ROOMIES (Strangers-To-Lovers Romance Novel)

by Bella Grant

  When Thursday night rolled around, Theodore was ready for the week to end. David, his faculty friend in the English department, knocked twice on the wooden doorframe and stuck his head in the office.

  “Come on, man,” he said to Theodore. “Let’s go grab a drink. I gotta get out of here for a while. I just did three hours of conferences, and my students are killing me.”

  Theodore chuckled. Right around midterms, students discovered the wonders of office hours, convincing themselves that showing up for meetings would magically transform their near-failing grades into shiny A’s and B’s.

  “Sounds good,” he said, sticking a post-it in his book to mark his place. “But I really don’t want to go hang out with a bunch of kids at the local bars. Is there somewhere you had in mind?”

  “Anywhere with alcohol,” David replied. “How about Sonny’s? It’s quiet and students don’t really go there. You’ve never been to Sonny’s?”

  “No,” Theodore replied, pulling on his coat. “Never heard of it.”

  “Excellent,” David chuckled. “Happy to know it’s still a secret.”

  They took a seat at the bar in the mostly empty pub. “This place is great,” Theodore remarked. “No students.”

  “It’s a well-kept secret,” David laughed. “Not that those college joints are all bad. I mean, am I crazy, or are the girls basically half-naked these days?”

  Theodore shrugged and ordered a Scotch, neat.

  “Vodka cranberry,” David called to the bartender. “What? It’s delicious.” He shrugged when Theodore laughed. “Anyway,” he continued, “I can’t imagine you have any trouble with girls. This department is full of gossips. Apparently, you got more requests for your seminar than any other class on the roster. Turns out all the girls have a big crush on you.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like that makes my life any easier,” Theodore muttered.

  “Why?” asked David. “What does that mean?”

  Theodore hesitated a moment, weighing the dangers of telling his coworker about whatever was developing with Amelia. David was a chill guy, and he had no reason to tell anyone. Plus, from all he’d said over the course of their friendship, he seemed to have a liberal attitude towards fraternizing with the students. Theodore couldn’t tell if he ever had, but the intent was there.

  “Nothing, really,” he answered finally. “It’s just… I don’t know. There’s a girl in my class. I can’t stop thinking about her. And it’s making shit complicated.”

  “Complicated how?” asked David.

  “Complicated as in I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s remarkable, man. Honestly. She’s not just a hot piece of college ass. She’s like… I don’t know, maybe the most impressive woman I’ve ever met.”

  “Is she hot?” David asked, pursing his lips and squinting one eye just a little.

  “She’s gorgeous,” admitted Theodore.

  David was now three vodka cranberries deep, and he swiveled on his bar stool to face Theodore. “Look,” he said, his head lolling to the side a little as he focused his eyes on Theodore. “If you’re serious, and there’s something about this girl, you shouldn’t fight it. Love is the most important thing in life. Fuck the bureaucracy, man. The bureaucracy will never make you happy, you know? I think you gotta go for it. If it’s the right thing, it’ll work out.”

  “Are you serious?” Theodore asked, taken aback by David’s permissive response. He had been expecting someone to talk him off the ledge, not climb up there with him for a pep talk.

  “Serious as a heart attack,” David slurred. “Take it from me, you should never pass on love. Sometimes you do, and you look back on the last ten years of your life and wonder what the hell happened.” He rattled his empty glass at the bartender, who ignored him.

  “But you’re married,” Theodore said, unable to fully grasp how they’d come so unsuspectingly to these hard-hitting personal truths. “Aren’t you happy?”

  “I’ve forgotten what happiness really feels like,” David mumbled to himself. “But if I had it again, I’d never let her go. I made a terrible mistake, man. And now, I have a wife and kids, and they’re wonderful, they really are. I love my wife. But she’s not the one, you know? I let the one go. And now I’m committed. So if you think this girl is the one, fuck everything else. That’s all that matters.” With that, David slid off his bar stool. “I gotta piss.”

  Theodore gestured to the bartender for the check and settled both tabs. It was the least he could do for someone’s most intimate life lessons. He wasn’t sure how many vodka cranberries it would take for David to forget everything he’d said or everything he’d been told, but Theodore couldn’t get those words out of his head. “If this girl’s the one, fuck everything else. That’s all that matters.”

  As he walked through the cold fall night, his coat collar turned up against the wind and his hands shoved deep in his pockets, tracing his steps back to his dark, empty apartment, Theodore considered what that might mean. He wondered what Amelia meant to him, if she was more than a student, a mere curiosity. He wondered if there really was such a thing as “the one,” and if she, by chance, was it.

  5

  Amelia poured herself a cup of coffee and sat cross-legged on her couch, balancing her computer on her lap. She planned to spend the morning editing her midterm paper, but when she opened her email and saw one from Professor Bell with the subject line Meeting? her heart squeezed a little harder. She felt a rush of excitement flow through her, and she wasn’t sure if it was the caffeine or the fact that Professor Bell had emailed her.

  Hello Amelia, Would you be free this afternoon to work on our proposal for the writing panel? We can meet in my office. I’m free between 4:30 and 7 pm. Talk to you soon, Theodore.

  Amelia felt giddy when she read the last part. She knew his name was Theodore since it was on his faculty page, but he had never ended an email with only his first name before. She tried not to read too much into it, but it seemed to signal a shift, she felt. A transformation between what they were, and what she daydreamed they could be—two peers, two hungry academic minds, two friends. Perhaps even lovers.

  She shook this notion from her head and hit ‘reply.’

  As soon as she laid her fingers on the keyboard to type, she froze. He had signed off as Theodore, but did that mean she should call him that? Would that be inappropriate? Should she stick to Professor Bell? And if she did, would it be a condemnation of whatever intimacy she felt growing between them? She took a deep breath and held it for a moment. Upon exhaling, she typed, Hi Theodore - I will meet you at your office at 4:30. Looking forward to it. Amelia.

  Amelia took extra care getting ready for their meeting. She washed and blow dried her hair until it fell in perfect, loose waves across her shoulders. She considered wearing her favorite perfume, but thought better of it. Overkill. However, this was a day that called for her favorite outfit: a pair of jeans with brown boots, a button-down shirt, and a red cardigan.

  She loved this outfit because it felt most “academic” to her, and she often imagined having her own classes to teach while wearing it. Mostly, she wanted Theodore to think of her as an adult, his peer, a woman just six years his junior, rather than the two of them as an undergraduate and a professor. A perfectly reasonable age difference, she convinced herself. There was hardly anything separating them at all.

  She grabbed her plaid blazer on the way out the door and hurried to the literature building. It usually took her about fifteen minutes to walk there from her apartment, but today, she cut that time in half without even trying.

  The afternoon was gorgeous, with bright blue skies and a cold wind tempered by the warm autumnal sun sitting low over the trees, lighting them up like fire. The building was warm—too warm for a day like this—and when she knocked on the door of Professor Bell’s office, he stood up to greet her.

  “Hi!” he said enthusiastically. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Any time.” She smiled. She was w
arm from climbing three flights of stairs, but when she started to take her coat off, Professor Bell stopped her.

  “I was thinking… Before we get to work, would you like to get a coffee and take a walk?” he asked. “I’ve been cooped up in here all day, and I’m dying to get out. Gotta refuel, you know?” He smiled hopefully.

  Amelia felt like she was melting, not because of the heat in the building, but because of the way his eyes creased when he smiled at her.

  “That sounds lovely,” she nodded. “Do you mind if I leave my stuff?”

  “Not at all,” he said and reached out to lift her leather bag off her shoulder. Amelia felt her heart skip a beat as he placed his hand lightly on her back, gesturing for her to go first the way she had seen dapper gentlemen like Bogart and Gable do in old black and white movies.

  They walked under the fiery canopy of red leaves on the main lawn, heading downtown past the brick and ivy to the quaint heart of town. Amelia’s heart was light, and she could hardly feel her feet as she walked beside him. Every so often, she would surreptitiously steal a glance at him, each time registering a different, delightful detail. He had a light dusting of five o’clock shadow on his chin. His eyes seemed to illuminate his face in the diffused light beneath the trees. His teeth were perfect, straight and white, and his mouth curled up just a little more on one side when he smiled.

  As they walked, her arms swung loosely at her sides, and her hands barely felt connected to her body. She looked around her at the perfect scene—a quintessential New England fall—and without watching where she was going, Amelia drifted towards Professor Bell. She didn’t realize this until her fingertips brushed his, jerking her back to reality. She pulled her hand away, mumbling, “Sorry,” but he only smiled and looked at her, a steady, inquisitive expression on his face.

  When they reached the coffee shop, Amelia ordered a cappuccino. Professor Bell said, “Make that two,” and insisted on paying. They took a seat in the corner, sharing a loveseat since it was the only available spot in the house. Amelia held her coffee in her lap with both hands, staring at it, too nervous to look up. She felt she was giving herself away, her feelings too obvious. She didn’t want to blow it.

  She searched frantically for something to say, some topic of conversation she could offer to break the electric silence between them. Before she could wrangle a concrete thought, Professor Bell asked, “Amelia, may I ask—what do you want to do with your future?”

  Amelia was surprised by the question. She wanted to get her PhD, teach, and write a book on something—maybe Romantic poetry, something scholarly and academic that would be studied by students of the canon for years to come. Those were her professional ambitions. But her mind was blank when he asked her, and without any warning, she replied, “I’m not sure. Probably buy some land in the country and restore an old farmhouse and raise goats and chickens. Write a book. And maybe get married and have a family.”

  The words tumbled out of her mouth, and she was surprised to hear them as they materialized in the air between them and settled on the loveseat. Was this what she wanted? She had toyed with the idea of a family before, but it had always seemed so out of reach and abstract. Now, sitting there with Professor Bell, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to want. Maybe she just needed to imagine it with the right person.

  Amelia had never considered herself the marrying type. It had never been an agenda item on her life list, the way it had been with many of the girls she knew growing up. She repressed the desire because of her unstable upbringing, bouncing from one foster family to another. She had no role models or picket-fence life to model her future after. But as she looked at Professor Bell, she realized it was true. She did want these things, and she wondered how much of it was her wanting them, and how much of it was her wanting them with him?

  Professor Bell seemed surprised by these words but also pleased. His mouth twitched up in one corner, and his eyes crinkled. Amelia was aware that normally, she would feel ridiculous for this kind of exposure, accidentally revealing her deepest feelings to someone she wasn’t close to, but in this case, she felt no embarrassment. She felt a sort of comfort and freedom in confiding in him. And it made her feel bold.

  “What do you want?” she asked him, looking up through her long lashes, her eyes fixed on his.

  He looked at her without blinking. They looked at each other for a few seconds. Normally, she would have dissolved in a puddle of self-consciousness after such intensity with another person. This time, however, she felt only excitement. She felt the blood warm her skin and flush her cheeks. Her lips tingled, and her hands seemed disconnected in her lap. She felt a flutter in her stomach and the pounding of her heart in her chest.

  It seemed like minutes but it was probably no more than five or ten seconds that they sat there, connected but silent. Her brain was a whirlwind of thoughts.

  What was he thinking? What did he want? Was she crazy to think he was interested in her? Why was he looking at her like that? Why did she want him so badly? Why did her imagined child have his eyes and his hair, and why was he throwing a ball around the yard with it? Was this what she wanted? A life with him? And if so, what the hell was wrong with her?

  Amelia blinked twice, shaking her head as if coming out of some hypnotic trance. She ran a hand through her hair, smoothing it, trying to soothe her nerves. When she looked back at Professor Bell, he was still looking at her, although he seemed more composed, more aware of himself.

  “I want the same thing, I suppose,” he answered. She had almost forgotten the question at this point. “I want a wife who loves me. I want a family. I want a place in the country. I want to write. I want a partner who understands and shares my love of literature.” He looked at her curiously, and she felt as if he was sizing her up, gauging her reaction. Then he grinned. “I’m not sure I want goats, though.”

  They had finished their coffees, and Professor Bell offered to return Amelia’s cup to the dish bin by the counter. As she sat alone, pulling on her coat, her phone buzzed. The text was from Frankie, reading, Dude! Are you on a coffee date with Prof. Sexy Pants? She looked up, surprised. Standing outside the front glass window was Frankie, staring at her pointedly with raised eyebrows.

  She glared at him, and shook her head. Go away! she texted back. We’re working on a project, and he wanted to get coffee.

  You’re totally on a date! Frankie fired back. Details!

  Seriously? Knock it off! she typed frantically. Are you spying on me?

  Please, Frankie texted, smirking through the window. I have better things to do. But this isn’t over. I want all the details.

  Okay, enough. I have to go. Don’t make a scene.

  Love ya! Frankie gave her a wink through the window.

  Professor Bell returned, and Amelia shoved her phone in her pocket, flustered. “Ready to head back?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she replied, trying to appear calm. Frankie had caught her, and she knew he wasn’t going to lighten up until she spilled. He had a way of burrowing in and extracting information. He was her best friend and they had no secrets, but this was too new, too weird, and too dangerous.

  As they exited the coffee shop, she looked around quickly to make sure he wasn’t still loitering outside, waiting to ambush her and do something embarrassing. Luckily, the sidewalk was empty and she breathed a sigh of relief, her breath foggy in the cold evening air.

  When they returned to Professor Bell’s office, Amelia pulled her laptop out and settled in to work. Professor Bell followed suit, and they typed in silence for some time, typing up a proposal, agenda, and materials for the panel discussion. The sky turned an inky blue outside the office, fading to black, and Amelia felt the caffeine buzzing through her, which made her feel agitated. And bold. She couldn’t ignore the fact that she felt turned on. She couldn’t concentrate.

  She ran her hand through her hair again, glancing up at Professor Bell with a small, flirtatious smile. She was being too obvio
us and she knew it, but she wanted him to catch her looking at him. She wanted him to guess how she felt, to open that door just a crack.

  “Would you take a look at this?” she asked him finally, focusing again on the work at hand. She expected him to reach out for the laptop, but he stood up and walked around the desk to where she sat. He leaned over her shoulder, resting one arm next to hers, his face hovering beside hers. She felt the space between them was inappropriately close, which she found incredibly arousing.

  “What do you think of this passage?” she asked, pointing to a section she had been untangling. As he read it, she turned her head slightly towards her left shoulder so her eyes were facing him. She watched his face and noticed that he focused all his attention on the laptop screen, as if trying to ignore the fact that she sat beside him… looking at him, wanting him.

  “I think it’s great,” he said after a few long seconds. He turned his face towards hers, and Amelia thought she could see him debating with himself whether to pull away or hold his ground, the two of them pushing just a little harder at this thing that grew between them, pushing steadily, and hoping it would not break.

  His face was almost touching hers. Amelia took a deep breath and held it. As she exhaled, she leaned forward—unexpectedly, even to her—as if she was no longer master of her own body. She leaned forward, grazing his nose with hers, and closed her eyes.

  6

  Theodore was caught off guard. He was well aware he was tempting fate, walking the razor-thin edge between what was appropriate and what was right. He knew how this would look on paper—his attraction for this student and his reckless disregard for the rules. He knew he jeopardized his career by stoking the fire that smoldered between them. And he had known something was different today, both with himself and her behavior. He should have been more guarded, but everything about this girl made him feel open. He wanted all of her.