Page 48 of The Invisible Roommate

In a fit of petty frustration, Emory tossed what was on his plate along with all the other ingredients unceremoniously in the trash, unseeable skin prickling with irritation.

Fine—if Gerard couldn’t be bothered to tell him that he wasn’t coming home for dinner, then there wouldn’t be dinner to eat when he got back. Emory hadn’t gone through all that trouble for it to be a reheated, soggy mess. He wiped his hands on a rag and distracted himself from the clenching discomfort of his own emotions, as he always did, with work.

Wrenching his lab coat off the rack by the door, he nearly tore the collar with his force. He was already stuck waiting for his invisibility serum to wear off; he couldn’t spend his days waiting around on Gerard Wells, too.

Where was Gerard? Why hadn’t he stopped by to at least say he’d be late?

Was this all because Gerard walked in on him jerking off?

Gerard knew to knock now!

And it’s not like he was thinking about Gerard while he did it.

Okay, that was a lie.

He had been thinking about Gerard, but in completely abstract, mostly innocent terms. As he touched himself, his brain—unprompted!—supplied a fantasy of Gerard breaking his golden rule by serenading Emory with that cheesy yet soul-strumming power ballad, “See You Sometime.”

In the imagined scenario, Gerard was naked while he did it, and maybe he was surrounded by hundreds of tiny lit candles, but it was pretty harmless as far as fantasies went.

God, if Gerard could’ve actually seen Emory when he walked in on him. His spring-loaded erection. His flamed-up cheeks. His quick-heaving chest. That would’ve been so much worse.

Mortification plopped down on Emory’s makeshift lab table and refused to budge.

Maybe he should stay invisible forever and ever. He’d avoid the Iping mob and any impending punishment for his joyriding, that’s for sure. He’d never have to face Gerard. For the most part, it would be the ideal solution, except for the fact that Gerard would leave eventually. What then? He’d have no choice but to spree in the nighttime again, an agent of chaos, belonging nowhere, fending for sustenance and safety until this wild concoction of his wore off.

What had been originally fun and freeing had grown stale and tiresome.

That’s what he was: tired.

Around 6:30, the pluck of an unfamiliar instrument that had the ring of a guitar but the airiness of a harp seeped through the floorboards. Emory stopped in his tracks, struck by the sound that seemed to squiggle in the air like a child drawing with marker on the walls. Was that Regina?

Her piano was a beast whose howls ascended through the ductwork with great volume and resolution. This was foreign. He moved toward the far wall, got on his belly, and pressed his ear to the usual vent.

“Like this?” Emory recognized Gerard’s voice instantly.

So that’s where he was. Downstairs the whole time.

A modicum of resentment slipped away. The music he played next was too beautiful to be mad at. Immediately, Emory remembered the food, in the trash, unsalvageable. Guilt raced across the back of his neck.

Since night had fallen and the autumn chill had set in, knowing Gerard would be upstairs eventually, and having churned himself into such a state, Emory cloaked up to go out. He donned the head bandages, a hat, a coat, shoes, sunglasses, and gloves, and slipped out of the house.

Maneuvering in the dark with shades on was less than ideal, but eventually his eyes adjusted. There were plenty of low-traffic places on Iping where he could go. Places where the shore was being rapidly swallowed up, so locals avoided them.

Emory shuffled through the inky expanse, emotions like shackles.

The beach access was fenced off when he arrived. A NO TRESPASSING sign snapped at him as he struggled over the yellow chain links. Too many rules had been broken by then; starting to follow new ones would’ve been a gross reinterpretation of his character.

When had he started thinking of himself as a character?

Perhaps when he chose to evade the consequences of his actions, when he decided it would be easier to have others fear him like a monster than understand him. Physicalizing the worm-rot inside him meant he couldn’t be hurt or othered or turned away from. Didn’t it?

The moon dangled in the sky, and the impressive glow spotlighted the water. Small, easy waves splatted onto the shore. Harsher wind gusts left water beads speckling the lenses of his glasses.

Still, Emory had made the trek, crossed the line—no returning now, even if he’d have to go back and face the music(ian) sometime.

Apology burbled in his mostly empty belly as he sat for an hour or more with his discomfort. He had that hard-and-fast rule about apologies, which he’d clung to for so long, not wanting to give the foster system and its beneficiaries any more credit than they deserved. However, the more he considered it, the more obvious it was that Gerard deserved an apology from him. Their agreement was by no means set in stone, but trashing dinner—what if Gerard hadn’t eaten? Were there any leftovers from last night in the fridge for him?

Lashing out as a tormented child he could forgive himself for, but thirty wasn’t that far off. He’d made a major scientific breakthrough, which meant if he planned to share his invisibility serum with the world, he would need to work with others to test its efficacy, defend its ethicality, and get it to market for global good. Flying off the handle was out of the question when he wanted to be seen as a professional. Wanted to be seen.