Page 39 of The Roommate Subtext

“We don’t really have that kind of friendship. It would be impolite.” He couldn’t imagine making sex jokes with someone unless he was really close with them, and he and Maggie weren’t there yet. Yet, his brain repeated. Maybe they’d be there at some point. Maybe Maggie wanted him to make sex jokes.

Maggie put her uneaten pizza crust down on her plate and folded her hands. “I’m just saying, it’s OK if you’re asexual. I don’t mind if you’re asexual, obviously. It’s none of my business.”

“And I’m saying, I’m not asexual. I’m completely—” He paused, trying to remember the term. “Completely allosexual.” When she raised her eyebrows in obvious surprise, he pushed his advantage. “Yeah, I know the word. One of my friends in college was ace. So, while obviously there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m not, and maybe you’re stereotyping me.”

Maggie had the grace to look sheepish. “Maybe I am.”

“Is it because of the all-or-nothing view of nerds as sex-obsessed or completely asexual?” He’d heard all that before, in high school, when being a late bloomer got him pegged in several ways and none of them the fun way.

“But you admit you’re a nerd.” She turned to face him, pulling one leg up beneath her on the couch. When her hair fell forward into her face, she tucked it behind her ear, a gesture so natural that he shouldn’t even notice it, but his eyes followed the curve of her fingers along her cheekbone, and he lost the thread of the conversation for a minute.

“I’ve been accused of that, yes.” He took a sip of his beer. The rich, sharp taste lingered on his tongue. On the screen, Tyrone and Neveah were going for round two. Wow, there was a lot of sex in this show. He never noticed it when he was watching alone.

“It might be the glasses.” Maggie reached over and tapped the frames, gently touching the arm of his glasses like she was going to take them off.

“I need those to see.” Blake couldn’t make himself pull away.

“I wasn’t going to take them.” She drew her hand back. “Also, you subscribe to three botany magazines.”

“They’re academic journals.”

Maggie laughed. “That doesn’t make it better!” She leaned back on the arm of the sofa, her gaze drifting to the television again where Neveah and Tyrone were finally winding up their sexcapades. “And the sweater vests.”

Puzzled, Blake looked down at his T-shirt. “I’m not wearing a sweater vest.”

“But do you own any?”

He pursed his lips. Four of them were neatly folded in his dresser, waiting for colder weather. “That’s not the point.”

Maggie laughed again. She picked up her beer bottle and clinked it with his, then took a long sip. Tyrone said something to Neveah about her job, and the show was back into plot again. Blake could only give half his attention to the screen, mulling over the way Maggie saw him. Obviously, this was one more case of a woman deciding she knew him when she didn’t. Maggie would never suspect his alternate life, and if she ever found out, she would probably judge him for that as well. The world wasn’t black and white, though. Nobody wanted to examine subtleties.

But then Richard vowed to get revenge on Finnegan, and Pauline called Richard to tell him the baby was his, and Blake’s other thoughts dissolved away. By the time the credits rolled, he was trying to figure out if Pauline was lying about the baby and whether Tyrone had ulterior motives in sleeping with Neveah.

“Now that’s a season premiere.” Maggie gestured at the screen with her almost-empty bottle, then tipped it back to get the last drops. She swallowed and sighed. Blake’s thoughts drifted away from the show, back to Maggie, back to their conversation, and awkwardness settled over him.

Maggie broke the silence. “I didn’t hurt your feelings about the nerd thing, did I? In my defense, you used the term first.”

“What? No.” It wasn’t the term, but her limited view of him overall had stung. “I don’t mind being a nerd with academic journals and sweater vests.” He hesitated. “But I’d rather you didn’t pigeonhole me.”

Maggie tucked her hair behind her ear again. Her eyes were dark in the low light of the room. The sun had dipped below the skyline, and they hadn’t turned on any lights before starting the show. “I’m sorry.”

He hadn’t been angling for an apology, and hearing one made his spine tense. “No, it’s OK. I just mean, there’s more about me than that.”

“Of course there is.” She paused. “As long as you’re not secretly investigating a murder while pretending to be someone you’re not.”

Blake laughed. “No murder investigating here.” Pretending to be someone else, though, was one of his favorite hobbies right now.

If only he could tell her. But what was the point? It wasn’t like she wanted to sleep with him. Even if she was a little flirtatious tonight, loose with the physical affection and touching his glasses, her leg only an inch from his on the couch. Even if she bit lightly into her bottom lip when she looked at him, even if it would be easy to slide his fingers into her hair and kiss her breathless.

Fuck, no, no, that wasn’t a safe direction. They were roommates, for crying out loud, and he’d decided not to let himself get hurt again.

He hopped to his feet. “I’ll put the pizza away.”

Maggie couldn’t relax after the Marigold Murders season premiere. Well, it wasn’t the episode, obviously. It was Blake. She’d never have imagined he was a fan of the show, not with all the drama and sex, figuring instead he was going to watch Planet Earth or something similar. Now she was having to reevaluate everything she knew about him in this framework. He’d accused her of stereotyping him, and she had, but she’d had good reason for it. Even after the show, they’d continued to hang out together in the living room, drifting into speculations about next week’s episode then sharing other shows they were each into. Blake did indeed like Planet Earth and a bunch of other educational shows, but he was also into some reality TV and “guilty pleasure” programming that he admitted to watching on his laptop. Maggie confessed to liking most of the shows on his list, and they made plans to watch more together.

Now, though, it was late, and she wasn’t sleeping, so she clicked around idly on her phone for a while and ended up on the Pimpernel’s website. She shouldn’t think of it as ending up there: she kept a tab open. Good thing, too: he’d dropped a new story earlier this evening.

At only halfway through her reading, he messaged her. She shouldn’t be surprised; they had been talking every night lately, and she was always excited to see his name pop up in her notifications.