WRENLEY

His name is Jerry.

That's all I got at the party before Tess dragged me to the snack table and started narrating the social standing of everyone in the room like I'd asked.

I remember leaving there feeling things I never thought was possible. Meanwhile, Aurel has been trying to talk to me all week but I avoid him.

The thought of Jerry fills my head until I can't think of anything else which is a problem, because I have several actual problems that deserve the attention more.

“How do you get a guy to like you?” I blurt out to Tess one afternoon. The second the words leave my mouth, I consider throwing myself through the nearest window.

“Oh my, look at you having your first crush,” she teased, bringing her chair closer to mine.

"I regret asking already.” I muttered with a hand over my face. We had just finished class for today. “Who is he? Is it Aurel?” She gave me a light shove. “I saw the way he looked at you at that party.”

“Ewww, no. I rather be married to a dog than him. I'm talking about that marine biologist graduate. The one who helped us in practicals.”

“Oh,” her happy expression changes. “Well I guess the best people to ask are the guys.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They are guys. If anyone knows about winning guys, it's the guys on the hockey team.”

Yeah right. As if I can just walk up to one of them to ask for dating advice.

“Why can't you advise me?” I asked.

“Me? What does my single ass know? I've been single ever since I was born so I know nothing.”

“Fair point,” I replied.

As luck would have it, I overheard Aurel and his coach discussing his poor grade in law and the possibility of him not playing if he doesn't get it back on track.

An hour later, I find Aurel in the basement of the athletic complex, at a long table with a textbook open in front of him that he is very clearly not reading.

He has the look of someone who's been on the same page for twenty minutes and has started to take it personally.

I sit down across from him without being asked.

He glances up. "Red? What are you doing here?"

"Don't you dare!" I glared at him.

"What? It's a really catchy name."

"I hear you're failing." I say it flat, and his eyes go wide.

"Where did you hear that from?" he asked, and his right hand twitched on the table before he stopped it.

People don't shake like that over a bad grade. They shake over what happens after the bad grade.

“Elise complains about it like it's something you're doing to her personally." I lied, hiding the fact that I totally eavesdropped the conversation he had with his coach. It's not like she's going to find out anyway.

"And here I thought you came down here for my company," he said with a sad face.

"I came down here to make you a deal." I put my hands flat on the table. "I'll tutor you for free. As much as you need, until the grade's fixed and you keep your spot."

He leans back. Now he's interested, and trying not to look like it. I look at his hands that are no longer shaking while he asks. "What's the catch?"

"You help me with something." The words cost me more than they should have. “Unfortunately, it requires talking to you.”

I never thought a day would come where I would ask him for help not to talk of dating advice.

"Okay, that shouldn't be hard, what's that?"

This is the part I rehearsed and it still comes out wrong.

"There's someone I want. A guy. I don't…" I stop and start over, plainer. " I don't know how this works, the talking, the… whatever you people do before you decide you like someone. But you do. You're good at it, everyone says so, it's apparently your entire personality. So you teach me that, and I teach you Con Law, and we both get what we want."

For a long moment he doesn't say anything.

"Who's the guy," he says finally.

"Does it matter?"

"It might. If it's somebody I know I can tell you if you're wasting your time."

"Jerry?" he blurts out halfway through my description.

I stop. "You know him?"

"Sure, uhm Jerry is a great guy. I can totally help you.” He tries to sound cheerful but his furrowed brows give him away.

"You don't sound like you want to." I pitched in.

"I want to pass Con Law." He pulls his textbook closed and looks at me, with a smile on his face.

"Deal. You teach me the commerce clause, I teach you how to get the guy. When do we start?"

"Now. Or else you're going to fail before we finish negotiating."

In the last two hours of our study session, I've come to realise that he's not so stupid after all. Everyone talks about Aurel Castell like he's a nice golden retriever who happens to be good at hockey, and he lets them, but when I make him explain the cases back to me in his own words instead of reading them, he gets there fast.

He just couldn't make the course stick to his memory.

It's almost ten pm when my phone buzzes. I almost don't look.

It's an email, forwarded from the property manager, and I read the subject line twice before the words go in.

NOTICE OF UNIT ENTRY; LOCKS TO BE CHANGED 6:00 AM.

"Hey." Aurel snaps his fingers in front of me. "You went somewhere. What's wrong?"

"Nothing." I lock the phone and stand up too fast, gathering my things, my notebook, my one good pen. "Same time Thursday. Read the next chapter before you come or I'm not explaining it twice."

"Wrenley."

It's the first time he's used my actual name. It stops me for half a second, which I hate.

"I'm fine," I say. "I'll see you Thursday."

I leave before he asks me another question.

I have until six in the morning to figure out where I'm going to live, with three trash bags' worth of a life I built out of nothing, and no one on this entire continent I can call.

I have never once, in any world, been this alone with a clock running

WRENLEY

By six in the morning my whole life is in three trash bags on the curb.

I packed them by phone light so I wouldn't have to turn on a lamp I no longer pay for.

The first bag is clothes. The second is the swim gear, which is the only thing in any of the bags worth more than the bags. The third is everything else, which turns out to be almost nothing; some books, a mug, a charger, the dead plant I kept meaning to water and apparently could not bring myself to leave.

I don't know why I packed the plant. It's dead. I'm arguably not doing much better, so maybe that's why but I'm sitting on the cold concrete next to it like we're both waiting for a bus that isn't coming.

I have nowhere to go. That's the part I keep arriving at no matter which way I run the problem. There's also no one to call unless I want several hours of concern, disappointment, and life advice I didn't ask for.

But that would mean giving up my dreams to go live the life my parents planned and I am not calling Tess to say can I sleep on your floor and then answer the forty soft questions that follow.

I'm not about to do that because of how much effort I've put into staying here. I need to get a job and I need it fast.

The laundromat behind me isn't open yet. The street's empty except for a delivery truck two blocks down.

So I make the mistake of thinking about my life for thirty seconds and how spectacularly a person can ruin their own morning when they've cut themselves off from everyone who ever knew their real name.

Then a car slows down. And stops. A figure gets out of the car but because he's a bit fat from where I'm sitting, I don't recognise him until he comes closer

And it's him, of course it's him because apparently humiliation wasn't finished with me yet.

Aurel is in practice clothes, his hair is a mess, and he looks at me, then at the three trash bags, and then at the dead plant, but he doesn't say anything stupid, which is somehow the worst part. I could've handled something stupid.

"Hey," he says. “Why are you out here by this time?”

"It's because I'm a creep. I love watching people go about their day while I sit here homeless. "

He looks at the bags again. "How long have you been out here?"

""Long enough to regret being born. Why?” I sigh when I see the frown on his face. “I'm actually waiting for someone." It's the fastest lie I have although it's a bad one.

"Okay." He doesn't believe me but doesn't push either. He just goes back to his car, puts it in park mode, which I didn't tell him to do, and gets out. "Then you can wait for them at my place, because it's freezing and you've got swim gear sitting in a wet gutter."

Wonderful. My options were freezing to death or accepting help.

"I'm fine,” I said and my teeth decided that right now was the best time to chatter. Seeing that it was no use lying, I said “I'm not going to your place."

"We have a guest room downstairs, with its own everything. That way, nobody'll bother you." He says it easy, like it's already decided, like he's done this a hundred times, when I happen to know he has never once done this. "Look, I need my tutor not to have hypothermia,” he runs his hands through his hair. “I know it's a selfish thing but my grade depends on you not dying."

"That's the worst manipulation attempt I've ever heard.” I said between gritted teeth.

"It's working though." He's already crouching to grab the first bag. "You're still talking to me instead of telling me to leave."

He's actually right. I mean, I should tell him to leave. The whole reason I survive up here is that I don't let people close enough to notice things that would trigger their suspicions. Like for example my hair and how it takes hours to dry or the fact that I don't get sick at all or the fact that my body's temperature is actually slightly higher than that of a normal human being.

A guest room downstairs from a hockey player is kinda like the exact opposite of keeping my head down. But because it's forty degrees at six in the morning and the alternative is the bus that isn't coming, I spend thirty seconds trying to think of a better option.

Unfortunately, reality refuses to provide one.

"The gear bag's heavy," I say. "Don't drop it."

He grins like I've handed him something, and pops the trunk.

The moment I saw the house, my face gave me away by how unimpressed I looked. I've seen way better and more beautiful buildings.

Walking from one end of the house to the other took several minutes, and there were so many rooms I couldn't keep count. Nothing rattled as every door swung silently.

The carpets were so thick my feets vanished into them. Sounds floated upward and seemed to disappear before returning as faint echoes.

The kitchen is bigger than my entire old apartment, which is a crime because no one should have this much hallway. As he showed me around the house, I caught sight of a couch that two people could lie down on and not touch.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he says once the tour is over. “So, what do you think?”

“How can you even afford a place like this anyway?” I asked fidgeting with my sweatpants.

“Well, that's the perks of being an only child. If my parents had more children, we would be classified as middle class but since it's just me, there's literally no one else to spend it on but me.”

He grins like someone who's never had to check a bank account before buying groceries.

“If you need anything, my room's upstairs by the left. Get some sleep, you look like you need it.”

And with that, he left me.

I stare at the number again, waiting for it to become a worse idea than my current situation.

“No,” I delete the number before taking a deep breath. “I can do this,” I took another one. “I just need to get my shit together.”

Then I hear screaming upstairs, which is oddly reassuring. Finally, people are having a worse morning than me.

“This isn't so bad,” I whispered when I realised just how big of a mess I'm in before laying down. I meant to rest for an hour. Apparently I blacked out like an elderly Victorian woman waking up when the sky had gone orange with no idea where I was, and for one half-second I forgot all of it.

When I get up, my stomach growls as a reminder that I haven't had anything to eat in twenty four hours. I follow the smell of food which leads me to the shared kitchen. The designers of this house made just one parlour and kitchen so its occupants have to share.

The moment I walk into the kitchen, I stop dead in my tracks.

"Hey," the guy I've been crushing on says. "Swim team, right? From the party." He tilts his head. "You're the new roommate?"

I can't speak. I genuinely cannot make a word out, because my brain is doing the math and the math is insane: the guy I made a deal to win lives across the hall from the boy I made the deal with.

And from the doorway behind me, where he's just come down the stairs and stopped, I feel more than seeing Aurel go still.

He's standing there with a towel over his shoulder, looking at my face; at whatever my face is doing right now, which I can't control and would give anything to take back.

I watched him put it together and understood exactly who I meant. Exactly who he agreed to help me win. Exactly who lives twelve feet from the room he just carried my bags into.

He doesn't say anything, that's how I know it's bad.

WRENLEY

The campus gym at four in the afternoon is the probably the worst possible place to be having a crisis about Aurel Castell's arms, but here I am doing just that.

The place is loud; from the clanking of the metal plates, somebody's bad playlist leaking out of the corner speaker, two guys near the dumbbells arguing about a game, a cluster of girls by the mats who are very obviously here to watch the hockey team train and not to work out.

The whole room smells like testosterone, sweat and someone's too-strong body spray. And in the middle of it, at the rack against the mirrors, is Aurel, pushing a loaded bar up over his chest in a cutoff shirt with his hair pulled back, and I am sitting at a machine I'm supposed to be using, pretending to scroll my phone, occasionally stealing glances at the way his biceps bulges like it's my job.

“Pull yourself together,” I coaxed myself because I hate this. I came here to train and mind my business, instead I'm thinking about the fact that this morning that same shirtless idiot was eating eggs out of a pan twelve feet from the man I'm scheming to date, in a house where I now sleep, in an arrangement so stupid it loops back around to feeling like a trap.

I'm supposed to be focused on Jerry, the one who lives across the hall, who I made an entire deal to win, who is the entire reason I'm tangled up with the boy currently bench-pressing my concentration into dust.

I drag my eyes back to my phone. After the eviction, I decided to pursue a skill I long abandoned because I felt I had no need for.

Three students have texted about alterations, one for her date night dress, the order is a formal wear that needs its last fitting by Friday.

The pay isn't glamorous but I'm determined to move out of his house as soon as I possibly can.

My mind is still on this when his shadow falls over me, and I feel the heat radiating off of him before he speaks.

"You're doing it wrong," Aurel says.

"What do you mean? I'm just sitting down. There's no wrong way to sit."

"I meant before. The pull-down thing." He drops onto the bench across from me, towel around his neck, insufferably pleased. "You were yanking the bar with your arms. You're going to hurt your shoulders, and then who's going to keep me from failing out?"

"My shoulders are fine." I involuntarily touch them.

"The way you exercise is a crime against the human body."

"Uh, excuse you?! I'm perfectly fine, okay?"

"Whatever you say," he has that stupid grin on his face. The one that apparently charms the girls on campus. "Ok Red, let me show you before you injure yourself and tank my GPA in the process."

I frown at the name but that only fuels him the more. I should stop letting the name get to me or else, he's never going to stop calling me that ridiculous name.

"Fine, whatever,” I roll my eyes. “Two minutes."

That's my first mistake. Because showing me means he stands behind me at the machine until our bodies touch, and I can painfully feel every muscle outline on his body.

One of his hands wraps around my elbow and the other flattens against my back, even as his voice drops into this low murmur right against my ear, under the noise of the room.

"Pull from here, not your arms. Drive the elbows down before slowly coming back up." His palm presses flat between my shoulder blades. "There. Feel the difference?"

What I feel is every nerve in my spine come alive, and a heat climbing my neck that for once has nothing to do with what I am. I pull the bar down harder than I need to, just to give the wanting in my chest somewhere to go.

Over by the mats, one of the watching girls says something to another, before they both look at us, and I hear the word roommate travel.

"Got it," I say. "Time's up."

"A little thank you doesn't kill you know" He still hasn't moved his hand. We're both looking at the mirror, at the two of us framed in it, and for one stupid second the gym goes quiet.

"Are you serious right now?"

The voice cuts the whole room in half.

Elise is in the doorway in her warm-ups, gym bag sliding off her shoulder, her face white and tight. Heads immediately turn toward her, before turning toward us like they are remote controlled.

Aurel's hand drops off my back in a flash like the machine went hot. Too late. She saw it. Forty people saw it.

"Elise…" he starts.

"Don't you dare," She crosses the floor fast and the room shifts to watch, phones forgotten in laps, the dumbbell argument going silent.

She stops right in front of me close enough that I can see her pulse jumping in her throat, and her voice comes out low and shaking. "I warned you, didn't I? I told you to stay away from him. And here you are with his hands all over you in front of everyone with absolutely no shame at all. Like the whole campus doesn't already know you moved into his house."

Somewhere behind me a guy goes "ohhh," soft, the sound of someone settling in to watch a fight.

"I'm tutoring him," I say, flat. "And I needed a place to live."

"Right. Tutoring." Her laugh is ugly. "The little charity case sleeps her way into the nice house and calls it studying."

"Ooh," goes the crowd, quieter, a few of them wincing, because that one was meant to draw blood.

Aurel steps forward, his whole body moving to put himself between us. For one second he's about to defend me, and some traitor part of me leans toward it before I can stop it.

Then he stops.

I watch it happen. I watch him look at Elise's white face and her shaking hands, watch something flicker behind his eyes and the words die in his throat.

He pulls back. "Elise, please stop making a scene. Come outside, let's just talk."

So that's what he is. I should've seen it. Golden boy, everybody's favorite, and he folds like wet paper the second his girlfriend raises her voice. All that warmth and not one bone of spine underneath it.

I turn to Elise myself, since nobody else is going to, and I let my voice go cold and loud enough to reach the back of the room.

"I'll say this once. I don't want your boyfriend. I want to not be homeless, a problem you've clearly never had, so I won't expect you to follow it." A couple of phones tilt up now; I don't care. "You want to call me a charity case? At least I earn what I've got instead of being handed it. And next time you threaten somebody, don't do it with your voice shaking in a room full of people. It just tells everyone you already know you lost."

"OHHH…" the crowd goes, openly now, somebody actually laughing, the burn landing in real time.

Elise's mouth opens but nothing comes out.

I pick up my water bottle and walk past both of them toward the door.

I'm almost out when Elise finds her voice again.

"Enjoy the house while it lasts," she growls. "You have no idea who you're dealing with. Give it time but I promise you, there won't be one person on this campus who would look at you without laughing once I'm done with you."

I don't turn around. I push out into the cold and let the door swing shut on all of it.

But my hands are shaking, and it's not from the cold. Underneath the anger, the very thing I've been trying to suppress lifts its head.

“If only you would just let me out once,” the voice in my head whispered. “I promise to make her go away.”