“I said we could talk. I didn’t say you could take over my house,” she said with a sneer, sitting down in the recliner across from me. I should have known she wouldn’t get too physically close.
“Are your roommates here?” I asked, trying to ignore the throbbing in my dick that seemed to be growing. Renee shook her head.
“Jami’s in class, and we haven’t seen Carly since the night you came over.” She glared at me when she said this, and I almost felt the daggers in my skin.
“She stopped by the apartment last night,” I told her. “To talk to Jake.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know. They talked in her car.”
Renee sighed heavily, and her hands fell into her lap anxiously. “So, she’s forgiven him but not me?”
I shrugged. “You’d have to ask her that, Ren.”
“Don’t call me Ren.”
I smiled, satisfied with her defense, and leaned back on the couch, crossing my legs. “Why not? That’s what we used to call you, remember?”
“Only people I like get to call me that,” she snapped, gritting her teeth. “And I fucking hate you.” She got to her feet then and crossed the room, fuming, but I could see what she was doing from where I sat: she was pouring a glass of wine.
“You got any beer?” I called, watching Renee’s face scrunch up angrily. Despite her irritation, she grabbed a bottle of Coors from the fridge and threw it at me. Luckily I could catch it because it almost winded up all over the spotless wall on the other side of me. I popped the top off the bottle and took a sip, eyes on Renee as she sat down again, taking a long drink out of her glass.
“So why did you come here?” she finally asked. It was difficult for her to look at me, I could tell, and I couldn't figure out how I felt about that. Smug? Annoyed?
Hurt?
“I came here to see you, obviously.” I set my beer down on the table and fold my hands across my stomach, eyes still on Renee.
“Why? You don’t know me. I don’t know you. We’re not even friends.”
“I didn’t know you were going to school for nursing,” I said, trying to ease the tension in the room.
Renee scowls. “And I didn’t know you were a firefighter, but here we are.”
“Would you have seen me any differently knowing I was a firefighter?”
She looked up, meeting my eye, hesitating. “No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“What difference does it make?”
“It makes all the difference,” Renee said softly. “Because you’re helping people, aren’t you? You, Matthew Nelson, are an actual public servant.”
“You seem shocked.”
“I am, I guess. If I'm being honest, I didn’t know you could have that kind of compassion for others.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” I tease. “I do it for the adrenaline spike.” That’s bullshit, of course, and Renee is right. I remember the first patient I dragged out of a burning building unharmed. It was what kept me going.
“If you’re a firefighter, what are you going to school for?” Renee asked.
“Fire science. I’d like to keep moving up in my position.”
Renee was looking at me now with a new expression of curiosity and newfound interest. But before I could say anything more, the expression was gone, and she was fuming.
“Why are you here, Matt? Did you come here to remind me what a slut I am?” she asked. “How I betrayed my roommate, not to mention the betrayal of your two best friends, right?”
“I don’t think I need to do that, Ren, because it seems you’re doing plenty of that yourself.”
