with Alex that year. It would be a little against school policy given that our relationship had been rather hard to hide from Aunt Tam over the Summer holidays. Especially when Mum and I had been invited to the Landry’s winery for New Years’ Eve.
“Well, this is nice,” Mum said as she looked around.
I’d shown her pictures of the new room, but she always liked to see the real thing.
“Not as nice as your dorm with Alex though, I’m sure,” she finished and I rolled my eyes at her.
She’d found it utterly hilarious that Alex and I had ended up together. Her words were, “Only something in a romance novel,” as she giggled gleefully the whole way back home to Adelaide at the end of the previous year.
I knew what we looked like and I didn’t care. I really liked Alex. I might even love him. Almost. If seventeen-year-olds could be trusted with knowing anything about love.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered to Mum. “My room’s this one.”
I pushed my way into my room, dragging my suitcase awkwardly behind me. Mum followed suit. I’d left a few things behind the year before. Sheets, pillows and doona covers I didn’t need at home. My school shoes, which had been a total accident. Library books I’d meant to take back before Christmas. Bits and bobs I thought I could last the summer without.
“Cleaning this all up at the end of the year is going to require a moving van,” Mum teased.
“Har har,” was my retort. “You should see Alex’s room.”
“Hello?” voice called from the living room.
I pushed my way passed Mum to see who my new roommate was going to be. I was surprised to see I recognised her. Long, dark legs. Wavy brown hair. A smile that lit up any room she walked into.
“You’re…” Do not say Birdman’s crush! “Zahra, right?” I asked with a smile.
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s Lottie?”
I nodded. “It is. I mean, I am.”
I’d heard so much about Zahra from Birdman that I felt a little like I was crushing on her myself for a second.
“Nice to meet you,” she chuckled. “Which room’s mine?”
I pointed, but before I could get any words out, two boisterous boys barrelled into the living room, chanting my name.
“Elliott! Elliott! Elliott!” Zac seemed most pleased with himself, but Birdman’s voice cut out with a squeak at the sight of Zahra.
Birdman’s eyes shot to me in panic as Zac cried, “Where is your boyfriend? He’s late.”
Zac then stopped and took in the room. “Oh, hey, Birdman! It’s Zahra.”
Birdman looked like a roo caught in headlights, but he nodded. “Yep,” seemed all he was capable of saying.
Zahra didn’t seem fazed at all. “Henry Bird, right?” she asked him, like she was surprised to see him of all people in her dorm room.
Birdman nodded again. “Yep.”
“You’re a point guard, too, yeah?”
One more nod. “Yep.”
Zahra smiled at him warmly. “Cool. I didn’t know you were friends with Lottie.”
“Best of friends,” Zac said happily. “But just friends. She’s dating Alex.”
Zahra smiled even wider. “I had heard that.”
“Birdman’s single,” Zac continued, only to
be thumped by Birdman.
“You guys pop by a lot?” Zahra asked.
I nodded. “They do. Sorry. I can tell them not to?”
Zahra’s smile for Birdman was a different sort of smile now. “No. Don’t do that. It’s totally fine.”
“Oohhh…” Zac started, only to get thumped again.
“Party in Callistemon!” Fret yelled as he, Luke and Alex appeared.
I looked at Zahra. “I am so sorry.”
She smiled. “Don’t be. I’m always up for a good time.”
“I warn you,” Fret said as Alex came over to say hi to me. “I am very good fun.”
Luke whacked him.
“How was your drive?” Alex asked, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“Good. You?”
He nodded as he kissed my cheek. “Good. Ready for another whirlwind adventure year at Acacia Academy?”
I looked at our friends.
I looked at Birdman, then Zahra.
If I’d thought the previous year was going to be interesting, this one had the potential to be even more so.
“This is going to be fun.” I smiled at him.
the Art of Breaking Up
If you like the Roommate Mistake, you might also enjoy my concurrent release, the Art of Breaking Up.
Wade Phillips shattered Lisa McGinty’s heart in Year 10 for no known reason. One minute he was the perfect boy-next-door boyfriend, star goalie on the soccer team, and future head prefect. The next he was like a different person altogether.
Lisa and I were used to his sarcastic teasing, his shallow taunting, and his insincere flirting. My best friend put on a brave face in front of him, but she still felt the sting. I knew she still loved him. At least, she thought she did. I kept waiting for her to see he wasn’t worth it.
No one knew what happened to Wade and no one got close to him anymore. Not until a life-altering incident throws me unavoidably into his path.
For one single second, I see through the armour he’s built. It takes just one single second for him to see through mine. Something connects us. It turns out, Wade Phillips might be the only one who understands me. It turns out, I might be the only one who understands him.
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