And They Were Roommates(49)

“Yes.” Jasper lifts a triumphant fist. “Lamentably so!”

“What’s with you?”

“Nothing!”

“You’re hiding something.” Which reminds me. “Why didn’t you tell me you have a private room in your aunt’s instructor quarters? Why didn’t you go there when I asked? No—on the first day of classes?”

Jasper makes an odd bleating noise. “Well. You see.” He pauses.

“Seriously, Jasper?”

He just bites his lip.

I storm toward the bathroom. “Be that way.”

“Wait—!” He hops off his bed and pulls my wrist back, spinning me around to face him. “Don’t be upset with me.”

I stare at our touching hands, my chest bursting with butterflies. Flu. Bubonic plague. “I’m not upset with you.”

“I mean about what I’m preparing to say.”

“Okay?”

“Over the summer, I may have helped my aunt with administrative stuff. And I may have noticed you requested a single despite your lack of a payment. Instead of flagging it, I roomed us together. Also, I synced our class schedules.”

One million arrows to the heart.

Yet all I feel is numb. My body can’t feel what my brain knows I should. I slip my hand out of Jasper’s grasp. I step back. “Why did you do that?”

“Do you have any siblings? Cousins?”

“You’re seriously trying to change the subject?”

“I’m not.” He goes to his bed, pulls out a box beneath it, and lifts up a pocket-sized brown-leather notebook. It’s different from his JFG one. I’ve never seen it.

“What is that?” I ask.

He returns, handing me the notebook. “I’ve been searching for someone I met a few years ago with your last name. It’s a unique name, so I hoped you two were related.”

I open the cover and flip through the pages. The daily entries date back to two years ago in smeared handwriting, starting from the June we met. I stop at the middle.

round and round the carousel of love we go spinning, spinning never catching up always chasing you



Slowly, I look up at him. “These are from Love Is a Broken Party Clown.”

“The first drafts. I’ll be honest, these—” Jasper takes a sharp, almost nervous breath. “These are all about a long-lost love of mine.”

He thinks I have a sibling.

Because he’s looking for me. From two years ago.

More than that. I’m his what?

My body sways for the millionth time today. I shove the journal into his chest, gripping the doorframe instead to stabilize myself. “You trapped us in a room together, hoping I’d be able to connect you with some relative? Without knowing if I had one?”

Jasper’s eyes flood with the same naivete I could only dream of having since he drained mine back at camp. “Does this mean you do? Please, will you tell me?”

Weeks of Jasper following me around. Weeks of him trying to get me to like him and steal my trust. Weeks of putting me through the stress of having a roommate. Of him being my roommate.

This fear. For weeks.

I’ve let him betray me again.

“I don’t have any family like that,” I spit out, my adrenaline spiking. It overtakes any and all logic that’s been holding me back from letting out what itches on the tip of my tongue—what would make Jasper realize, once and for all, how he hurts me over and over while remaining untouched. “Because that person you’re looking for is me.”

Silence settles between us, the only sentence I promised to never speak at Valentine hanging in the air.

The synapses in Jasper’s allegedly genius brain aren’t getting there, his brow pinched. “What are you saying, Charlie?”

“Sorry that I’m so unrecognizable to you now compared to when we were at camp, but two years tends to change a person.”

His face shifts. First, his eyes, racing as he searches my blazer, my slacks, and my now-sharper face. Then his mouth, which he covers with a trembling hand. He stares at the notebook in his grasp. “But—Wha—Hhh—?”

“Use your words,” I grumble, crossing my arms. “You’re supposed to be good at those.”

“This is an academy for boys,” Jasper says.

“Yes.”

“So?”

“So, things change.”

“Right.” Jasper’s gaze clouds as he looks toward the rug. “Things change.”

“You said you were searching for your long-lost love,” I say.

“I. Well.” His face pales despite its usual constant pink glow.

My expression must look no better. If he believes I’m his long-lost love, then he’s delusional. He spent that same summer writing love letters to three others.

“Why didn’t you say who you were?” Jasper asks so quietly it’s barely audible. “The whole time we’ve been in this room?”

Of course that’s his first question. He could never understand. I pace the bedroom. “I don’t know—why do you think I need a room to myself despite you messing that up for me?”

“You’re a light sleeper?”

I groan. “Seriously, Jasper?! Are you really Rank One?”