“I don’t have any homework tonight,” I tell him, and he glances over from his laptop and shrugs.
“Well, I do.”
“Oh, just to keep me up late?” I ask, searching for the ulterior motive.
He shakes his head. “Nope. Just to get it done before class tomorrow.” He turns back to his screen and keys away.
I search around my room uneasily. Things have been too calm recently. And tonight things areeerilycalm, in a way that only concerns me that much more.
I approach my bed cautiously, pulling back the sheets to see if he has some horrible prank waiting for me—like he’s slipped Payton’s python under the sheets. It hasn’t happened to me, but it’s an easy enough prank to pull off, and I fucking hate snakes.
“If you want,” he says, “I can finish in, like, five and do the rest tomorrow morning.”
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He spins the swivel chair toward me. “I told you: my homework.”
Finally something clicks into place. I know what’s up!
“Do you have someone in here?” I check under the bed, then the closet.
His forehead creases as his brows knit together. “Do you think I would hide them in the closet?”
“You didn’t put the door hanger out, so you’d be violating one of the rules Sigma Alpha agreed to. Maybe you forgot since you never honored them anyway.”
“And I just jumped into these clothes when I realized you were coming up here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one of the guys texted you. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I see there’s no one else in here. And no snake…that I’ve seen.”
“Why would there be a snake?”
“As if you don’t know.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost it. Maybe I have.
“I’m trying to work out why you’ve been acting weird lately,” I explain.
“You’re searching the closet for girls and I’m the one acting weird?” he says as though he’s the shining example of a roommate.
“Okay, this is entering full-on gaslighting territory.”
He grins. “How is that gaslighting?”
“Gaslighting means trying to make a person question their reality, which you are doing by acting like it’s this far-fetched idea that you’d do these things that you are entirely capable of doing, especially with how pissed you’ve been at me.”
Ryan’s gaze wanders as he considers this. “Is that what gaslightingis? Huh, who knew?”
“Is that a confession?”
“Nah, man. I’ve had a change of heart recently. And I actually kind of need your help.”
“My help?”
I know this is somehow gonna end in a prank where he fools my ass, and tonight is not the night, motherfucker.
But I go along with it to see where this leads. “Okay, what is it? Give it to me. But if you think anything you say is gonna get me to ask Lance to take you off probation, you’ve got another thing coming.”
He chuckles. “It’s not that. You know those tango classes you’re taking?”
