Chapter 42: I May Have MisJudged My Emotionally Repressed Roommate
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Across the room, Damien was back at his laptop, sitting in his typical position, but something felt subtly different about the way he held himself. Less rigid. Just a slight difference that most wouldn’t catch, but I, having subconsciously memorized him over the past two weeks, noticed it instantly.
I gazed at him without meaning to, my eyes forming a habit I couldn’t shake. His profile in the dim evening light. The way his hand rested near his mouth while he read, fingers touching his jaw as if he was genuinely engaged in thought, not just processing information.
The slight furrow between his brows was one of concentration, not irritation, two distinct expressions I’d learned to differentiate without trying.
Now that I knew he didn’t hate me, every look he’d ever given me had shifted in my memory, taking on new meanings, which opened up problems I didn’t have the energy to unpack.
I dropped my forehead back onto the textbook, holding it there for a moment.
This doesn’t change anything, I told myself firmly.
He still kissed you in a dark closet without a warning.
You are still...no, you are not—let’s just say, that’s a separate matter for another day.
"Nope," I said quietly to the page.
Damien glanced over from across the room. For the next hour, the apartment sort of slipped back into a rhythm that felt vaguely familiar and completely foreign all at once, a blend that caught me off guard.
I attempted to study. I made genuine efforts. I read pages, some of them twice, some even three times. I wrote down notes that, later, I would realize didn’t even connect to anything I was actually studying.
Damien worked at his desk, focused, but every now and then, I caught him stealing glances at me. When our eyes nearly met, he looked away first...quickly, like he was trying not to seem too interested.
Before, those looks felt like scrutiny, as if I was being measured according to a standard I didn’t even know existed. Now, they felt careful, and that small shift landed somewhere I hadn’t anticipated, and it lingered.
Out of habit rather than intention, I turned the music up a little while I organized my notes. Muscle memory. That instinct that usually prompted a swift correction from him.
I frowned at him, genuinely suspicious. "You’re not going to say anything about the music?"
He looked up. "It’s fine."
Just two words, even-toned and unbothered.
I gaped at him. "It’s fine?"
"Yes."
Later that night, after I’d wrung all I could from the textbook and finally admitted defeat, I headed to the kitchen for a glass of water and found Damien leaning against the sink, scrolling through his phone with that quiet intensity he brought to everything.
The kitchen felt about half its usual size.
I moved to the cabinet to grab a glass, filling it with water while aiming for efficiency, not letting anything else distract me, turning on the tap and watching it fill, becoming engrossed in the sound.
Neither of us spoke.
But the silence wasn’t empty...it was charged, packed with the words that had almost been spoken over the last hour but had retreated at the last moment. I could feel them hovering around us; we both could, probably.
I cleared my throat.
"So..."
Damien looked up from his phone.
Whatever I had been about to say vanished in an instant, just like that, the way it always did when he focused on me, which had been an ongoing challenge since day one and showed no signs of improving.
"I forgot," I muttered.
A pause ensued, then Damien smiled.
As if I was the strangest, most amusing thing he’d ever discovered.
Not a smirk, but a real smile, small and brief but genuine, carrying something warm that none of his previous expressions had. It lasted just a couple of seconds before he managed to contain it again.
But two seconds was enough.
I turned and walked back to my room with a decisive pace that looked purposeful to anyone else but was really just a retreat because I needed to protect myself, and I didn’t have much else left tonight.
By midnight, the apartment had quieted down. The rain had settled into a steady rhythm against the windows, and I lay awake.
I stared at the ceiling, feeling blank and unfocused after an hour of fruitless attempts to sleep, only gaining a better understanding of how the ceiling looked in the dark.
The blanket, his blanket, still, the one he’d tossed at me without explanation a week ago, which I’d never returned and he’d never asked for...was pulled up to my chin.
Don’t ask why I never returned it...it has a nice expensive texture. And...and it also smelled good okay?!
I continued to stare upward.
Go to sleep, Oliver.
Tomorrow things will be back to normal. You’ll wake up, and everything will have settled into something manageable, and you can function like a normal person again.
My mind, declining that suggestion, replayed the closet incident. The wall. His hand on my waist. The tilt of his head. His voice in the dark saying the thing that continued to resonate weeks later.
I sighed quietly into the room.
Then the door opened.
Softly and carefully, like someone who understood the hour and was trying not to disturb anything. I watched the ceiling as the hallway light briefly lit up the room before disappearing when the door clicked shut.
I recognized the sound of Damien moving through the dark, a rhythm I had learned without effort, the sort of sounds that come from spending enough time in a place.
There was a pause near his bed. Brief, like he was weighing something.
Then the familiar sounds of him settling in.
Silence.nMy heartbeat was doing something I wasn’t going to delve into.
Then, across the room, low and unhurried:
"Goodnight, Oliver."
I stayed still for a moment, two weeks I had lived with him...he never told me me goodnight.
Two words. That was all. Ordinary words exchanged every day without consequence, requiring nothing beyond their literal meaning, words I had heard from others countless times and processed without any notable internal response.
But somehow, I swallowed hard.
"Goodnight," I replied quietly to the dark.
Silence returned.
But it was the softest silence we’d had in this apartment since I’d moved in...no sharp edges, no forced quality. Just two people at the end of a long day, in the same room, with the rain outside and the city below, and somehow, under everything else, something had shifted tonight that wouldn’t shift back.
I lay there a little longer, looking at the ceiling. Damien Lockwood didn’t hate me.
He had never hated me.
And somehow, against all available logic and my personal aversions and any sensible interpretation of the situation,
That made everything so much more complicated than any kind of hatred ever could have been.