Strictly Roommates

Micah didn’t follow me upstairs.

At first, I was grateful. By midnight, when I heard his key turn, I had invented six different reasons for his absence, each worse than the last.

I lay facing the wall.

He paused beside his bed.

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

My fingers tightened around the blanket.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Something upset you.”

“I don’t like people touching my hat.”

A short silence followed.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t.”

I had prepared for teasing, questions, even irritation. His simple acceptance left me with nothing to defend against.

“Goodnight, Loui.”

“Night.”

For the next week, I became extremely committed to my education.

I studied in the library. I ate with Miyu. I learned the shortest route between my classes and the longest route back to our room.

Micah didn’t corner me. That made avoiding him both easier and much more unpleasant.

On Thursday, I returned to find him asleep over an open textbook. A cold mug sat by his elbow. One page contained a diagram so complicated it looked like somebody had tried to draw a nervous breakdown.

I put the mug in the sink and draped his hoodie over his shoulders.

He opened one eye.

“Caught you being nice.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Tragic.”

I went to my desk. He sat up, rubbing the side of his face.

“We can forget the kiss, if that helps.”

My stomach dropped with humiliating speed.

“Right,” I said. “Sure.”

“I meant we don’t have to make it weird.”

“It isn’t weird.”

We looked at each other across six feet of extremely weird room.

He nodded first.

“Jamil and I are camping Saturday. Lake trail, proper campsite. Want to come?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my roommate and I think you might be fun when you’re not fleeing.”

“I don’t flee.”

“You’ve been moving through this building like a wanted man.”

I tried not to smile. He noticed that, too.

“Come on. One night. No kissing.”

“That wasn’t my concern.”

His eyebrows rose.

I picked up a pen. “Fine. Camping.”

By Saturday evening, I regretted every decision that had led to the invention of tents.

The campsite was a short drive from campus, near the north end of the lake. Jamil put up the tent while Micah contributed suggestions nobody had requested. I carried bags, handed over pegs, and quietly assessed whether my sleeping bag would keep me alive.

I was always cold. It was one of the less charming features of being a Neko.

Another was the way my tail reacted to stress, currently curling around my hip under the specially altered waistband of my jeans. My mother had sewn soft channels into most of my clothes. They kept everything concealed, provided I didn’t do anything reckless like bend, run, or exist too enthusiastically.

“Wood duty,” Micah announced, handing me a bag. “You and me.”

Jamil pointed a tent pole at him. “Stay on the marked path.”

“Your lack of faith wounds me.”

“Last time you lost your car in a parking garage.”

“It was a confusing garage.”

We walked beneath turning leaves, picking up dry fallen branches. The lake flashed between the trees. Away from campus, with nobody close enough to brush against me, I could almost breathe normally.

Then something cracked in the undergrowth.

I stopped.

Micah stopped, too.

“Probably a squirrel,” he said.

“Then let’s respect its privacy.”

Another sound came, lower this time.

Micah tilted his head. “We could look.”

“We could also live.”

He laughed. I grabbed the back of his jacket when he pretended to take a step toward the bushes.

“Absolutely not.”

“What if it needs help?”

“What if it needs dinner?”

He looked down at my hand gripping his jacket. I let go immediately.

On the way back, he walked close enough that our shoulders knocked twice. Neither of us moved away.

After dinner, Jamil told a ghost story with unnecessary commitment. I informed him that structural problems in an abandoned house did not count as supernatural activity.

A branch snapped behind the tent.

I nearly dropped my mug.

Micah pressed his lips together.

“If you laugh,” I told him, “I’m putting something dead in your sleeping bag.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

Rain arrived before the marshmallows were finished. We scrambled inside, laughing as Jamil complained about the weather app. The tent smelled of damp jackets and chocolate. Micah found the bag of marshmallows in the dark and passed it around.

“Where are you?” I whispered when he asked for another.

“Tragic question. We’ve shared a room for two weeks.”

I found his cheek with my fingertips, then guided a marshmallow toward his mouth.

His lips brushed my finger.

For one second, neither of us moved.

Jamil reached over us. “If you two are finished hoarding them, some of us are hungry.”

I practically threw the bag at him.

Later, rain tapped steadily on the flysheet. Jamil fell asleep with the confidence of a man who had brought adequate equipment. I stayed rigid in my sleeping bag, teeth threatening to chatter.

“Loui.”

I opened my eyes.

Micah was a dark shape beside me.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“You’re shaking the floor.”

“I’m expressing dissatisfaction.”

He lifted the edge of his blanket.

I stared at it.

“It’s just a blanket,” he murmured.

I knew that. I also knew how warm he had felt when we danced, and how quickly I had started missing it.

I could spend the night miserable to prove a point nobody else understood.

Instead, I slid out of my inadequate sleeping bag and moved beside him.

He tucked the blanket around my shoulders. My cold hand landed against his shirt, and he flinched.

“Jesus. You’re a refrigeration unit.”

“You invited me.”

“I’m very brave.”

His arm rested around me without tightening. I lay listening to the rain, his breathing, the small rustle of Jamil turning over.

My ears slowly relaxed beneath my hat.

When Micah asked if I was warmer, I said yes into his shoulder.

He didn’t try to kiss me.

Somehow, that made it worse.

Back on campus the next afternoon, Amara met us outside the dorm. She took Micah’s duffel, pulled him down by his collar, and kissed him as though it were an ordinary Sunday greeting.

Maybe it was.

Micah had promised me no kissing.

He hadn’t promised not to kiss anybody else.

I carried my sleeping bag upstairs alone.