Page 50 of And They Were Roommates

How?

I inspect how his hand moves at a steady pace. Two years ago, he scribbled so fast that the ink would smear worse than nowadays. His thigh doesn’t distractedly shake beneath the desk anymore. I’d have to clutch his knee during workshop to make him stop.

Jasper is different now. But he isn’t different at all.

Luis passes me a sheet of paper. His completed equation. “Can you check this?”

I glance down at my barely finished one.Focus, Charlie.“Yeah.”

Soon, the three are off with quick thanks.

Jasper returns to my desk. Instead of sitting across from me like last time, he claims Luis’s chair, which is still pulled out. “Where were we?” he asks, assertively tossing down his journal.

I stay quiet, not particularly wanting him to remember, and glance around the library. After hearing how the student body is obsessed with us two, I feel invisible eyes on my back despite the vacant desks around us.

“Right,” Jasper says. “My fourth EROS. Tell me you love me.”

“Listen, I really don’t want to keep saying that I lo—”

“You don’t have to say that you loveme. Just sayI love you. To the wall. The desk. I only want to make you feel that vulnerability.”

I grimace.

“I won’t watch.” As Jasper goes back to his journal, I pick out more changes in him. Unfortunately, he’s always had a nice face to look at, but his jaw is sharper, and his brows really are bolder. The dress shirts he rolls to his elbows look eons better than our hideous camp uniforms—dweeby polo shirts, navy shorts, name tag lanyards, and socks rolled up to the knees.

But one thing about him might not have changed.

“I promised I wouldn’t watch you,” Jasper says, peeking up at me through the hair draped over his face, “yet now you’re watching me.”

I flick my gaze away, covering my lips with a propped hand. “I have a question.”

“You’re muffled.”

“I have a question,” I repeat louder. “Where do you keep going?”

“Can you please be more specific?”

“You’re always late for lights-out. Are you using that special number pin on your collar to sneak into the sister academy at night and stuff?”

“I’m writing letters in my office.”

“That’s all?”

Jasper shrugs. A nonanswer.

I tilt my head at him. Jasper is obsessed with romance, yet I know the truth that he’s secretly a heartbreaker. He should have at least five girlfriends.

“We non-tutors don’t have any ulterior motives of hitting on sister students, if that’s what you’re implying,” Jasper adds.

“So, you really only joined STRIP and stayed because of P.M.?”

Jasper’s fountain pen goes still in his hand. “Excuse me?”

“Xavier mentioned it.”

At first, his mouth only wobbles, yet he’s usually such an open book that I’m trying to slam the cover shut. “I suppose I did enjoy his approach to STRIP’s letters, and we learned from each other until he abandoned us. And I have always taken up any opportunity that allows me to write and improve my craft, so I’ve stayed. Does that answer please you?”

I peer at him. “What happened with you two?”

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