Bad Boy Roomie (The Bad Boy Roomie Romance Series Box Set)

by Claire Adams

  “For a lot of puppies, visiting new places, meeting new people, these can be some triggers,” Tonya says.

  “So basically the environment that is our home will unavoidably cause him to pee on the carpet?” Dad asks.

  “Not if he’s gone to the bathroom recently enough,” she answers.

  “Pee on the carpet or no pee on the carpet, Gerald and I are about to become fast friends,” I coo. “Can I let him out of the cage?” I ask.

  “Sure,” Tonya says. “Just remember, he’s a puppy and he’s going to be thrilled to be out, so try to keep him close or he’s liable to start us all off on a high-speed chase through the building.”

  I open the cage and Gerald jumps up on my leg, making high-pitched yipping noises. A moment later, I’m sitting on the floor and he’s jumping in my lap. He lies down on me and I scratch his back.

  “It’s like the two of you are lost friends,” Tonya says.

  “Yeah,” Dad mutters. “And one of you is going to get pee everywhere.”

  “I’ll try to make it to the toilet, Dad,” I say dismissively, and I scratch Gerald behind the ears.

  “Do you sell leashes and collars?” Dad asks.

  “You can keep the collar he’s got on,” Tonya says. “Leashes are 10 bucks.”

  Dad is naturally offended that a leash would cost so much and the two start haggling. By haggling, of course, I mean Dad complains and Tonya tells him there’s nothing she can do about it.

  While blinking my eyes as Gerald licks my face, I spot something just outside this room. At first, it’s just a passing glance, and then I see what looks like one of the veterinarians talking to someone.

  Gerald jumps out of my lap, and I’m trying to see who the veterinarian is talking to, but I’m just at the wrong angle. I’m not quite sure who I thought I saw, but whoever the vet’s talking to, they got my attention.

  “Mia, would you mind grabbing your dog?” Dad asks. “He’s giving that look like he’s trying to find a nice place to—oh…”

  I look over to see Gerald squatting down, peeing on the linoleum floor.

  “He doesn’t lift his leg?” I ask. “I thought that was a universal male dog thing?”

  “Some dogs come out doing it—well as soon as they have the leg strength and the coordination—other dogs, it takes a little while,” Tonya answers.

  She’s saying something else, but the person talking to the vet just leaned forward again, and I see why my brain was telling me to keep looking.

  “Would you mind going up to my desk and grabbing the blue spray bottle and the paper towels?” Tonya asks my dad.

  “How often does he pee?” Dad asks.

  “The dog got a little on his paws and I’m going to wash him off,” Tonya says. “If you could just go grab the blue spray bottle and those paper towels, I would appreciate it.”

  I wait until Dad leaves before I ask, “Is that Ian Zavala talking to that veterinarian?”

  Tonya’s got more pressing matters on her mind as she tries to get Gerald into the basin for a bath.

  “What?” she asks as he wriggles his body in strange and hilarious ways in an attempt to break free and escape the coming b-a-t-h.

  I get up and help her get Gerald into the basin.

  “He’s not a fan of baths,” Tonya says.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard most dogs aren’t,” I respond.

  “Well, there’s most dogs and then there’s Gerald, here,” she says. “I’m sorry, what were you asking me?”

  “I think I just saw someone I know from school, Ian Zavala?” I start. “Does he work here or something, or do you not know who I’m talking about?”

  “Ian?” she asks. “He comes in when we’re overloaded and understaffed. Nice kid.”

  “So he works here, then?” I ask.

  “No, it’s more of a volunteer thing, I think,” Tonya says.

  Ian Zavala, world-class skater, sexy and respectable guy—although I do have a few questions about what happened between him and Abby at that party—and apparently, animal lover’s on the list as well. Unless something pretty freaky went down between he and Abs, I think I might just be in love.

  Well, okay, love here is just an expression, not an actual “I think I’m in love with this guy” thing. I am very attracted to Ian Zavala, especially given this new information. Let’s leave it at that.

  It’s nice to know sometimes that, even when things aren’t going the way I want them to go, good things can still happen. I just met who I’m sure is going to be my best friend, Gerald, and I found out that my kind-of crush and project partner volunteers at an animal shelter.

  I guess life isn’t so bad.

  “Would you mind grabbing that soap?” Tonya asks. “You’re going to need to wash the area just above Gerald’s penis. I can’t reach from where I am and I don’t think he’s going to let us trade places.”

  * * *

  After the way my dad had acted toward Ian, we both agreed that it would be best to meet on neutral ground. That, and it’s about time Ian finally makes things right by buying me a meal in the café where he stood me up.

  Call it karma.

  After the row with my dad and seeing Ian at the shelter, I think I let my mind get a little ahead of itself. He’s attractive and he’s talented, but he still went behind my back with the professor in pushing his topic through, and I still have another question I’d like to ask him.

  “What happened with you and Abs?” I ask.

  “Me and who?” he asks.

  “You and Abs,” I respond. “Abby. You know, the chick who was standing next to me at the competition and then a little bit later at a party where the two of you took off to have some kind of alone time. What happened with the two of you?”

  “Are you sure that’s an appropriate question to ask your class partner?” he returns, laying out two thick lines of condiments on the thin paper on his tray: ketchup and mayonnaise.

  What he’s planning to do with them is beyond me, and who orders a burger and fries at a neighborhood café? The whole point of these places is to walk in and order something that sounds pretentious so people will think you’re the classy type.

  Myself, I’m having the bruschetta and the prosciutto. I just hope it’s not too obvious that I got both of them because I can never remember which one of them I like.

  “I think it is,” I tell him. “If we’re going to be working together, I don’t think we should have to be uncomfortable around one another. I’m not going to freak out or anything. It’s not like we’re married.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Well, I don’t know if you’ll believe me or not, but nothing really happened.”

  “Is that a ‘nothing happened really happened’ as in stuff happened, but you didn’t go all the way, or is that a ‘nothing really happened’ as in nothing really happened?” I ask.

  “Would it bother you if something did happen between me and…your friend?” he asks.

  “Her name is Abs,” I tell him, “but you can’t call her that. Her name is Abby. So, did something happen with the two of you or not?”

  “I can’t believe it,” he says. “You, my dear, are jealous.”

  I’m laughing, but trying to cover my mouth at the same time. I can never fake laughter. My inability to smile properly on demand isn’t particularly well-developed.

  “You are,” he says. “Well, that changes things.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “And I am not jealous.”

  “Well, we can’t very well work together on this project if you’ve got these feelings for me. I’d be over here suggesting some brilliant idea or other and you’d be giving me the googly eyes and trying to picture me naked,” he says. “We’d never get any work done.”

  “First off, I’m not jealous,” I tell him. “Second off, I don’t have feelings for you that would affect, prevent , or even manifest in any conceivable way, as I’m not entirely sure what it is you think I feel for you.”

  “Third off?�
�� he asks.

  I actually did have a third off, but he broke my rhythm, and the little teleprompter in my head just had a power outage.

  “I don’t even care,” I tell him. “The two of you are consenting adults and it’s none of my business what you did at that party.”

  “Can I tell you something?” he asks.

  The waiter comes over with my bruschetta and prosciutto, but he walks away before I can ask him which one is which.

  “He forgot me,” Ian says. “That dude’s not getting dick for a tip.”

  “If you’re going to talk like that, would you mind not doing it so loudly?” I ask, my face growing red as I look around the café for signs of the offended.

  “What do you mean?” he asks. “What’s the problem? I always talk like this.”

  “I get that,” I tell him in a whisper. “I’m just saying that I would appreciate it if you would curse quietly if you’ve got to curse at all. It’s embarrassing.”

  “You know, you dress kind of funny and you hang out at some pretty weird places for someone who’s so uptight about swearing,” he says. “They’re just words like any others, only someone at some point decided this term was acceptable, but that term wasn’t.”

  “Could you rephrase what you were saying to convey the same point, but use what you’d call an acceptable word instead?” I ask.

  “Listen,” he says. “I’d love to sit here and go the rounds with you again and everything. Sparring’s one of my favorite hobbies. That said, we have a lot of stuff to do and I don’t think that we’re going to get any of it done by sitting here and arguing whether or not I could have gotten away with saying the guy wasn’t going to get—”

  “Very sorry for the extra wait, sir,” the waiter says, interrupting Ian at what I can’t imagine could have been a better time. “Here’s your cheeseburger and french fries, sorry again about the wait.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ian says calmly, and the waiter walks away.

  “You kind of switched gears there, didn’t you?” I ask.

  “Nothing happened with me and your friend,” he says. “She was kind of looking for something, but I wasn’t interested.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because I’m interested in you,” he says.

  I’d hoped for a response like that, but he’s so matter-of-fact about the whole thing that it takes a few seconds for his words to really process in my head.

  “You’re interested in me?” I ask. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks, taking a few french fries then dipping them, first in the ketchup, then in the mayo.

  “That is disgusting,” I tell him.

  “What?” he asks. “It’s called fry sauce. You just mix ketchup and mayo together. I’m telling you, it’s the best thing you’ll ever dip your fries in.”

  Ketchup is fine, but mayo on fries? Ew.

  “Listen,” he says, “we can sit here and argue over fry sauce, or we could see if we can get some work done. Where are we on everything?”

  I grab the folder sitting next to me on the seat and set it on the table. “We’ve got our topic and everything, general approach, too,” I tell him. “What we need are questions to ask people to test our theory.”

  “Which is?” he asks.

  “Oh, shut up,” I tell him. “The professor already decided on your idea, you don’t have to—”

  “I’m not rubbing it in,” he says. “To be perfectly honest, my mind’s kind of been focused on other things. I know we were going to talk to people who hold fringe or extremist viewpoints on either end of the American spectrum and see if there’s any common ground between them and everything, but what is our basic statement?” he asks.

  “You mean our hypothesis?” I ask.

  “Sure,” he says. “Whatever.”

  “Our hypothesis is that, by interviewing people with radical social and/or political beliefs, we may begin to see a pattern, even in those whose beliefs appear to be incongruent or even opposite,” I tell him. “The problem I’m seeing is that we’ve only got like a month left and if we’re going to do things your way, we’re going to need a lot of time for these interviews. I think the first thing we should do should be to write out some questions we’d like to ask and then we can worry about how to find these people.”

  “They’re not hard to find,” Ian says. “They’re usually the people with the loudest opinions and the least fundamental understanding of the world around them.”

  “So you’re saying anyone who has a firm opinion on their beliefs is ignorant?” I ask.

  “Not at all,” he says. “It’s when those beliefs have no basis in reality, and when someone questioning your beliefs becomes a cause for going off that you cross the line into freak mode.”

  “Freak mode?” I ask.

  He dips another few fries in his ketchup and mayo, lifts the top bun of his burger. and places the fries between the bun and the cheese.

  “The questions won’t be a problem,” he says, ignoring my question. He reaches down to the floor to the side of the booth and grabs his backpack.

  While he’s looking for whatever it is that he’s looking for, I’m gazing down at my plates. One looks like a dessert and one is definitely not. The one I like is the dessert, but I forgot to stop the waiter and ask which one it is when he was giving Ian his food.

  “Here,” Ian says. “I think this should help.”

  He hands me his open notebook and I start reading. They’re questions to ask interviewees.

  “When did you do this?” I ask.

  “I am a college student,” he says. “I do realize there’s going to be homework from time to time.”

  I flip the page. The back of the first page and at least the front of the next one are filled not only with linear questions, but with, “if so, go to this question,” and, “if not, go to that question.”

  “These are good,” I tell him. “I think we can use these.”

  I look up at him.

  He’s taking a bite of his burger, and I take a moment to wonder why it doesn’t bother me that he has fries dipped in ketchup and mayo on his burger, but it bothers me when he eats them without.

  “Great,” he says through a full mouth. “I’m going to need to up my practice time as the competition comes closer, but I’ll put as much time as I can into this. Despite what you may think, I’m not just some ingrate who expects other people to do my work for me.”

  I’m laughing.

  “What?” he asks, fidgeting a little in his seat.

  “I don’t know if you know this,” she says, “but I saw you biff it when you were trying to drop in at the skate park.”

  “Yeah,” he says, looking anywhere but at me. “I know you were there.”

  “What was that, anyway?” I ask, still tittering. “I’ve seen you skate before, but you looked like you didn’t know what the hell you were doing.”

  “There was some loose gravel at the bottom that I didn’t see in time to react,” he says, but I know he’s lying. Besides, I was at the park for a while, and I caught him running out or crashing every time he went down that half-halfpipe section.

  “I don’t think so,” I tell him. “If that was the case, you would have cleared it out before you tried again.”

  “I was just having an off day,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You know,” I tease, “for someone who’s been skating as long as you have, it’s pretty hilarious to see you crash out repeatedly on something so basic.”

  “Who says it’s basic?” he asks. “If it weren’t for that vert section of the park, I wouldn’t have access to a vert ramp at all. Have you ever tried to roll in on a vert ramp? It’s harder than it looks.”

  “Oh my God,” I say, covering my mouth. “You can’t drop in.”

  “Shh!” he says, putting his finger to his lips and hunching forward like we’re talking nuclear secrets. “It’s not a big deal,” he says. �
��I’m working on it and I’m going to have it all down in time for the competition.”

  “You really can’t?” I ask. “I was half-joking.”

  He takes a few seconds to weigh his options.

  “Are you going to eat any of that?” he asks finally, pointing to one of my plates. “What is that, anyway?”

  I sigh.

  * * *

  “This is humiliating,” Ian says as we’re walking up to the park.

  “Well, you’re the one that brought your board,” I tell him.

  “Yeah,” he says, “I was going to come here and practice after we met up and everything. I just wasn’t expecting to have an audience when I did.”

  “There’s nobody here,” I tell him.

  It’s actually kind of strange to see the park deserted this early. The sun is setting and nobody ever bothered putting up lights around the park, but with the street lights in the distance, there’s still just enough light to see by.

  “You meant me,” I chuckle, “didn’t you?”

  “I’d rather nobody see me dropping in until I can actually learn to come out of it,” he says.

  As much fun as I’m having with Ian on this, I can’t imagine how terrified he must be to be this close, but doomed to fail. Even if he gets perfect scores in the street competition, if he can’t drop in, that’s it. Game over.

  “Why don’t you just try dropping in once and I’ll see if I can tell where the problem is,” I tell him.

  He’s looking at me like I’m telling him to kill his cat.

  “You know, just because we’ve got our questions for the interviews and everything doesn’t mean that we can just—” he starts, but I think he realizes about halfway through this is just something he needs to do. Either that, or he’s figured out that no matter what he says, I’m going to pester him until he goes through with it anyway. “All right,” he says. “I’ll do it, but I’ve had enough people laughing at me for not being able to do this, and I really don’t need any more negative reinforcement.”

  “You know, negative reinforcement isn’t actually what you think it is,” I tell him. “When you add something to a scenario, even punishment, it’s still considered positive reinforcement because you’re adding. If you take something away from a person, that’s called negative reinforcement, and it occurs to me that none of that is really that important right now.” I look up at the spot where he’s supposed to drop in, and I’m just glad I don’t have to do it.