Cocky Roommate

by Claire Kingsley

  “Doesn’t matter,” she says, adjusting her glasses. “I predict that’s where this is going. You hate him now, but just wait.”

  I lean back in my chair. “I don’t hate him. That’s pretty harsh. I mean, sure, he’s an asshole. But I don’t hate him.”

  Mia nods sagely, like she’s suddenly possessed of great wisdom. “You know what? I bet there’s an answer to that question.”

  “What question?”

  “Why he’s an asshole.”

  “What are you talking about now?”

  “There are basically three kinds of asshole men.” She holds up one finger. “The first are dicks for no good reason. They’re just assholes who were made that way. Those ones are hopeless and your best bet is to stay far, far away.”

  “Okay…”

  “Second are asshole men who use being a dick as a tool,” she says. “They’re not really jerks deep down, but they act like it a lot. They use being cocky and kinda selfish to get what they want in life, but they’re big softies on the inside.”

  My mouth opens, but I don’t even know what to say.

  “Third,” she says, ticking off a third finger, “are men who are assholes for a really good reason. They have some deep-seated pain that they’re masking with their assholedom—like a suit of armor. It’s a defense mechanism. And they keep it up because, like the second type, it probably works for them. They get what they want a lot. But there’s a deeper reason they are the way they are. Those kind… they’re the most compelling, if you ask me.”

  “God, Mia, Weston isn’t some romance hero,” I say.

  “Are you sure?” she asks. “Oh my god, Kendra. You have to find out his reason.”

  “What?”

  “His reason,” she says, rolling her eyes like of course I should know what she means. “Weston is absolutely the third type. I bet he has a reason for being the way he is. Maybe he had his heart broken when he was younger, or he had a really dark childhood. Was he in foster care, by any chance?”

  “Um, I have no idea.”

  “Okay, so maybe, but we’re not sure,” she says, putting a finger to her lips. She pauses, staring at the table. “I don’t know, it could be a lot of things. But you have to find out.”

  “How do you know he’s the third kind? Maybe he’s the first—maybe he was made that way.”

  Mia purses her lips for a few seconds, then shakes her head. “No, I think he’s the third. I think he has a reason. If he was the first type, you’d hate him for real. Like, legit hate him. But you already told me you don’t.”

  I roll my eyes at Mia, but it does make me wonder. At least a little. “Look, whatever kind of asshole he is, he’s the kind who’s going to move out in a few months, and that will be that. I’m not going to start digging into his life, trying to figure him out. I don’t think that would end well.”

  Mia leans forward. “Oh come on. Now I really want to know.”

  “No,” I say with a laugh. “I’m just going to do what he said and stay out of his way. He’ll stay out of mine, and in a few months, things will go back to normal. I’ll have my house back and he’ll forget this little blip in his perfect life ever happened.”

  She looks at me through narrowed eyes. “If you say so. But I’m going on record right now. If this turns into something, I called it.”

  I shake my head. Mia reads way too many romance novels. “Whatever makes you happy, Mi. If you’re right, you can rub it in all you want. Your life might be straight out of a novel, but mine is definitely not.”

  “Okay,” she says. “We’ll see.”

  4

  Weston

  “Dr. Reid, your patient is ready for you in exam room three.”

  I glance up at Tanya, my nurse, and nod. She disappears from my office doorway.

  I pull up the patient’s chart on my tablet. New consultation. Mid-forties. Two children. Clean health history. I put in the order for blood work—standard procedure. Notes indicate significant weight loss over the last two years. Yep, this one definitely needs me.

  She’s sitting on the exam table wringing her hands together, her upper body draped in a paper gown.

  “Afternoon,” I say, offering a hand. “Dr. Reid.”

  “Hi.” She shakes my hand, her grip light. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  I go through a few standard questions. More about her health history. Her reasons for seeking breast augmentation. I walk her through the basics of the surgery and recovery process, although Tanya will give her more details. She nods along, her eyes wide, her face eager.

  “Okay, let’s take a look,” I say.

  She nods and I move her paper gown aside. Significant loss of skin elasticity. Nipple height too low. I take measurements and enter them into her chart.

  “So, um, can you make them look better?” she asks.

  I glance up from my tablet. “Absolutely. This is very standard for a woman your age after having children. I recommend a three-hundred cc implant.” I take one of the samples and hand it to her. It’s soft and pliable, filled with saline solution. “This will put you at about a C cup, but more importantly, you’ll have lift.” I point to her nipple with my stylus. “Instead of the nipple sitting here, it will be up here. You’ll be pleased with the results.”

  “Wow, that would be amazing,” she says, closing the gown so she’s covered.

  “Do you have any more questions?” I ask.

  “No, I don’t think so. Seems like you’ve gone over everything.” She meets my eyes and chews on her lower lip. “I’m just nervous.”

  I clear my throat. “I’ll send Tanya back in to get you on the schedule.”

  “Oh, okay,” she says. “Thanks, Dr. Reid.”

  “Have a good afternoon.”

  I’m out the door and send Tanya in to see her. I don’t have time for hand holding. That’s Tanya’s job. I don’t deal in hugs and warm feelings. There are surgeons that do. They’ll sit with their patients and listen to their sob stories about why they hate their bodies. Reassure them that they’re beautiful.

  My job is to make them beautiful. And no one is better at it than I am.

  When people hear I do breast augmentations, they usually imagine me surrounded by hot twenty-somethings with tiny waists and triple-D boobs that defy gravity. I’ve had patients who fit that mold, but most of the women I see are like my last patient. Thirties, forties, fifties. They pop out a bunch of kids and aren’t happy with what it did to their breasts. They come to me for a solution.

  That’s what I do. I take their soft, sagging skin and drooping tissue and give them a set of tits they love. I restore their contours and curves to the best versions of their bodies I can manage. I make them look better than they did when they had perky little teenage boobs. No one cares that my bedside manner is shit. I take them from drab and frumpy to fucking spectacular, and that’s what matters in the end.

  I check my schedule when I get back to my office. That was my last patient. Thank god. I pinch the bridge of my nose. I haven’t been sleeping well since I moved in with Kendra. That fucking house makes so much noise. The floors creak. The windows rattle. It’s drafty. And it smells like… well, it smells like the dried lavender and eucalyptus she keeps everywhere, and I have to concede, that part is nice.

  And she does more or less leave me alone. I guess it’s marginally better than living out of a hotel room.

  It’s a little after four, and I text Caleb to see if we’re still on for basketball. He replies with a yes, so I head out to meet him at the gym.

  Caleb is already here when I come out of the locker room. He takes a shot and makes it. I’ve known Caleb a long time, and I guess we’re unlikely friends. He was a pretty good wingman while we were undergrads, but that didn’t last long. We both went off to med school, in different states, and then he got married. For whatever reason, we’ve kept in touch over the years.

  Since he moved back to Seattle, we’ve made a habit of getting together to play basketball on
ce every week or so. He has to cancel pretty often if he doesn’t have someone to watch his daughter, but it’s not a big deal. I’m not a high maintenance friend.

  In fact, other than Caleb, I don’t really have friends. I hang out with my business partner, Ian, sometimes. But I don’t know that I’d call him a friend.

  “Hey,” Caleb says as I approach. He passes me the ball.

  I dribble a few times. “Hey. Save a bunch of lives lately?”

  “Yeah, actually,” he says. “Been a busy week.”

  Caleb and I always had different ideas in mind for our careers. My dad was adamant about me pursuing a specialty that would pay off. He’s a surgeon, so the pressure was on for me to live up to his expectations. Caleb was an idealistic young pre-med guy, intent on saving people. I guess he’s doing what he always said he wanted to do, working as an ER surgeon. His hours suck, though. Private practice was definitely the right call for me.

  “So I haven’t talked to my sister in a while,” Caleb says. “I guess that means everything is fine over there?”

  I shrug. “I’ll make it work.”

  “What does that mean?” Caleb asks. “Is there a problem with the house or something?”

  I take a shot and watch the ball swish through the net. “It’s not the greatest. But it’s better than living in hotels.”

  “I would have thought you’d love hotel living,” Caleb says, grabbing the ball. He takes a shot. Swish. “Room service. Someone to turn down your bed.”

  “Yeah, it’s great until some chick who works there gets a bug up her ass,” I say.

  “What?” Caleb asks.

  “I was staying at the Hyatt for a little while. Hooked up with one of the front desk chicks. She worked mornings. A couple nights later, I scored with one of the girls on the evening shift. I don’t know why either of them gave a shit, but apparently they weren’t happy. They kept deactivating my key card so I couldn’t get into my room.”

  Caleb takes another shot. Misses. “Okay…”

  “So I moved to the Paramount Hotel. It’s not bad. The bartender was hot as fuck. Took her back to my room every night for a week,” I say. “But then she wanted me to take her out and date her or something, and when I blew her off, she got weird.”

  I take another pass and shoot. Bounces off the rim and goes in.

  “Then there was the Mayflower Park. This fine piece of ass worked in housekeeping, and she came in and surprised me a few times,” I say. “But then she walked in when I was with some random I met at a bar, and she flipped her shit. I don’t know what her problem was. It wasn’t like we were in a relationship; she knew that as well as I did. When I was at work the next day, she let herself into my room and cut up all my underwear. I didn’t even realize it until the next morning when I was trying to get dressed. All my underwear had fucking holes in them.”

  Caleb laughs, hard. “Dude, are you serious?”

  I pass the ball back to him, a little harder than necessary. “Yeah, I’m glad that’s amusing to you.”

  He tucks the ball under his arm. “Are you really telling me that you had to move hotels because you kept shagging women who worked there, and then they’d run you out of the place?”

  “Yeah, basically.”

  “Do you actually have that much trouble keeping it in your pants?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Beautiful women love me.”

  He takes another step forward, his face suddenly serious. “You watch yourself with my sister.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Kendra? Bro, you have nothing to worry about there.”

  “I’m not sure if I should be relieved, or pissed that you just insulted her,” he says.

  I take a shot. Miss. “I’m not insulting your sister. She’s fine. Just not my type.” I get the ball and pass it to Caleb.

  “Oh, so beautiful, smart, driven, and funny aren’t your type?” he asks.

  “You just told me to watch myself and now you’re trying to convince me to go for it with her?” I ask, my mouth half turned up in a smirk.

  “Fuck you, no.” He shoots. Scores. “It’s just… you’re still chasing hookups? I thought maybe you’d outgrown that by now.”

  “Outgrown what? Enjoying beautiful women? I don’t think men outgrow that.”

  “Sure, but some men decide to have something with one beautiful woman,” he says. “A relationship, maybe?”

  “Some men are wired that way,” I say. “You are, and if that works for you, great. But I’m not made for relationships.”

  “That sounds like a cop-out. When was the last time you dated someone?” He passes me the ball. “Seriously dated.”

  I shoot again and the ball goes in. “I don’t know. Never.”

  Caleb retrieves the ball and tucks it under his arm again. “Never? You’ve never actually dated a woman before?”

  “Not really.” I’m getting tired of this conversation. “You gonna babysit that ball, or are we going to play?”

  “Why?” Caleb asks.

  “I don’t know, you want to analyze me?” I ask, my voice sarcastic. “I don’t want to deal with the drama of a maintaining a girlfriend. I don’t get why anyone does, but do you see me making a big deal out of it? If it’s your thing, have fun. It’s not my thing. At least I recognize it. I know what I want.”

  “But you’ll just sleep with women wherever you go, and that’s better?” Caleb asks.

  “Since when did you get so fucking judgmental?”

  “I’m not being judgmental, and when did you get so defensive?” he asks. “Fine, you do your thing. You’re happy with your life, so I don’t know why I’m questioning you. Just remember, my sister isn’t a hookup girl.”

  He passes the ball and I take another shot. Swish. I wince at the thought of seeing Kendra like that. “No. No, she is definitely not a hookup girl.”

  5

  Kendra

  I finish up the dishes in my dad’s kitchen while he takes his glass of whiskey to the other room. It’s been a while since we were all over here for dinner—Alex and Mia, Caleb with Charlotte, and me. I got here early to cook dinner for everyone, and the meal turned out great. It was one of my staples—chicken fettuccine alfredo—and they all made appropriate yummy noises. Even my niece Charlotte, who rarely talks much, giggled when she slurped her pasta and told the whole table about the book her teacher read at school. Caleb positively beamed the entire time, he was so excited to see her opening up to us like that.

  Caleb comes back into the kitchen and grabs a towel. “Charlotte’s reading books with Dad. Need help?”

  “Sure.”

  He starts drying pots and pans, and putting them away. Alex and Mia wander back into the kitchen and take a seat at the table. We all usually end up back in here after Dad retires to his recliner with his nightly drink. Alex grabs four beers and sets them out on the table while Caleb and I take care of the last few dishes.

  “So how’s the roommate?” Mia asks with a very obvious wink.

  I sit down and take one of the beer bottles. Alex reaches across the table and opens it for me. “He’s fine, I guess. He’s not around much.”

  Alex frowns at Caleb. “What’s that look for?”

  “What look?” Caleb asks.

  “You look guilty,” Alex says.

  “I don’t… fine,” Caleb says. “I feel like I owe Kendra an explanation about Weston. And maybe an apology.”

  I tilt my head and give Caleb a cherubic smile. “Oh really? Like maybe you’ll explain to me how on earth you even know a guy like that? And what could have possessed you to suggest he live with your sister?”

  Mia snorts.

  Caleb winces. “Something like that.”

  “I’m all ears, o brother of mine.”

  “Look, I’ve known Weston for a long time,” Caleb says. “He’s always had his own thing going on. He’s not really the kind of guy who gets close to people. Ever. I didn’t realize he was such a—”

  “Dick?” I fill i
n.

  “No, I know how he comes across,” Caleb says. “He’s kind of a dick to most people. But believe it or not, he’s not always like that.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say.

  “I’m serious,” Caleb says. “He’s just… he’s the kind of guy who has your back, even when you don’t expect it. When Melanie died, he was really there for me.”

  Weston being less dickish to some people? Fine, I can buy that. But being a support system when his friend’s wife died? I can’t see it.

  “He was there for you? I’m not saying you’re making that up, but… honestly, are you making that up?”

  “Not at all,” Caleb says. “He flew out to Houston the next day. It wasn’t like he sat around and listened to me talk about my feelings. But he stepped in and took care of things when I couldn’t. He made sure the rent on my apartment got paid and had food delivered so I didn’t have to worry about it. He even made sure I had diapers and formula for Charlotte. I didn’t ask him for any of it, he just showed up and did it.”

  I pause for a second, unsure of what to say. That seems so out of character for Weston. “He did all that? Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” Caleb says. “He didn’t act any different. It’s not like he was offering emotional support or something. That’s not him. But he didn’t hesitate to drop everything to make sure I had what I needed. I guess that was his way of helping. He heard what happened, flew out for about a week, and went home again. He was there when you guys came out, but I guess you never saw him. He sort of did his thing and disappeared.”

  “I’m having such a hard time picturing that,” I say.

  “I know, I do too in a way,” Caleb says. “And we never talked about it later. I felt like he didn’t want me to mention it. But even after he went back home, he’d text me about once a week to make sure I had what I needed. He’s really not a terrible guy. He just acts like it sometimes.”

  I arch an eyebrow at him.

  “Okay, a lot of the time,” he says.

  Mia catches my eye and gives me her wise nod again.