I grab my phone, seeing I have a new voicemail notification. It’s from Meegan, and I instantly delete it. The only messages my psycho ex sends me these days are meant to rile me. Usually, it’s the sound of her fake-ass moans as some other guy rails her, making me listen as she tells the asshole how much better he is at making her come. Her latest efforts have doubled since I hadn’t reacted how she’d wanted when she’d filmed herself and Hart fucking—and then released the footage—before last summer.
Well, anyone who knows me could have expected my reaction—beat the living shit out of Hart. Which I did. Until he’d admitted he’d only slept with her as a means to temporarily forget his mother’s cancer diagnosis. We’re good now, and Meegan’s pissed another one of her attempts to fuck me over didn’t pan out.
I throw my phone down on my bed, lip curling in disgust.
The bathroom’s warm and misty with steam, so I must not have fallen back asleep for that long. I tug down my sweats.
And hear a shush. Followed by the deep breathing of someone trying to hold back laughter.
Inside the bathroom.
With a growl, I pull my pants up, then reach over and snap the shower curtain open.
Then immediately pull it back shut.
“The fuck are you idiots doing?”
Because the last thing I want to see this bright and early is Levi Hart’s ass.
“Morning, Spence!”
His girlfriend, Rylie Stone—whose body Hart shields with his own, so the only glimpse I have is the back of her head over my roommate’s shoulder—bursts out in giggles as she tries to tell me good morning.
“Don’t move,” Levi says to her in a low hush.
I scowl, realizing what they’d been doing with Hart pressing her up against the wall like that. What they’d been in the middle of doing when I walked in.
“You have a fucking bedroom, Hart!”
“You were sleeping!”
“Why the fuck did you turn off the water?” At least then, I’d know not to come in.
“Rylie, stop moving—” and she howls with laughter, no matter how much he shushes her. “Look, Spence, shower sex is not as sexy in practice as it is in theory—”
“I was having a good time,” Rylie snorts.
“Actually, me, too. Until Spence walked in,” Hart says to her.
“Turn on the fucking shower!” I shout.
I slam the door on Hart’s response—“Water is a terrible lubricant!”—and head downstairs. Grayson’s at the kitchen counter, and I mumble a greeting to him before using his bathroom. It smells faintly of vomit, and when I return to the kitchen, Gray’s pasty face tells me why.
“Mason and Morris?” I ask him, pulling out orange juice and ingredients for a breakfast sandwich from the fridge.
A bowl of soggy cereal sits in front of him. He slides it away. Sets his glasses on the counter. Then lowers his head to the granite. All his movements are carefully measured. One wrong turn, and he’ll retch.
“They bet me I couldn’t waterfall four beers last night,” he explains, voice muffled.
“Yeah?”
“Three times.”
“Hn,” is all I say, cracking eggs in a pan over the stove. That is a bit much. For Rowe. I’d had almost as much the night before, but whereas I have the mass and tolerance to carry myself after that much alcohol…
I glance at him. Freshman year, Grayson Rowe had been nothing more than a lanky string bean with glasses and an annoying habit for telling dumb facts. Morris and I had worked with him to establish a workout routine and a lean, protein-rich diet to bulk him up. Mason lures him out from the harsh screen of his computer to socialize. Hart keeps him on his toes with intentionally wrong comic book references. He’s come a ways—
“Did—” Gray pauses, breathes deeply, then starts again. “Did you know the chemical formula—”
—But no one’s managed to rid him of his annoying-as-shit facts.
“No.” Because I don’t know shit about chemistry.
“—for alcohol—” He heaves on the word.
“Fucking shut it, Rowe,” I wave my spatula in the direction of his bathroom. “Or go hurl. I already have to deal with Hart and his girl jizzing in my shower. I won’t wipe up your fucking mess, too.”
Gray pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed as his stomach settles. After a bit, his skin looks less like death, and he quietly mutters, “It’s C-two-H-five-O-H.”
Sometimes I fucking wonder what’s wrong with me that I choose to live with these jackasses. I haven’t even seen Morris yet, but that’s probably because he’s got a preternatural ability to wake up and go running before ten in the morning.
I finish layering together my sandwich, then sit down at the counter next to him. When I pass him a plate heaped with eggs, bacon, and toast, he pokes at it before digging in, needing the grease and carbs to soak up whatever C-two-H-five-O-H is leftover in his system.
Around a mouthful of toast, he asks, “Is that what the commotion was about? Rylie and Levi having sex where they shouldn’t be?”
“Got you too, huh?”
“Right after winter break,” he says, squinting over his shoulder since he has yet to put his glasses back on. He glares at one of the armchairs in the living room. “I’ll never sit there again.”
“Sit where?” Our roommate bounds down the stairs, Rylie behind him. It’s thirty below outside, but you’d think from his shorts it’s the middle of July. Even winter can’t come between Levi Hart and his refusal to wear a goddamn shirt.
Gray moves his plate when Hart tries to snatch a bacon strip. He pushes his glasses back on his face so he can glare more efficiently. “You know where.”
“Sorry, Gray,” Rylie folds her hands on the counter. She’s more appropriately dressed for the season in a pair of sweatpants and a man’s t-shirt—probably from Hart’s closet, though I’d never seen him wear it.
I clear my throat. Her gaze darts to me, and she sighs. “And I’m
