ROOMIES (Strangers-To-Lovers Romance Novel)

by Bella Grant

  Amelia’s lips brushed his so lightly he could almost pretend it hadn’t happened. She didn’t move, remained frozen before him as if unsure what to do. Her eyes were closed and trusting. Her hair smelled like flowers. Theodore knew he shouldn’t, but he reached his hand out and ran his fingers gently through her long locks. She let out a little sigh that made the blood surge through him.

  His fingers wrapped themselves in the thick, silky stands at the nape of her neck. He pulled gently… hardly at all, just enough to tilt her face up towards his. Her eyes remained closed, and with his other hand, he ran his fingers down her cheek, tracking his thumb over her lips. He cupped her chin, and she parted her lips slightly.

  Theodore kissed her slowly at first, grazing her lips with his, just as she had. He wanted this with every part of his body, but he also knew he shouldn’t. It wasn’t allowed, and he risked everything by doing it.

  He moved slowly, wanting to give her plenty of opportunities to stop, to pull away, to end it before it got out of hand. Instead, as his lips brushed against hers, he felt her body relax into him. She let out a little moan, like a kitten purring, and he pressed harder into her, moving his mouth more hungrily against hers.

  She met him eagerly with no sign of hesitation or reluctance. She wanted this too, that much was abundantly clear to him. Her hands had reached up and were pressed against his chest, gliding up to his neck, her fingers curling through his hair and one hand against his cheek. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned into him, and he felt a wave of emotion crash over him. He wasn’t even sure what these feelings were. Arousal, definitely. Desire. Excitement. But something softer, more rounded and warm. Affection. Happiness. But there was something else pressing in, something unpleasant. Fear, maybe? Apprehension?

  Amelia moaned again, and Theodore mustered the determination to pull away. As soon as his lips left hers, her eyes opened wide. There was some wild energy in them, and he stiffened even harder when he saw the look on her face. She wanted him, and it took everything he had—all the logical reasoning powers of his superego—to quell the powerful id fighting for freedom, to throw her on the desk and take her.

  She bit her lip and looked up at him, her eyebrows furrowed. He stroked the side of her face, smoothing her forehead with his thumb. Then he ran his fingers through her hair and let his hand slide lightly down her arm before he took it away altogether.

  “Amelia,” he began, and then fell silent. His words failed him because he didn’t know what to say. He shifted and tried discretely to adjust the bulge in his pants. “Amelia, I’m sorry,” he tried again.

  “Don’t be,” she said gently. “I’m sorry. That was me. I know I shouldn’t have.”

  “Amelia, I shouldn’t have encouraged this,” Professor Bell said, embarrassed. “You’re my student, and I have an obligation to you. I took advantage of you.”

  “I wanted this,” she fired back, frustrated by the notion that he was responsible for what had happened. “I want it,” she corrected herself.

  “But we can’t,” he pressed, stunned by the feelings that clamored for domination within his brain. Rational, logical thoughts were pressed out by the insatiable desire he felt for her, then those feelings tumbled together with some warm, protective affection. He didn’t know what to make of it. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, taking a deep breath.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong,” she whispered softly, reaching her hand up and resting it against his face.

  Theodore opened his eyes and saw her looking at him, so full of desire and hope. He didn’t know what to say, so he cupped her hand in his and shook his head.

  “We can’t,” he said firmly. “Not because I don’t want to. We can’t because it’s not allowed.”

  They were silent for a moment, neither moving. He didn’t want it to end, but he knew it had to. He let out a deep sigh. “You should go,” he told her gently.

  When Amelia looked at him, her face crumpled and her chin trembled a little. He knew she would be hurt, and he hated himself for it. Her brow furrowed again, and her big eyes shined a bit more from the tears pooling in them. She pressed her lip together and nodded once. Then, without saying a word, she shoved her laptop in her bag and left the office.

  It wasn’t until he heard the door slam at the end of the hall that Theodore realized she’d left her coat behind. When he picked it up, it jingled, and he reached into her pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

  “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. Not only was she going to freeze out there, who knew how far she’d get before realizing she didn’t have the keys to get into her apartment.

  He didn’t know what to do. He waited a moment, hoping she’d realize what she’d forgotten and come back for them, but the building was silent. In a snap decision, he flipped open his laptop and pulled up the student directory. He searched for her name and local living address and found her apartment number. Pulling on his own coat, he wrote the details on a post-it, grabbed her jacket, and ran down the stairs.

  When Theodore got to her apartment, it was in darkness. He had feared she’d been locked out and would be waiting on the steps, not sure what to do. But as he approached the dark building, he realized how stupid that was. Amelia was a resourceful girl, and to think she’d be sitting on the steps of her own apartment, freezing in the cold, flummoxed by what to do since she was locked out, was preposterous. It was a stupid idea, and it made him feel like a stupid, chauvinist to think she needed him to rescue her.

  Theodore left her a note with his cell number saying he had her coat and keys and to call him when she got home. He wasn’t sure where to go, but the thought of going back to his office or his dark apartment seemed unbearable. He pulled his collar up and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. He turned down the side streets on the edge of campus and walked to the bar downtown.

  He thought about texting David, but he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t quite grasp what he had gotten himself into, and as he pounded back a shot of whiskey, gesturing to the bartender for another, he felt a frustration build within him.

  The system is so fucking stupid, he thought to himself. Yes, Amelia was his student, but he had real feelings for her. She wouldn’t be his student for long, and any implication of impropriety came from the expectation that he would show her favoritism. Not only am I an ethical guy, Theodore rationalized, I don’t even need to adjust her grade. Amelia was the smartest student he’d ever had. The whole issue was bullshit. Stupid, arbitrary bullshit. With that, he swallowed the second shot, threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, and shoved out the door into the cold.

  7

  Amelia was halfway to her apartment before she realized she had left her coat and keys in Professor Bell’s office. She stopped and looked behind her towards campus, debating whether to go back for them. A rush of energy had filled her in the office. She couldn’t believe she’d done it. She had kissed Professor Bell. Theodore. What the hell had she been thinking?

  She couldn’t go back for them. He had stopped it. He had pulled away and said they couldn’t. She wasn’t surprised, really. She told herself it was the right reaction, the normal, expected response to what had happened between them. What had she been expecting anyway? Had she imagined him shoving all his stacks of paper off the desk, throwing her on it, and taking her? Expected? No. Wanted? Yes.

  As Amelia stood, trembling on the sidewalk, her breath fogging up in a cloud before her, she realized two things—she was freezing, and at any moment, she was going to break down and cry. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and began to text Frankie. Something happened, she wrote. I can’t go home. Can I come over?

  She started walking towards Frankie’s apartment without waiting for a response. She was about a block away when her phone buzzed. Yeah. Are you OK? Doors open, come in when you get here.

  She took the flight of stairs up to his apartment two at a time, hardly feeling the steps under her feet. She was numb and exhausted, and she hadn’t
realized how tenuous her control over her emotions was until she entered Frankie’s apartment and he jumped up to greet her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Did you walk here? Where’s your coat?”

  “I forgot it,” she replied. “In Professor Bell’s office.”

  “What happened?” Frankie pressed again. “Are you okay?”

  Amelia started to cry. She wasn’t okay. She felt rejected and alone, and all the beauty of the evening had been washed from her in the cold deluge of his words. I’m sorry, we can’t, Professor Bell had said to her. And his words, coupled with that kiss—that body-shaking, mind-melting kiss that made her heart swing like a yoyo—had taken all of her sanity and left her with only raw feelings.

  As Frankie reached out to hug her, pulling a sweatshirt around her shoulders, she collapsed into his arms and sobbed. “Okay, seriously, what the fuck?” Frankie asked, his voice raising an octave with anxiety. “Ames, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I’m losing my shit here. Are you hurt? Did Professor Bell do something to you?”

  Amelia wiped her eyes and tried to quell the tears with a few shaky, determined breaths. “I’m fine,” she said quietly. “I mean, something did happen, but it wasn’t bad. He didn’t attack me or anything.” She was silent for a moment, fighting the tears that threatened to roll down her cheeks. Finally, she said, “We kissed. And he rejected me.”

  “Whoa, okay, you’ve got to back up,” Frankie stammered. “What happened?” He handed her a box of tissues and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from on top of the fridge.

  “I went to his office to work on the discussion panel,” Amelia explained. “And we had this amazing afternoon. You saw us in the coffee shop. Something… changed. Something was different today. He was different. We were different. Anyway, we were back in his office, and I guess I was testing the waters. We kept getting closer and closer to this feeling, and then finally, we kissed.”

  “He kissed you?” Frankie demanded, and Amelia couldn’t tell if he was astonished or angry.

  “No, actually. I kissed him,” she clarified. “And… um, well, then he kissed me. Frankie, it was the best kiss of my life. I’ve never felt so much for anyone,” she said, her voice quivering.

  “So what happened?” Frankie pressed.

  “He stopped it. We had this intense, incredible kiss, but he pulled away. He said we couldn’t, it wasn’t right, and we had to stop.”

  “Well, he’s not wrong about that,” Frankie said reluctantly.

  “What does that mean?” Amelia asked defensively.

  “Nothing.” Frankie back-pedaled. “I just mean it’s totally against the rules. Not that the rules aren’t stupid, but you could both get in a lot of trouble.”

  “I think that rule is so fucked,” Amelia said angrily. “It’s not right for the university to dictate who I can and can’t be with. We’re all fucking adults.”

  “It’s more about the ethics of you being his student,” Frankie said gently. “You know that. Come on, Ames. You can’t tell me you’re blind to the consequences.”

  “I know,” she said, defeated. “You’re right. I know that. My brain knows that. But my heart has been waiting all my life to feel this way, and now I have to convince it that I’m not allowed to feel what I feel because of some stupid fucking bureaucracy.”

  “He’s your professor, Ames,” Frankie said, determined to reason with her. “You must see how that looks. What would you say if I started dating my professor?”

  “I’d say good for you,” she lied.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Frankie insisted, filling her glass with a few fingers of whiskey. Amelia swallowed it in one gulp and made a face. “You’d tell me I was being reckless and try to reason with me,” he continued. “You would talk me back to my senses, and get drunk with me, and convince me what I was doing was a terrible idea. And that’s what I’m going to do with you.”

  Amelia looked at him, and her face crumpled. She sobbed silently. Frankie reached out and pulled her to him, and she curled up in a ball with her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair.

  “You’re going to be okay, Ames,” he whispered. “You’re going to get over this.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” Amelia said, and meant it. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to let someone in, and it’s never happened until now. I don’t know what it is about him, but there’s something different. It doesn’t feel like a fling. It feels like this is the real deal. I’m not sure I can let it go.”

  “Oh, babe,” Frankie said, and squeezed her tighter. “I’m so sorry.”

  That night, Amelia slept on Frankie’s couch. They finished the bottle of whiskey and she threw up twice before falling into a drunken haze. She watched the ceiling spinning above her, wondering how badly she’d fucked up. She wondered where Theodore was, and what he was doing, and if he was thinking of her, too. It was unlikely, she conceded. It was three in the morning and she should be asleep, but she couldn’t quiet her mind.

  In the morning, she called off work at the coffee shop, saying she was sick. She was sick—hungover from the whiskey—and her head was killing her. She moved slowly from the couch to the bathroom, threw up again, and borrowed a sweatshirt and her spare key from Frankie to walk home. As she shielded her eyes behind her large, dark sunglasses, trying to make it home without incident, she felt as if yesterday was a million miles away and the kiss that had taken place between them was so alien and removed from her present that she could almost pretend it hadn’t happened.

  Amelia continued to live in this bubble of denial until she reached her apartment. Mounting the front steps in the slow, deliberate trudge of the severely hungover, she looked up to find a note wedged in her door. Above a hastily scribbled phone number was the following message:

  Amelia, I have your things. Please call me. I want to see you. - Theodore

  Amelia felt her stomach drop, and her heart began to pound. A rush of adrenaline coursed through her body as she read the note again. I want to see you, she repeated in her head. Theodore hadn’t written “We need to talk” or “Let me explain.” It was “I want to see you.” Surely that had to be a good sign, right? As she read the note again, folding it and putting it in her pocket, she was certain of one thing—she wanted to see him, too.

  But I can’t, she told herself. This whole messy relationship, or what there was of one, had spun way out of control. She had let him in, and he had rejected her. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, but she was positive she couldn’t stomach it a second time. She felt the sudden urge to throw up and scrambled quickly to unlock the door with Frankie’s spare key. She tossed it on the counter and hurried to the bathroom.

  When she had washed her face and calmed down, she looked at the note once more. Theodore. Well, that wasn’t surprising. They were definitely more than Amelia and Professor Bell now.

  Amelia paced the house until this became too strenuous for her current physical state, after which she curled up on her couch with a comforter and hugged her knees to her chest. She started crying. She didn’t often feel lonely. She was used to being an independent person without a big circle of friends.

  Amelia had Frankie, and he was all she really needed. No other man had ever made his way into her heart before, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with the fact that Theodore was the first person she had opened up to in her adult life. She didn’t know how to handle the truth that he was the one with whom she wanted more. The one she fantasized about having a future with.

  She spent the rest of the day studying and reading papers. After a few Advils and Vitamin Waters, she began to feel a bit more like herself. She started compiling her notes for her paper on Regency clothing in her 17th Century Literature class and reading the final book for her Modernism course, and by the time evening rolled around, she felt composed enough to look at Theodore’s note again.

  Amelia dialed the number and stared at it. She considered h
itting the ‘call’ button, but she wasn’t sure what she’d say. Or rather, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle what Theodore would say to her. She couldn’t take any more rejection, and if that’s all it was going to be, she was better off not listening to it at all. She’d leave it in the office where his words had been so final. “We can’t do this.” Anything else was either a complication or a redundancy.

  What did she want? Did she want Theodore to want her? And didn’t he already? Did she want him to want more—a relationship with her, something more established? Probably. But she wasn’t sure how it would work, and the time away from Theodore and his penetrating eyes and his charming, crooked smile had been like a cold draft blowing through her brain. Frankie was right. What they were doing was wrong. She couldn’t sleep with her professor. And she couldn’t see the possibility of anything more developing right now.

  Amelia deleted the number and texted Frankie instead. He left a note on my door asking me to call him.

  Almost immediately, her phone buzzed in response. Did you?

  No, Amelia wrote. I didn’t know what to say. He said he wanted to see me.

  Wow, was all Frankie replied.

  And that he had my stuff, she added.

  Oh right, Frankie wrote. I forgot about that. Well, you have to get it back at some point, right? He can’t really give you your keys in front of the class.

  I suppose you’re right, Amelia agreed. I just don’t think I have it in me right now to have my heart shit on all over again.

  After a moment, she typed, How are things with Frat Boy? She paused before sending it. Then she deleted Frat Boy and typed, Jake.