I felt his words lodge in my chest like arrows. It wasn’t like he was calling me names or threatening me. It was a very long way away from being the worst thing I’d ever heard someone say to me.
But he was failing his classes and he was blaming me.
And he was going to have to leave the college.
And he wasn’t going to be my roommate anymore.
And I needed not to care right then. I needed to draw a line under all of it and remembered that, yes, once upon a time, hewasthe asshole who called me names. I needed to be glad that he was going. I needed to think that he was a horrible, hurtful asshole who I didn’t want to be around anyway.
“I’m getting that wish no matter what,” I blurted out. “I got an email from the Dean. My new room assignment is ready. I’m moving soon.”
It wasn’t fully true. I still hadn’t actually responded to the email. I had no idea how long it would take for me to move after I accepted it. Maybe it would be that day. Maybe the end of the semester. Maybe I’d left it too long and I wouldn’t be able to change rooms after all.
But I wanted him to know that I didn’t need him, and he could yell at me all he wanted and it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to hurt me.
But what I wasn’t prepared for, not at all, was how hurthelooked.
“Fine,” he snapped after a moment. For a moment I tensed again, but he wasn’t moving like he was going to hit me. He was moving like he wanted to, somehow, hit himself. “Good. That’s great. I get a nice big room all to myself for the rest of the semester until they kick me out. That’s perfect.”
“Olly,” I said because I wanted to do something to fix whatever had just happened. I hadn’t meant to be unkind.
No, I had meant it. I wanted to hurt him. I said it because I was being defensive – I wanted to stop him from being able to hurt me. But I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that.
Not when I had already decided in my head I wasn’t going to take it.
What was I going to do now?
“Whatever,” he said, brushing me off with a shrug. He slumped into his bed, not even bothering to get changed, and rolled to face the wall. “I’m going to sleep.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but it was too late. The lights were already off, so it wasn’t as though the room still felt like a place for conversation. With his back to me, I couldn’t even tell if he was asleep yet or not.
I took a deep breath and put my laptop aside, and quickly changed. I kept glancing over at him to see if he was looking, to see if he would roll back over. But he didn’t – he didn’t even move. I could barely even see his body rising and falling with his breath.
I climbed into bed myself and rolled away from him, facing my own wall.
I’d made it so awkward in here, maybe it was going to be better if I really did move after all.
Olly
I kicked my feet at the ground, trying to find a pebble or something I could scuff at. Unfortunately, the field was kept so pristine that there wasn’t so much as a tiny fragment of stone inside the tunnel.
“What’s up with you?” Aiden asked. He was getting on my nerves. Always asking what was going on.
“I’m fine,” I snapped.
“You really sound it,” another of our teammates, Caleb, said as he passed by.
“Fuck off,” I muttered. Now Aiden was getting everyone else involved, too.
“What’s going on?” Aiden asked. “Seriously. You have to get it sorted out before the game.”
“I will,” I insisted. “I’m just – I’m having some issues with my roommate, okay? That’s it.”
“Alright,” Aiden shrugged. “Well, if you need help, just ask. We all have to work together, right? That’s what Coach says.”
“Right.” I nodded. I gritted my teeth. “I will.”
Aiden obviously didn’t know that it was a lie, because he jogged out onto the field ahead of me.
