Page 22 of The Beautiful Collision
As I head inside, the living room is drowned in shadow except for light bleeding from Maya’s laptop screen on the dining table. Before Maya moved in, I’d pass out wherever gravity won. The apartment was the one place where MaineHamilton, Comic Relief and Hockey Star, could finally power down.
Now it’s just another venue, and my toughest critic has a front-row seat.
I pry off my sneakers, because she’s established her position on wearing shoes indoors via progressive escalation: disapproving looks, pointed throat-clearing, and finally a hot-pink sticky note depicting what might have been either a frowny face or a biohazard symbol.
And that’s when I see her.
She returns from the kitchen, giving me the slightest nod of greeting, then sits at her laptop. My eyes track her the whole time, and my exhaustion suddenly burns away into a crystallized clarity. Even in her most relaxed state, doing coursework late at night, she’s sex on legs.
She’s wearing a tissue-thin gray tank top, complete with black bra straps slicing dark lines across pale shoulders. Her sleep shorts retreat further up her thighs with each micro-adjustment, giving me an eyeful. And her hair is twisted into messy chaos, stabbed through with a ballpoint pen.
My throat resembles desert conditions, and the sight shoots straight to my cock. And the worst part is she’s not even trying. This isn’t some dressed-to-the-nines party outfit with fuck-me heels and predatory lipstick. This is Maya studying at midnight, in low-power mode.
I realize I’ve been frozen inside the door and staring at her right as she glances up at me. Her gaze holds mine a beat past casual, past roommate acknowledgment, into territory that makes my chest tight. I bet she can see it all—the stress behind my bravado, the sizzling attraction I’m hiding.
Well, trying to hide.
“Big night at the office?” Her voice cuts cool across the distance, and there’s something under the sarcasm, something that notices I’m later than usual.
“Just living the dream.” The words come out rough. “One large pepperoni at a time.”
She gives me this little half-nod, already pivoting back to her screen, dismissing me as efficiently as she’d process a food delivery. The pen catches between her teeth as she puts it in her mouth, and I have to lock my jaw to keep from making a sound.
I retreat toward my room, the door swings wide, and then I see it.
Dead center on my pillow, positioned with pathological precision: the plate I’d abandoned in the sink this morning, now radiating aggressive cleanliness. The ceramic actually throws back light like an accusation, and a hot pink sticky note crowns it:
Did it get lost on its way home?
Anger floods my system, instant and pointless, because this is the latest in the back-and-forth micro-aggressions we’ve shared since she moved in. I’d tried to welcome her, cleaning her room and giving her the freedom to fill it—and the rest of the apartment—as she needed to to feel welcome.
But she keeps crossing the line.
She’s synchronized her marathon-length showers to my practice schedule with admirable precision. She’s “optimized” the kitchen into some Nordic organizing system that probably requires certification. She’s asserted dominance over the scent of the entire apartment, and now she’s working on the sight.
Her shit—decorative items, pot plants—is now fuckingeverywhere.
So I keep silently pushing her back over the line.
A hockey bag left here, a plate left in the sink there. It’s immature, but it’s the only possible rebellion in the cold warbetween us, because the fact is I can’t afford the war to go hot. Her rent splits the difference between survival and drowning.
The note crumples in my fist and energy buzzes through me—frustration and exhaustion and the phantom pressure of her gaze—and I need to burn it off before I do something stupid. Something like storming back out there, telling her what those shorts are doing to me, and telling her to take herfuckingcandles…
And maybe asking if she’d like to fuck before she goes.
But I don’t do that, because I need her. And if I confronted her, I might be tricked into admitting that I time my morning protein shake based on when she gets out of the shower and heads to make coffee. Or that I feel like a giddy schoolboy when her guard drops and she almost smiles at my stupid jokes.
So instead, I’ll do what I always do when I’ve got energy to burn and no party to ringlead. My work shirt hits the floor, stained with grease, and the pull-up bar lurks in my doorway like a constant dare. At leastitdoesn’t leave passive-aggressive notes or make my apartment smell like promises I can’t afford.
I launch up, grip biting metal, and pull.
One. Two. Three.
My shoulders shriek immediately—a clean pain I understand.
Four. Five. Six.
Here’s what’s fucked: I’ve got a PhD in reading women. After three minutes of the Maine Hamilton Method, they’re usually laughing and sharing their numbers. But Maya’s built from different materials, which deflect my bullshit back on me and make me feel a bit stupid.
