And They Were Roommates(36)

“You haven’t heard everything going around about you two?”

Brilliant. “No.”

“It’s breaking news that Jasper’s living with someone. Last year, he had the suite on the top floor that that one first year, Frank, has now. That’s brought in speculation on who you are.”

Nerves prickle in my chest. More spotlights. “I’m nobody, I swear.”

“People are crafting all sorts of conspiracy theories. One’s that you’re a famous poet, too, especially since you replaced P.M. as our year’s Scholar. Plus, your class schedules are mostly the same, right? From the outside, it looks like strings could’ve been pulled so you two stick together.”

“Nope,” I say, dead inside. “Just unlucky.”

Luis shakes his head almost incredulously. “Why is the principal’s nephew in a double?”

“There was a mix-up, apparently.”

“Jasper didn’t complain?”

“He thought having a roommate would be”—I toss up air quotes and frown—“fun.”

“In what universe? Mine won’t stop freaking out about spiders.” Luis tugs on a curl so violently that I’m shocked it doesn’t rip off.

“Yeah, I don’t know. Jasper at least gave us secret roommate knocks yesterday, so maybe he’ll stop barging through the door.”

“I guess that’s less obvious than a sock on the knob.” Luis eyes me up and down. “He’s not causing you serious problems, though, is he? He makes you work a lot for STRIP. You look, well, miserable.”

Jasper is causing me problems, but not in the way Luis is likely imagining. Even if Luis did flag me as someone who would be interested in sending love letters on our side of campus, there’s no way he’d guess Jasper’s and my complicated history. I trust Luis the most here, but it’s not like I’d tell him everything.

“Is he, V.H.?”

“No,” I say quickly. “It’s fine. I promise.”

Michael waves to snag our attention. Similar to Luis, his good looks seem frustratingly natural, as if he just wakes up like this. But where Luis is all soft and smooth lines, his sleek crew cut and pointed face make him sharper in comparison. “Ready?”

Instead of answering, Luis laughs as if Michael told a joke deserving of a platinum medal.

This must be his not-so-hypothetical crush.

Holding back a grin, I walk the three through their inverse function questions. While we solve the first equation, my gaze drifts past Luis’s shoulder, toward Jasper’s desk. He’s focused on the love letters in his journal like always. Never a textbook. Yet he has impossibly high grades for a second year. A perfect hundred.

How?

I inspect how his hand moves at a steady pace. Two years ago, he scribbled so fast that the ink would smear worse than nowadays. His thigh doesn’t distractedly shake beneath the desk anymore. I’d have to clutch his knee during workshop to make him stop.

Jasper is different now. But he isn’t different at all.

Luis passes me a sheet of paper. His completed equation. “Can you check this?”

I glance down at my barely finished one. Focus, Charlie. “Yeah.”

Soon, the three are off with quick thanks.

Jasper returns to my desk. Instead of sitting across from me like last time, he claims Luis’s chair, which is still pulled out. “Where were we?” he asks, assertively tossing down his journal.

I stay quiet, not particularly wanting him to remember, and glance around the library. After hearing how the student body is obsessed with us two, I feel invisible eyes on my back despite the vacant desks around us.

“Right,” Jasper says. “My fourth EROS. Tell me you love me.”

“Listen, I really don’t want to keep saying that I lo—”

“You don’t have to say that you love me. Just say I love you. To the wall. The desk. I only want to make you feel that vulnerability.”

I grimace.

“I won’t watch.” As Jasper goes back to his journal, I pick out more changes in him. Unfortunately, he’s always had a nice face to look at, but his jaw is sharper, and his brows really are bolder. The dress shirts he rolls to his elbows look eons better than our hideous camp uniforms—dweeby polo shirts, navy shorts, name tag lanyards, and socks rolled up to the knees.

But one thing about him might not have changed.

“I promised I wouldn’t watch you,” Jasper says, peeking up at me through the hair draped over his face, “yet now you’re watching me.”

I flick my gaze away, covering my lips with a propped hand. “I have a question.”

“You’re muffled.”

“I have a question,” I repeat louder. “Where do you keep going?”

“Can you please be more specific?”

“You’re always late for lights-out. Are you using that special number pin on your collar to sneak into the sister academy at night and stuff?”

“I’m writing letters in my office.”

“That’s all?”

Jasper shrugs. A nonanswer.

I tilt my head at him. Jasper is obsessed with romance, yet I know the truth that he’s secretly a heartbreaker. He should have at least five girlfriends.