RIVER

Taylor was quieter than I would have loved to be during dinner, and I could not be happier. When I offered to pay for what I had eaten, he waved it off. I did not like being indebted to him, so I planned to leave him a few bills when I moved out by tomorrow. I have no idea how long the wait would be at the housing agency, but I must get it done by tomorrow so my life can get on track, and I have no reason to lie to my father.

I look down at my phone. I had promised to check in with him before I went to bed, but now that I could not be honest, it was hard. I wonder if there would be other things I couldn't be honest about with him. Was this going to be the reason that I drifted from him? I try to focus my mind on the present and stop worrying about what has not happened yet.

I take my phone and call my father. I hear screaming and muffled sounds in the background. "Dad," I groan into the phone.

"Kiddo, I am just taking one drink," he defends almost immediately.

"And one drink would spiral into a few bottles, and then you would be drunk. Who's going to pick you up and make sure you get home safe tonight?"

"You don't have to worry about that; I am a grown man who can take care of myself." I want to counter him, but I can't.

He went through these phases, drinking more than usual and disappearing into bars while I cleaned up the consequences.

"Make sure you get home tonight."

"Yes, ma'am," he teases, and I sigh. He should not be teasing me when he was the one in the wrong. "Are you all settled in?"

"Nope." I want to tell him why, but I can't seem to bring myself to do so. "I fell asleep and figured I could do it tomorrow," I add. It's not a lie, only a half-truth, and until I sort this out, he does not need to find out.

"Huh! River Rainbow Wilson? You did not follow a schedule?" he says, and I roll my eyes. "I guess you are taking my advice after all," he adds.

"I told you I will," I lied, knowing that once this housing situation was behind me, I was going to go back to my tight schedule. That was the only reason I was able to get anything done in life. I believe that everyone should have a schedule they follow to the letter so that they will never worry about not getting this done.

"Okay, let me let you get some rest so you can do all you have to do early tomorrow," he says as if he knew what I was about to say.

"Good night, Dad. Don't stay out late, and make sure you eat something once you go home. You know what beer does to..."

"Good night, kiddo," he cut me off and cut off the call before I could ramble on. I plug the phone into the bedside and lie on the bed. I had made the bed because I had no other option.

My alarm goes off at five am, and when I look out, the sun is still down. I say a little morning prayer before I get out and begin to do a little warm-up in the room; that is the only way I can get my body moving.

I play a soft, low-fi beat, making sure the volume is not loud enough to wake Taylor. I take out my things and go to the bathroom so I can freshen up for the day. Once I am done with my bath, I go into the room and put on a white tee neatly tucked into a pair of mom jeans.

I put on a necklace my father had given me when I turned fifteen; it had belonged to my mom, and he waited so long to make sure I would love and cherish it. Wearing it always made me feel like she could still see me, like someone was watching to make sure I didn't mess it all up. I toss my hair into a neat ponytail before taking a double look at myself in the mirror. By the time my morning routine is complete, it is already seven am.

I am a bit hungry, as I was the kind of girl who always wanted to have breakfast, but I did not know what I was supposed to do. I knew that if I left the room now, I could get a place to eat some bread and coffee before I got to the using agency. I had done a little research and found out exactly where it was, three miles from the house, and it would take me forty minutes on foot, which means if I left now, I would be in time to meet them open by eight.

I slip out of the house to the empty street and begin to walk, following the directions on my phone, stopping to check if I would see a place to eat something before the craziness of the day descended. I see a coffee truck that sells a few scones and coffee; left with no choice, I get one scone and a cup of Americano and then find a place to sit.

I finally made it to the housing agency, and I was greeted by a woman who looked like she was in her thirties and twenties at once. Her face looked older, but her clothes and energy screamed 'forever 23.'

"Hello, ma'am, I am River Wilson, and I..."

"We do not have any rooms left; this semester was brutal." Hearing her say that made my heart skip a beat, but I was sure that I would be able to convince her to swap me with someone else.

"Oh no, I already have a room," I say, and she looks at me as if I had gone mad.

"Then why are you here?"

"There was a mix-up," I say, setting the file on the table that separated us and pulling out the rental agreement. "My roommate is a boy." She looks up at me as if I had just spoken a foreign language. I clear my throat and reaffirm.

"My roommate is a boy."

RIVER

"How did this happen?" she asked me, taking the agreement from my hand as she began to tap on the keyboard. I calmly explain the situation to her, and she looks up at me after staring at her screen for a while. She looks at me as if I am being ridiculous or maybe joking with her; when she sees I am waiting to hear from her, she drops the papers on the table.

"You had me worried for a second," she says as if she had solved everything, but in reality, she had done nothing.

"Well, shouldn't you be? I am supposed to have a girl roommate, but..."

"You have a boy," she nods, and I tilt my head, trying to understand what she meant.

"And you don't think that's an issue?"

"Of course not, how can it be? The house you chose is a shared house, meaning that both genders can cohabitate there," she explained, and even though that should be enough to clear the air, my mind still can't understand what she meant. "You did not specify in the agreement that you wanted a girl, so we went with the next person on the list, and it happened to be..." She looked down at the papers in front of her before adding. "Taylor Deluca"

"I thought Taylor was a girl," I cry out in frustration.

"You've said so, but as we've established, Taylor is a boy, and going back and forth isn't helping us both." I stare at her because I don't believe her one bit.

"Can I at least swap rooms and have a girl roommate?" I ask, and she shakes her head as if she is about to deliver great news.

"I am sorry I cannot do that; if you find someone who wants to swap, then I would happily help you, but without their consent, I can't change their room." I eyed her and couldn't believe how unhelpful she was being. Do I begin to knock on people's doors asking them if they want to swap rooms with me?

If anyone asked me that, I would think they had gone mad and slam the door in their face. I groan, and she smiles. "It's not such a bad thing," she adds with a smile. "One of the best relationships I had on campus was with a boy I shared a bed with." I was almost certain that the situation was different, but I was not in the mood to talk about what her life was like.

"Is it possible I can change housing?" My mind was spinning, trying to find a place to live. I could not think of living with Taylor for the rest of the session; it could not work. What was I to tell my father when he called?

"Well, you can try, but I am sure that all housing around campus and on campus is full." For some reason, she seems to be enjoying this more than she should. "Just take the house and don't make a big deal out of it." She is ready to dismiss me, and I can see it. I sigh and take the agreement form from her desk and step out, feeling my life slip from my hands.

This was not how the start of my morning was supposed to go. I was supposed to come in here, have the issue resolved, and then go to my department to get my class schedule, but now I wonder if the day was cursed already from the start. I stay rooted in place for a few more seconds before I turn and begin to walk back to the apartment. I should be going to school, but my day was ruined. Why ruin it further? By the time I had walked forty minutes and was at the top of the hill, I was panting and huffing so much that I did not know how much longer it would take me to catch my breath. I see a motorcycle parked in front of the house. I wonder how I had not noticed it this morning when I left.

I open the door, and I see Taylor standing in the kitchenette, shirtless, pouring water into his mouth. I stand and take a deep breath, trying to focus my eyes on anything but his toned abs and slightly more visible tattoos on his side. If only that lady at the housing agency had seen this, she would not have said it was not a big deal and would have tried her best to help me out. How was I to deal with this?

"You are an early worm," he says, closing the bottle and dropping it to the counter before wiping off the remains of water on the corner of his mouth.

"And you sleep in," I return. I don't know why I said that when I was supposed to be talking about our situation.

"So you are getting back from the housing agency, I guess." He ignores my remark and walks out of the kitchenette towards me. I take a step back, not because my brain tells me it's the right thing to do. "What did they say?" a teasing smirk on his face.

"You already knew what they would say, didn't you?" I asked, shocked he had allowed me to waste my entire morning walking back and forth, only to get disappointed.

"It's already too late to try and switch houses," he says, almost repeating what the woman had said.

"And you could not have told me this yesterday?" I ask, feeling my blood boil. He felt like a prankster in that moment, and I hated it. "You made me ruin my entire day just to get that news at the housing agency?" My voice rose a bit, but as soon as I realised the change, I stopped talking and threw a glare at him.

"With how uptight you seem, would you have listened to me?" His question strikes a chord in my entire being. He is right; there was nothing he would have said that would have made me relent. I would have still gone back and forth without thinking about it. "See," he adds with a head tilt and then the smirk over his face.

"I guess you are my roommate," he exclaims, not smiling, still smirking at me.

I take a deep breath and nod. "I guess I am," I mouth to him, and he claps his hand. Was I really doing this? Living with a shirtless boy who made water look scandalous? Maybe the woman at housing was right. Maybe I was cursed.

"You strike me as a girl who would like to make rules that must be followed. I will listen to you," he says as if he were giving them an opportunity. I frown and sit on the couch for the first time, feeling how soft it is. Maybe this place can't be that bad; it would be a year, and I would make sure to change my housing and double-check it all so this does not happen again. How bad can a year be?

"Are you giving the rules or not?"

"I want to write them out."

RIVER

I was even surprised that he asked me to make the rules. I had thought he would have been against it, but then maybe this was a good thing. He knew boundaries and decided to accept them. I take out a notebook and open it to an empty page before I begin to write in it. I wanted to believe that somehow I might find a way here before the end of the year. Who knows, my luck could just turn around all of a sudden, and I could get lucky.

'HOUSE RULES' I write boldly at the top of the paper and draw a line underneath. I hear him snicker, but he does not say anything about it. "First rule, you can't be shirtless, especially in shared places," I say, and he smirks with a head shake. He is quiet as if he had agreed, and since I did not get any refusal from him, I scribble it down and go on to the next.

"No morning noise, at least before 9 am," I say, and because he is just sitting there quietly as I recite all of the rules before scribbling them down. I tear out the page and hand it over to him.

He takes the paper from me and stares at the right rules I had written. "Don't I get to write anything down?" He sounds like he is judging all of the rules I had written.

I stretch the pen to him, and he shakes his head. "I am not a weirdo," he whispers as if that is supposed to be some kind of insult. He drops the paper on the coffee table in front of us before he walks to the room and comes out with a neon highlighter and begins to scribble on the paper.

Once he is done, he hands it over to me, and I gasp at what he has under. Under rule number one, which is that he can't be shirtless in shared spaces, he writes, 'I can't promise that,' and then he goes on to rule number four and scribbles, 'Can I bring my dog?' He knows I clearly mean that he can't have a girl over, and yet he wants to provoke a reaction out of me. And under number eight, which is most important, no flirting with me. 'You'll break this one first, sweetheart.'

I look up at him with my eyebrow raised slightly. "This is only temporary; I would find a solution to this, and we would go our separate ways," he nods, but it is obvious he does not believe in me.

"I will put this up on the fridge," he announces as he makes his way to the kitchenette. Soon, the rules are hanging there, and he is still standing in the middle of the kitchen, shirtless. I stood up and walked to the counter separating us, and with a clearing of my throat, I grabbed his attention.

"Rule number one," he says, looking at me as if I am speaking gibberish for a while before he walks away with a smirk and emerges a few minutes later with a tank shirt on.

"Happy?" I nod because I am; at least he was not violating me with his body, even though I could still see how much he worked out from his arms. "I am going to make some toast and scrambled eggs; want some, sweetheart?"

"Don't call me that. And no, thanks," I say, backing away to go unpack my things.

"I guess you don't like your nickname. Then I am going to come up with another for you."

"I do not want a nickname; you can call me River, and I would call you Taylor," I say as if he is not aware of his name.

"Are you sure that's what you want, sweetheart?"

"Hundred per cent"

"Suit yourself then," he said, turning to the cupboard and taking out the ingredients he needed. I was in my room and checking the time. I could see it was a little past ten am, and I sighed. I'd better get to unpacking.

A few hours later, I was done with all of the stuff I had and was now anticipating the rest of my things coming along later that week. I can't believe I would unpack them now and then get to pack them up again. I know that I would find a solution to this problem, as there has never been an issue I have not been able to solve.

I looked up places I could get something to eat since I had no food to prepare with me. I stepped out, and sitting on the couch were Taylor and a strange girl almost on his lap. It hasn't been a full day, and he was already breaking one of the rules.

"Good afternoon," she says with her eyes running down my body as she looks back at Taylor. "Is she the roommate?" I usually did not care about what people thought of me, but I did not like that this girl, who looked superficial, had already heard things about me.

"She is." Taylor looked uninterested in whatever she was saying as he kept on wiping his phone.

"Baby, don't you think she is too hot to be your roommate?" The girl cried, acting as if I were not standing right there.

"Taylor, a word," I say, and then to the girl I smiled. "Don't worry, Taylor is not my type." I do not even know what my type is; I had never been in a relationship before, so saying my type was a far fetch. She looks offended by my declaration, and I can't understand why. Shouldn't she be happy? I ignore her and take Taylor to the kitchen, pointing at the fridge.

"It's been barely a minute, and you are already breaking rules," I say, pointing to the fridge.

"Are you saying I am not allowed to have my girlfriend over?" he asked, amused. It is almost as if he thought the rules were supposed to be a joke.

"Did I stutter?" I respond, looking over to the blonde sitting on the couch, staring at us. "I am going for lunch, but this should be gone by the time I get back." I hold my bag close to me before storming out angrily.

PS: I know you want to see River's rules, so here you go.

HOUSE RULES.

1. No shirtless walking around the apartment. Ever.

2. Respect morning silence: no loud music or talking before 9 a.m.

3. Dishes must be washed immediately after use.

4. No random people allowed in the apartment.

5. No touching my stuff. Especially my notes. Or my snacks.

6. Keep the bathroom clean. Hair. Towels. Everything.

7. You stay on your side of the living room. I stay on mine.

8. No flirting. With me. At all. Ever.