Page 5 of And They Were Roommates

Delilah points at my hand. It’s shaking.

I drop my arm. “I’ve dreamed of studying here forever.Academics that’ll actually challenge me, and on the boys’ side of campus. I never thought I’d be able to…” I trail off, recalling the worst roommate I could’ve been assigned who might blow up this dream.

How do I keep Jasper Grimes silent? A bribe?

Bonging noises resonate through the courtyard. I startle and cover my ears.

Delilah rips my hands down. “Bro, relax, it’s the ten-minute warning bell till lights-out.”

I glance down the brick wall—cockblockade—where a bell tower sticks out of an otherwise unused church. I hadn’t noticed it in the dim sunset.

Instead of the bro handshake I faced in the residential hall, Delilah goes in for a basic hug. I’ve never been more thankful.

“If you start panicking or sobbing at any point, contact me,” she says. “Since I’m your emergency contact, my residential retainer can send me to the office to take the call.”

“I won’t sob.” I pause. “But thank you.”

Delilah disappears through the open cockblockade gate to the sister academy, and I head toward the residence hall. The sidewalks are crowded with families rushing their goodbyes, but I barely perceive them. Too much is on my mind.

Tonight, I have to sleep in the same room as another boy. One who kissed me and walked away like I was nothing.

Myfirstkiss.

I shove my hands deep into my pockets as if that’ll punch the nerves out of me. The second Jasper sees me, he’ll have questions, and I won’t know how to answer any. I need to have a speech ready, and that bribe, but I don’t know what I’d offer.

I’ll just ask. He never had a problem taking whatever he wanted.

Chapter 3THE TIME MACHINE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

I press an ear against the door to Room 503, listening for signs of life.

A clang here. A shove there. He’s back.

Where’s that speech, Charlie?

Yes, I’m the person you met at Valentine’s Shakespeare and Classics Summer Camp two years ago. Yes, we kissed by the lake. No, I’m not that person anymore, but also, I am. What would you like in order to stay silent?

That’ll do.

As I reach for the handle, my hands lock up.Do it. Just do it!

Adrenaline surges through me, and I yank back the handle. The door whips open and slams against the wall.

“Oops,” I mumble.

At the end of the room, a slender figure in the same plaid blazer and tie as me jolts. Although my uniform loosely hangs in all the wrong places, his cinches in all the right ones. He loses his grip on a glass object—a heart-shaped paperweight—and fumbles three times before catching it.

The Sexiest Poet of the Year poster boy with glistening blue eyes and blond hair pulled into a stubby ponytail. In real life. Staring back at me.

The speech I prepared drains out of my head.

Jasper Grimes is really here.

Jasper tosses the paperweight despite saving it seconds ago.The glass cracks against the windowsill and falls to the floor in chunks. “Charlie von Hevringprinz!”

Even though he’s never spoken this full name before, everything about the way he says it sounds so familiar.

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