Chapter 7
About three weeks in, I started noticing things I really didn’t need to be noticing.
The way she tucked her feet under herself when she read.
The specific sound of her laugh when something caught her off guard. Rare, unguarded, nothing like the polite smile she gave the rest of the world.
The fact that she kept a small notebook in her coat pocket and wrote in it during her commute. I never read it. I’m not that guy. But I noticed it existed.
That was the problem with having a beautiful woman in your orbit. Your brain, completely without permission, starts cataloging things.
The way she pushed her hair back when she was concentrating.
The way she hummed under her breath while doing dishes, off-key and totally unaware of herself.
I told myself it was just professional observation. I was a writer. I noticed things.
My brain was lying to me.
The night she knocked on my door—actually knocked, like a normal person—and asked if I had any painkillers because she had a headache and had run out, I handed her two ibuprofen and a glass of cold water from the kitchen without even thinking.
She looked at the glass. “I already have water.”
“That one’s cold.”
She looked at me for a second, traded hers for mine, and went back to her room without another word.
I stood in the kitchen longer than was reasonable, staring at the glass she’d left behind.
I was in trouble.
Not rom-com trouble. Not cute, soft-focus, indie-soundtrack trouble.
Real trouble.
The quiet, inconvenient, logistically complicated kind.
The kind where you’re self-aware enough to understand exactly what’s happening and still dumb enough to let it keep happening anyway.
I went back to my desk, opened my document, stared at a blank paragraph for twenty-two minutes, and typed:
The problem with beautiful things is that they’re distracting even when they’re not trying to be.
Then I deleted it and wrote a ghost story instead.
Here’s an important thing about me.
I don’t talk about my feelings.
Not because I’m emotionally stunted. I’m actually pretty self-aware.
I just don’t see the point in narrating my internal life out loud while it’s still happening.
Processing is private.
Decisions are the only thing worth saying.
So no, I did not go to my friend Marcus and announce that I was developing feelings for my roommate.
Marcus figured it out anyway.
Mostly because he’s annoyingly perceptive. Also because I made the fatal mistake of bringing Chloe up four times during a thirty-minute conversation about a completely unrelated video game.
“You’re describing her a lot,” he said.
“I’m providing context.”
“You described the sound of her laugh.”
“It was relevant.”
He looked up from his controller. “You described the sound of her laugh.”
I said nothing.
Marcus paused the game.
That was serious.
“How long?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay. How long have you been in denial about not knowing what I’m talking about?”
I leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
“Three weeks. Maybe.”
He nodded like a doctor confirming a diagnosis.