Page 61 of And They Were Roommates

“I’m setting the mood for romance.”

My heartbeat splutters. I try to stay very still and normal. “For me?”

The light of Jasper’s buzzing bedside lamp suddenly hits his face at an angle that turns his cheeks rosier. Did he move? “For writing love letters together. Work! Non?”

“R-right.” What else did I think? “Isn’t a dull environment best?” I gesture at the pansy bouquet pattern on our walls. “I mean, even without the heart, we have that pink wallpaper.”

“You meanshabby chicwallpaper?”

“It’s baroque at most.”

“If we’re getting into specifics, it’s French country,” Jasper says, tossing a hand.

I frown. “Is there a point to this, Jasper?”

Jasper’s mouth opens and closes before he hops over the fire hazard he’s created, crushing petals in the process, and meets me at the door. “I have been thoughtless. You do have a lot of pressure on you. Thank you for being honest.”

Now my whole body is what’s on fire. Do I have a fever? Did I catch some illness from that freezing gazebo? “I yelled at you.”

“You did.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“It’s an honor that you shared your feelings with me. You often don’t with others.”

“Oh.” It’s all I can say in the face of being read by somebody who shouldn’t be able to. Who can’t.

But it’s true. While I have to monitor Mom’s feelings over mygrades, Delilah’s over my own well-being, and every other students’ here to ensure I’ve kept my head down enough, I never have to with Jasper. In a way, that part of being around him feels like freedom. Even if I’m simultaneously trapped in a room with him.

“However, you’re misguided about one thing,” Jasper says, playing with the bangs shaping his face. “People do not like me.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh. “Everyone loves you.”

“My aunt is the principal. They have to. Isn’t that why you’ve tried to tolerate me so for so long?”

My shoulders tense. “I. Well.”

Jasper smiles, but it’s bitter. “Same goes for the other top ranks. It’s so sought after by everyone—rather, their parents, who practically threaten their own kids to kick us off.”

I look toward the window and at the library beyond. “You help them with their love lives. They all thank you.”

Jasper wanders to the windowsill. He grabs a chunk of the glass paperweight he shattered on the first day. “And some are friendly to get a date but would cheer if I got hit by a car. I’ll never know who’s who.”

I stand there, unsure what to say.

“My advice,” Jasper says when I don’t respond, putting down the paperweight. “Whenever you do rank, do not trust anybody here either.”

I’d already been telling myself that since I arrived. So why does my heart hurt so terribly, hearing the same from Jasper?

“Anyway, von Hevringprinz.” Jasper closes the space between us and reaches toward me, only to pull back. His hand hangs awkwardly in the air like I shocked him. He’s never had a problem with invading my personal space before.

“You good?”

“Y-yes,” Jasper says, but on a strange trill. He tries again, taking my hand into his.

“What are you doing?” I ask with a waver in my voice.

Jasper guides me away from the doorway, deeper into the room, and I’m so thrown off that I let him. He sits in the candlelit heart, letting go, then pats the space beside him on the rug. As I sit, he pours me sparkling apple juice into a plastic cup stolen from Dix and hands it to me. “We’re scrapping my EROS. What do you wish to write?”

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