Quarantined With My Straight Roommate

by Charlie Chubb

  “Oh?”

  Fuck. What kind of stupid ass response is that?

  “Yeah. I mean this isn’t working and whatever’s happening between us it —

  BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

  Both our phones beeped with that stupid State Emergency Alert tone they use when they send those texts about flood and hail warnings out to everyone. We both instinctively glanced at our phones.

  State Emergency Alert: Due to global pandemic, the Gov. Of Massachusetts has issued a shelter in place order. All businesses except essential services will be closed for the next six weeks. Visit the state government website for information regarding essential businesses. Landlords are asked to refrain from issuing new leases for the duration of this order.

  Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. I was stuck with this little bastard. For six fucking weeks.

  12

  MAX PATEL

  Tony hated me. I got that. But getting back at him didn’t make me feel any better. Touching him made me burn with sensations I didn’t recognize. I’d been with other guys before — plenty of other guys. College had been a veritable sausage buffet. Away from the watchful gaze of my strict Indian dad and my lovably unstable white mother, university was a free for all.

  With a popular sister like Ju, I had an in to all the hottest spots on campus and hookups with the hottest guys. After college hooking up only got easier, but dating was out of the question for most guys.

  “I’m not in a good place.”

  “I only do casual.”

  “I have a wife.”

  “I have a husband. He only lets me play with younger guys.”

  That kind of thing. Repeatedly. I gave up on dating. I gave up on what I dreamed of — a small apartment in the city with a spider plant hanging from my kitchen window and pancakes for breakfast. Seven years of dating was enough to turn me cynical. Tony was the worst of them all because no matter what he did to me, I kept going back to him. I kept wanting him.

  The best course of action would be to get out of his apartment, finding a place to stay even if I had to crawl back to Julissa and her shitty boyfriend and beg them to allow me to stay with them. Maybe that wasn’t such a horrible idea.

  I called Julissa.

  “Hey, how are you?”

  “Have you heard about this pandemic?! It’s crazy. Places are shutting down. Mark’s place has him working from home and I don’t even know if I will have my job.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what I’ll do about the graphic design place. I got an email this morning saying they moved my interview.”

  “That sucks!”

  “How’s Mark?”

  “Don’t start, Maxxie.”

  “Start what?”

  “I get it, you don’t like Mark. But you know me. I’ve always had a thing for alpha males.”

  “What part of being an alpha male involves being a dickhead?” I grumbled.

  “See? You’re starting.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What about an apartment?”

  “I’m stuck here, I guess.”

  “Do you like your new roommate? Jackie told me he was hot. Maybe if things don’t work out with Mark…”

  “You don’t start, Ju.”

  “What, I’m just saying. You know I have a thing for white boys.”

  “He’s not that hot.”

  Tony shoved my door open. Great. He probably heard what I said.

  “I’ve got to go, Ju.”

  “Aw. I wish I could have you back here. But I’m trying to make it work with Mark. You understand?”

  “Bye, Ju.”

  Tony sat on the edge of my bed.

  “What do you want, Tony?”

  “To talk. About the other night.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. But, lucky fucking us, I’m stuck here.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Shut up.”

  Tony gazed at me beneath long lashes, his masculine jawline shifting back and forth.

  “You are fucking impossible.”

  “Great.”

  “We need to talk about the other night.”

  “I don’t think we do. You keep insisting you’re straight and who am I to argue with you. We’re stuck with each other for six weeks, so it’s for the best if we keep our distance.”

  Tony leaned in, too close to me. Did he put cologne on to come in here? This insufferable asshole flirt couldn’t stand rejection. That was what made Tony so fucking irritating. The second I thought I could get over him, that I could get past my body’s insidious desires for him, he came close to me and laid it on thick.

  “What if I don’t want to keep my distance?”

  “I don’t care what you want,” I snapped.

  “Hm. I think you do. I think you’d do anything I want.”

  “What is it you want, Tony? You’re obviously not straight, so I don’t know why you keep bullshitting me.”

  “I want fun. That’s all. A good fucking time.”

  “Right. You can have your good fucking time with a guy who deals with people like you. Your hyper-masculine bullshit doesn’t impress me.”

  Tony snickered.

  “Okay, Mister Liberal Arts. Did you rip that speech right out of a gender studies paper?”

  “I hate you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  He leaned in and kissed me. I found enough strength to push him away. My rejection didn’t surprise him. His eyes glinted like a challenged cat. He enjoyed this — the chase, the push and pull, the stupid fucking dating game that I was already tired of.

  “You’re the guy who likes games and I’m done with them.”

  “I want sex. Now.”

  “You’ll have to find a girl to get it from, then. What was her name? Kylie?”

  Tony’s cheeks reddened. I loved seeing him embarrassed. He was human, not the God amongst men he thought he was.

  “I don’t want a girl,” he said hoarsely.

  “If you want to get what you want, you must do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  Tony ran his hands over his stubble slowly, releasing the delicious scent of his cologne and his strong masculine musk.

  “I get if you don’t want people to know you’re gay, but what’s the point of lying to me when it’s obvious I know the truth.”

  “I’m not lying to you.”

  “Um. You are, though.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “No shit.”

  “I’m not living in denial. I know I’m gay.”

  “100% gay?”

  “Yes. 100%.”

  “The truth comes out.”

  “Don’t lecture me about coming out,” Tony snarled.

  “Geez. It’s a figure of speech.”

  “You seem like you’ve had a charmed life, Max, but it ain’t the same for me. I need you to think I’m straight because I will never be with a man. I will never have a boyfriend. I’ll never want to settle down. It’ll be easier for you if you think of me as some kind of asshole in denial. Because the truth is worse. I can’t love anybody. And I’m sick of hurting people by giving them false hope.”

  “I don’t have false hopes. Trust me, you are the furthest fucking thing from boyfriend material.”

  Tony snickered.

  “Glad you agree.”

  “So that’s it? You don’t want to commit so you thought you’d pretend to be straight?”

  “I just thought it would be a turn-off.”

  “You are so fucked up.”

  Tony chuckled and pulled my cheeks so my lips hovered close to his.

  “Yes,” he murmured, “Now you have what you want, it’s time for me to get what I want.”

  13

  TONY STONE

  If I could purge every sensitive emotion from my body, I would. If I could excise Tom from my memory and Max from my apartment, I would. If I could forget the way his fingers felt pressing against my back, the way his hands cupped my ass and the way his
lips tasted like cardamom and nutmeg, I would be better off. Fucking Max. With his black nail polish and his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

  I knew what he thought of me. A dick head. An asshole. A liar. It was easier to pretend to be ashamed, to play into his stereotypes about me than to tell him the truth. I didn’t owe Max the fucking truth. I barely knew him. Hooking up a few times doesn’t mean you know someone. Hooking up a few times doesn’t mean a guy won’t fuck you up.

  Everything about Max was too fucking gentle, and I was a tornado, a crashing swirl of wind and rain, and pain. And fuck. Lying in bed was no use. I rolled out of bed and half-dressed for work. Working from home sucked, but at least I didn’t have to deal with office gossip or flirts here. Well, except for Max, and I knew how to handle his flirting. A smirk tugged at the corner of my lips. Wait, no. No getting distracted by Max fucking Patel with his cacao colored hair. I grunted as I answered a call from my dad.

  Maybe it was time to give him a chance. I’d been too hard on him and we didn’t have to go weeks without talking. Staying in the apartment all day long was making me soft.

  “Tony? What the FUCK did you do?”

  “Hi dad.”

  “Don’t give me that fucking attitude. I got a call from Peterkin saying you fucked up his account and now we’re in a bucket load of shit!”

  “Peterkin? I haven’t heard from Peterkin in weeks.”

  “I don’t give a shit if you think you heard from him. He’s not happy and unless you deal with it, he’ll move all his assets to the Lawson firm. Fix this shit. NOW!”

  He slammed the phone down. Just another conversation with my loving dad. At least it was better than my mom giving me the whole Spanish Inquisition treatment about girls. You think by now they would have figured me out. If they cared, they might have.

  I had bigger problems than Max. I called Alex Peterkin — dickhead in chief and thorn in my fucking side. He was our worst client by far and he refused to use email like a normal fucking person. After talking with Peterkin, I went out into the kitchen. Max sat at the kitchen counter with headphones on. Stuck. We were stuck with each other. I scoured the fridge for my protein powder. I could feel his eyes on me. Watching me as I made lunch.

  I turned around and growled. Max had his headphones off.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing. I’m not staring.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I heard you on the phone earlier. Sounded rough.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “I know it isn’t. I was just trying to be nice. You know people do that, right? They try to be nice to other people.”

  “Hm.”

  “Done with work? Since we’re stuck here, maybe we could hang out.”

  “Hang out? Is that what we’re calling it?”

  “We aren’t calling ‘it’ anything. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  “Want any?”

  “Sorry, I only eat people food, not jock slop.”

  “Jock slop?”

  I grinned and Max put his headphones back on. I sat next to him to drink my shake, elbowing him in his side.

  “You know. If you want to hang out. We can work out together.”

  Max wrinkled his nose.

  “Right. Because I definitely want to become an annoying jock.”

  “Is that what I am?” I whispered into his ear, “An annoying jock?”

  I snickered as the gooseflesh broke out across his neck. He could play games, but I knew Max. I knew how to make him react. I could punish him for all the ways he made me feel. I wouldn’t end up the powerless one..

  “Yes,” he muscled through his blatant attraction to me, “Worse than that. You’re screwed up in the head with your whole ‘I’ll never have a relationship’ bullshit. We’ve all got daddy issues, Tony.”

  “Don’t talk about my father,” I huffed.

  Max smirked.

  “Sensitive?”

  “Shut up, you little —

  “Little what? You act all tough, Tony, but I see through you. We’ll be better off once this quarantine is over and we can go our separate ways.”

  “At least we agree on something.”

  “If I weren’t afraid of getting sick, I wouldn’t sit here playing this stupid game with you. Trust me.”

  “How’s your job search coming?”

  “Like you care.”

  “Right.”

  Fuck. By the time I tried being nice to Max, it was always too late, and it was my fault he responded coldly. Every fucking time. My fucking fault for being a dick head to a guy so nice that I could see myself... Nevermind.

  I put my hand on his thigh, and Max took his headphones off again, raising an eyebrow.

  “Are you serious?”

  “What?”

  “You’re coming onto me after treating me like an asshole. Does that usually work for you?”

  “I don’t know. I rarely do any of this.”

  Max scoffed.

  “Please. We met because of an anonymous hookup. It kind of seems like it's your thing.”

  “Are you implying I’m some kind of manwhore?”

  “Um, I’m not implying. I’m telling you. Who knows how many guys you’ve fucked raw. It’s gross…”

  “You’re the one who talks about condoms like they’re optional,” I snapped.

  “So? I look after myself,” Max sneered.

  I slammed my fist down on the counter and enjoyed watching Max flinch.

  “Watch your mouth, you hypocrite.”

  “Don’t enjoy getting called out?”

  “I don’t like you judging me when you’re the guy who bent over for me.”

  Max’s mouth dropped open.

  “You are such an asshole.”

  “You’re Mister Perfect, then? If you’re so fucking perfect, why are you living here instead of with a friend or fucking family? Why did you have to come crawling to me?”

  “I did not come crawling to you, you narcissistic dick weed. I came here because one of my friends offered to help me. You wouldn’t have been out of a roommate if you weren’t such an incredible twat waffle that you chase everyone you know off.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  “And you don’t know shit about me. Not like you’d ever ask. I guess tough guys like you only care about protein shakes and protecting your fucking image.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Don’t yell!”

  “I have never met anyone who pisses me off the way you do,” I growled.

  “The feeling’s mutual,” Max sneered.

  I grabbed his cheeks and kissed him. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t kiss me back. I pulled away, and we gasped for breath.

  “You can’t do this every time we have half a conversation,” he breathed.

  “I know.”

  I grabbed his cheeks and kissed him again, running my hand over his sharp jawline and pushing my fingers through his thick hair. Max pressed his fingers up against my chest. He wanted to push me away. Resistance danced at the end of his fingertips, and then they curled against my shirt. His palms were so warm. So fucking warm.

  He pulled away, and it was my turn to say something. To say anything that would stop Max from hating me.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed, “I know I’m a piece of shit.”

  “But an excellent kisser. That makes up for it.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “I don’t get what you’re so afraid of.”

  My back tensed.

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Then what? Because I don’t get it.”

  “I’m a Texan man. We don’t talk about feelings.”

  “So that’s it, then? You’re going to pretend you don’t have them?”

  “I don’t want you to psychoanalyze me.”

  “I won’t.”

  Max rolled his eyes.

  “Fine. I’m not perfect. I might psychoanalyze yo
u... a little... but…”

  His hand reached for my crotch, and he gripped with just enough firmness to make me uneasy.

  “I can make it worth your while.”

  “Is that what it’s come to? Trading sexual favors?”

  “We’re quarantined here. No one has to know,” Max teased.

  I kissed him again, taking his bottom lip between my teeth and letting him kiss me back, pushing his tongue between my lips and resting his palms against my chest. He slid off the kitchen barstool and ran his hands down my back until he gripped the small of my back.

  “I’m not afraid of anything. But I’ve had my heart broken before. Believe it or not.”

  “By a man?”

  “Yes. A man.”

  “Sor-ry. You’re the one pulling the ‘I’m straight’ card.”

  “My voice does not sound like that.”

  “It does. All twangy and sexy.”

  “Sexy?”

  “Does everything’s bigger in Texas apply to egos too?”

  “Among other things.”

  “You are full of it.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  His hands raked through my hair, and a shiver rushed through me. Fuck. Did his hands have to feel this good?

  “Tell me about this heartbreak. I want to know.”

  “Why?” I murmured hoarsely.

  “I like you, Tony. Duh.”

  “Hm…”

  “Tell me.”

  “If I’m going to tell you my deep dark secrets, I have to know yours.”

  “So what? Getting head isn’t enough.”

  I braced myself against the counter.

  “I’ll take secrets over head.”

  “I didn’t peg you as the sort,” Max murmured, “But okay. We have a deal.”

  He pressed his lips to my neck, and I melted against his firm chest. For a guy who didn’t work out, his body remained perpetually chiseled. Lucky. I had to work for every inch of muscle on my body.

  “I met him in Idaho.”

  14

  MAX PATEL

  “Hold up. I thought you were from Texas.”

  “We summer in Idaho.”

  “Using summer as a verb makes you sound like a dick.”

  Criticizing Tony when he was trying to be real with me for once made me sound like a dick. I get it.