Chapter 49: My Roommate Has An Ulterior Motive
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It’s been one week.
An entire week had gone by since Damien and I had that weird argument that somehow ended with an apology, a strange dinner, and me bolting from the kitchen like my life depended on it after our hands touched for just a moment.
Not that I was keeping track.
Okay, I totally was.
Life at Preston Hall had turned... odd. It wasn’t bad odd or good odd, just odder than usual, like that familiar song you suddenly hear in a minor key. You recognize it, but something’s off, as if the whole thing shifted when you weren’t looking.
The tension that used to fill every room had lightened a bit, like someone finally opened a window and let in some fresh air. We weren’t arguing anymore. No more passive-aggressive fridge notes. Damien wasn’t glaring at me every five minutes, and I wasn’t trying my best to drive him crazy with eighties music and mind games.
But we weren’t friends.
Definitely not friends.
That’s what I kept reminding myself each morning, like a mantra from someone who was trying very hard not to believe it.
The first thing I noticed on that Monday morning was a hospital bill notification sitting in my email like a personal attack.
I groaned and rolled onto my back.
Fuck my life...
The white ceiling just stared back at me, completely devoid of empathy. It had nothing useful to say, as ceilings often don’t.
"Good morning to me."
The notification sat there taunting me. Payment due. Another payment due. Just another reminder, another expense. It felt like every time I managed to save a bit of cash, life would swoop in with a baseball bat and smash my bank account to pieces, right there in broad daylight, without a single witness.
My dad’s treatments were getting more expensive by the day. Groceries wasn’t getting any cheaper. Textbooks? Nope. Transport? Forget it. Meanwhile, I had about seven dollars, two coupons, and whatever spare change I could find at the bottom of my backpack—buried under a granola bar wrapper and a pen that gave up on life last October.
Fantastic, truly. A blessed morning.
I dragged myself out of bed like I’d been hit by a truck, shuffled toward the bathroom, got ready for class, and eventually stumbled into the kitchen with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner facing the gallows.
My eyes barely opened, and my soul hadn’t fully rejoined my body. I was just running on muscle memory and a sprinkle of spite.
Halfway there, I caught a whiff of something.
Fresh coffee.
Not the cheap instant stuff I usually settled for since my wallet wept every time I looked at anything better. This was rich, warm, and slightly nutty, curling through the air like it was specifically designed to break down my defenses.
I frowned instantly. That couldn’t be good. Nothing that smelled that heavenly this early could possibly mean anything good.
The kitchen was empty when I stepped in.
Damien was nowhere in sight.
Instead, there was a steaming mug of coffee on the counter, a plate of eggs and toast, and a neatly folded note propped against the mug as if this was a normal occurrence—not something that happened between people who’d supposedly disliked eachother when they first started living with each other.
I stared at it. The breakfast stared back.
Slowly, suspiciously, like it might either be a present or a trap, I picked up the note.
One word.
’Eat.’
That was it. No signature. No explanation. No "I made this because I feel pity for you and you looked like you haven’t eaten in days" or anything remotely helpful or patronizing. Just eat, written in clean, precise handwriting that also somehow looked disgustingly expensive.
I narrowed my eyes. "What kind of serial killer behavior is this?"
The food, much to my chagrin, smelled amazing.
I glanced toward our room...the door was open and empty. He’d already left, which made it worse because now there wasn’t even a rich jerk standing nearby for me to complain to directly that I didn’t need someone making me breakfast. I was left here alone in the kitchen, grappling with my pride and a plate of incredible-smelling eggs.
I stared at the breakfast for almost a full minute. Then I looked at my bank account. Then back at the breakfast.
The struggle between my pride and common sense lasted all of twelve seconds, longer than I would have guessed.
With a dramatic sigh, I sat down.
"I don’t need his pity," I announced to nobody.
I took a bite.
"...Goddammit."
It was good. Really good. The eggs were fluffy and seasoned just right, the toast was buttered perfectly to the edges, like it should always be but hardly ever was, and the coffee? Just the right temperature. I hated that. I hated that I enjoyed it.
I hated that the coffee was made exactly how I liked it...two sugars, a splash of milk, none of that fancy syrup nonsense. I hated that he’d somehow learned exactly how I liked it without me even saying a word.
Most of all, I hated that I cleaned my plate, scraped it, and then sat there feeling surprisingly, traitorously better.
But throwing away food? A crime. A personal crime. A crime against my ancestors and everything they’d gone through so I could stand here in a nice apartment eating eggs made by a guy I refused to have feelings for.
My grandmother would rise from the dead to smack me with a slipper if she found out I wasted perfectly good food.
So of course, I finished everything while muttering complaints the entire time. That felt like a fair balance.
The next few days followed a similarly confusing routine.
Every morning for two weeks, there was coffee. Sometimes breakfast. Always a note. Usually just a couple of words: Eat. Drink. Breakfast. Don’t waste it.
Terse little commands left on folded paper as if he was waging a military campaign against my malnutrition.
One morning, there was simply a thumbs-up drawn on a sticky note.
I spent ten full minutes trying to decipher it. Was he encouraging me? Threatening me? Mocking me? Checking if I was still alive? I held it up to the light like it would reveal a hidden message. It didn’t. Just a thumbs-up, drawn in black pen with enough commitment to suggest he was completely serious.
The man communicated like a mysterious billionaire owl. All significance, no context.
By Thursday, I had developed a routine. Wake up. Check bills. Experience despair. Find coffee. Complain loudly to the empty kitchen. Drink the coffee anyway. Feel a little less despair. Move on.
It was deeply irritating. But, I was reluctantly admitting, it was also what got me out of bed each morning.
The strangest part? Damien never brought it up. Not once. He didn’t ask if I liked it. He didn’t mention it at dinner. He didn’t lean against the doorframe with that infuriating half-smirk waiting for me to thank him.
He just continued doing it. Like it was normal. Leaving someone breakfast every morning wasn’t a weird thing to do. Like kissing your male roommate at a party and then silently making coffee for them for a week afterward was totally ordinary behavior that didn’t require any discussion.
Rich people are terrifying. Seriously. A whole different species.
I came back from class on Thursday afternoon, completely wiped out, famished, and ready to collapse face-first onto my bed until either my life improved or the planet blew up...whichever came first.
Instead, I walked into my room and immediately froze.
My laundry.
The entire mountain of my laundry I had been too tired to do...an unkempt pile that had been accumulating in the corner like a fabric skyscraper...was gone. Well mot gone gone. They were perfectly folded. Each piece arranged with a level of precision that made my typical laundry folding look like a crime scene.
Every item stacked meticulously on my bed, organized by what seemed like some kind of system, color or category or maybe just sheer willpower.
So he’d also gone as far as to do my laundry, now? I always assumed he had some sort of ulterior motive to his actions, but what could he possibly be planning to do to me at this point?!
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𝔞𝔲𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔯’𝔰 𝔯𝔞𝔪𝔟𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰
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