My Roommate’s Boyfriend Rejected Me First

After one night with the man I’d secretly loved, I told him how I felt.

Adrian Cole raised an eyebrow. “What made you think sleeping with me would make me want you?”

I changed my number and moved to another city. Two years later, my roommate landed in the hospital with a high fever, and her wealthy boyfriend drove through the night to be with her.

It was Adrian.

In the hallway, he slipped an unlit cigarette back into its pack and looked at me without a flicker of recognition.

“Thanks for taking care of her. Let me get your Venmo. I’ll pay you back.”

He was wearing a bracelet..

Red braided cord, tied around Adrian’s wrist beneath the cuff of his expensive shirt. It looked out of place on him. I remembered tightening the last knot at our kitchen table while Vanessa Reed watched over my shoulder.

She’d paid me thirty dollars to make it.

“He can buy anything he wants,” she’d said. “What am I supposed to give a man like that? Something handmade actually means something.”

Vanessa was hopeless at crafts. I’d been happy enough to help. At the time, I hadn’t known her boyfriend’s name, let alone that he was the man I’d left town to avoid.

Now he stood a few feet from me, waiting for my answer, with my work on his wrist.

I looked down at my phone.

Two years hadn’t made his rejection any less embarrassing. I could still remember standing in front of him, trying to explain that my feelings hadn’t begun the night we slept together. I’d liked him long before that.

His answer hadn’t changed.

“I’m sorry. There’s someone else. I’m waiting for her.” He’d paused, then made certain I understood. “If I’d wanted to be with you, I wouldn’t have waited until now.”

So that was why none of the women who flirted with him ever got anywhere. He wasn’t unavailable to everyone. He was waiting for one particular woman.

“Okay,” I’d said. “I understand. I’ll go.”

I’d done a thorough job of going. New number, new city, no contact with anyone who might mention him.

And here he was, asking for my Venmo as though we’d met ten minutes ago.

“There’s no need,” I said.

I opened Venmo instead and held out my phone. “You owe me two hundred seventy-three dollars.”

Adrian didn’t take out his phone right away. His gaze stayed on my face long enough for me to wonder whether I’d sounded rude.

Then he sent it.

The payment arrived just as Vanessa called from her room.

“Adrian? Could you get me some water?”

“Of course.”

He turned away from me and went inside. I was putting my phone in my bag when I heard her again.

“You met my roommate, right? Isn’t she pretty? She’s been so good to me.”

His reply carried through the open door.

“I didn’t really notice.”

I believed him.

I’d met Adrian through his cousin, Sophie Cole. Sophie and I had been close friends in college, and she used to take me along when she went out with her cousin’s crowd.

I was usually the person standing at the edge of the group, holding the same drink all evening. Adrian never had to find a place for himself. People made room when he arrived.

Even the men who liked to talk about their money and connections chose their words more carefully around him. I’d noticed that before I understood much about his family.

Our actual history was short. He’d driven Sophie and me back to campus twice. Once, when we were caught in the rain, he’d held an umbrella over me.

That had been enough for me to start looking for him at every gathering.

It hadn’t been enough for him to remember my whole name.

On the night we ended up together, he’d asked, “You’re Bennett, right? What’s your first name?”

“Claire.”

I remembered how quietly I’d answered. I wished I could forget it.

After two years, why would he recognize me in a hospital hallway? Perhaps the face I’d spent so long dreading showed up in his memory only vaguely, if at all.

That possibility made it easier to leave.

I took a cab home alone. It was a little after five in the morning when I got to the apartment. I showered, put on pajamas, and went to bed before it was fully light.

A knock woke me later that afternoon.

Thinking Vanessa had come home, I hurried to open the door. Adrian stood on the other side.