“I don’t want to talk,” Keaton hissed. He slammed the door behind him and stalked over toward me. He was bright red with rage. He didn’t seem afraid as he stood over me. For a moment, strangely, I felt proud of him. “You had no right to send an email from my account!”
“I just -” I swallowed. “You said you were going to stay. I was helping.”
“Helping!” Keaton repeated loudly, in a tone that suggested he didn’t think I was helping at all. “That was my decision to make. Mine! You didn’t have the right to send it. You hacked into my laptop!”
“It was open,” I pointed out.
“You knew I wouldn’t want you to use it while I was out!” Keaton shouted. “You’re not that stupid. You know it’s not normal to just reply to someone else’s emails. What the hell were you thinking?”
I looked down. He was so angry. He wasn’t going to forgive me for this. I’d screwed everything up for good now.Stupid. “I was scared,” I said.
It was the truth.
“… What?” Keaton asked.
I looked up. Some of the steam seemed to have gone out of him. He was staring at me like he might have thought he heard me wrong.
“I was scared,” I repeated.
“Of what?”
“That you would change your mind and leave,” I said. I looked him in the eye. “Because I kissed you.”
Keaton’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times. He looked like a fish. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the kiss again.
But what else could I do?
We needed to get it out in the open – or nothing was ever going to be resolved.
“I’m not going to leave just because of that,” he said. “But I might leave because you went onto my laptop without my permission and sent an email pretending to be me.”
He was angry with me. I swallowed down a sour, sick feeling in my throat. He probably hated me. I closed my eyes for a second.
“While we’re talking about the Dean,” I said. Every single word felt like a barb being dragged through my chest. This was it. I was ruining everything. But I had to come clean. If he was angry already then maybe this was the best time.
Ruin it all at once. A clean break.
“What?” Keaton snapped, his eyebrows going up.
I swallowed three or four more times before I managed to get the words out. “We weren’t put together by random chance,” I said. “I asked for it.”
Keaton gaped at me. “Youwhat?”
I winced. I knew I deserved it. “I asked to room with you.”
“What – how – wh –” Keaton stopped and took a breath. “Why?”
“Because of…” I hesitated. “I thought because of school.”
“You thought?” Keaton asked, picking up on the nuance. I almost wished he hadn’t. Explaining this felt like pulling teeth. Worse. Physical pain was easier than this. How was I supposed to explain how my feelings had changed over time? How I was starting to think maybe I’d just been telling myself it was all about protecting him? How really I just couldn’t shake the image of his dark eyes and his curly hair and the thought of kissing him?
“I knew how bad I was,” I said. “Back then. I didn’t protect you. I hated myself for that. All this time. When I found out you were coming here…”
“How did you find that out?” Keaton asked incredulously.
“Student group,” I said simply. There’d been a social media group for new incoming students to join. I’d seen his name on one of the posts and looked him up. When I realized it was really him I’d immediately started coming up with the plan. I’d never posted anything there. There was no way he would have known I was there, too.
“Wh…” Keaton shook his head. He was still struggling. “Butwhy?”
