Chapter 95: The Roomate Arrangement

Chapter 95 — The Roommate Agreement

Roxanne returned from morning classes, bag still slung over one shoulder, to find a maintenance notice taped crookedly to her dormitory door. A plumbing problem had flooded part of the corridor overnight, and several rooms needed temporary repairs before they could be used again. Isla read the notice twice, her expression growing more skeptical each time. "They want us out tonight?" she asked. "Apparently," Roxanne said. "Where are we supposed to sleep?" Isla demanded.

The dorm supervisor explained that Roxanne and Isla could use a spare room temporarily, though it only had two beds. Tessa, whose own room had been affected by the same repairs, had been assigned to stay with them for the duration. Tessa arrived a short while later, dragging an enormous bag that looked ready to burst at the seams behind her.

Roxanne stared at it. "Are you moving in permanently?" she asked. "I packed essentials," Tessa said, hoisting it higher on her shoulder. "Do you consider a hair dryer, three pairs of shoes, and a decorative pillow essential?" Roxanne asked. "Don’t judge my survival strategy," Tessa said, and the three of them hauled their belongings toward the spare room, already disagreeing about whose bag went where before they’d even opened the door.

The room turned out smaller than any of them expected, barely large enough for the three of them to stand in at once. One bed sat pushed against the window, the other against the far wall, and the remaining floor space was barely enough to fit their luggage without tripping over something. Isla wanted everything organized immediately, Tessa wanted to rearrange the furniture entirely, and Roxanne mostly wanted both of them to stop treating a single inconvenient night like a full military operation.

Their arguments were affectionate rather than genuinely heated, more habit than conflict, and they revealed each girl’s personality clearly enough. Isla was practical and endlessly nurturing, Tessa was energetic and stubborn to a fault, and Roxanne eventually gave up pretending to be the sensible one, offering deliberately unhelpful suggestions purely to irritate them both.

Eventually they settled on a set of temporary rules. Nobody borrowed clothes without asking first. Nobody touched anyone else’s snacks under any circumstance. Whoever made the biggest mess was responsible for cleaning it up. And nobody was allowed to wake the others unnecessarily, no matter the reason.

Tessa immediately asked whether that last rule applied if she had an excellent idea at two in the morning. "It applies especially if you have an excellent idea at two in the morning," Roxanne said, and they shook hands solemnly on the agreement. It lasted approximately twelve minutes.

The dormitory’s usual dinner service was delayed because the kitchen was dealing with the same plumbing disaster, so the girls decided, perhaps unwisely, to cook something themselves using the small shared kitchenette down the hall. Isla found a simple recipe online, Tessa insisted she could improve on it, and Roxanne volunteered to supervise, despite having no real intention of doing much actual work.

The result was an unqualified disaster from start to finish. Something burned almost immediately, Tessa insisted the recipe itself was wrong, and Isla scrambled to rescue whatever could still be salvaged while Roxanne laughed so hard she had to lean against the counter for support. When they finally produced something edible, more or less, they ended up sitting on the floor to eat it, since the room’s small table had already disappeared under a pile of belongings.

They talked for a long while about embarrassing school moments, terrible first impressions, and the ridiculous lengths students went to in order to impress people they liked. Tessa admitted, with great reluctance, that she had once pretended to understand an entire lecture about advanced combat techniques purely because she found the boy explaining it attractive.

Roxanne nearly choked laughing. "You let him explain the same thing for forty minutes?" she asked. "He had beautiful eyes," Tessa said defensively. "Did you learn anything?" Roxanne asked. "His name," Tessa admitted, and the three of them collapsed into laughter all over again. For once, Roxanne wasn’t the center of the conversation at all. She was simply one of three girls laughing together on a crowded floor.

Later, while they sorted out sleeping arrangements, Tessa asked something unexpectedly personal. "If you could change one thing about your life at the academy, what would it be?" Isla clearly expected Roxanne to mention Dorian or Arabella or everything she’d survived since arriving. Instead, Roxanne admitted she wished she had spent less time waiting for something terrible to happen.

She explained that she had arrived at the academy fully prepared to be humiliated or pushed out entirely, and even once things started going well, some quiet part of her had kept bracing for it all to collapse anyway. Isla listened quietly without interrupting, her chin resting on her knees. Tessa, unusually subdued for once, admitted she often assumed people would leave once she became difficult to deal with, which was exactly why she worked so hard to stay entertaining and competitive before anyone could decide she was too much trouble.

The conversation never tipped into a full therapy session. They simply acknowledged what had been said and let the mood lighten naturally afterward. Isla threw a pillow at Tessa for making the room depressing, and Tessa threw it right back, and Roxanne got caught squarely in the middle before the pillow fight became entirely inevitable.

Near midnight, long after they should have been winding down, someone knocked on the door, and all three girls froze mid-laughter. Roxanne opened it to find Liam standing outside holding a covered container, looking far too pleased with himself. He explained that Lucien had heard about the kitchen disruption and asked whether the girls had managed to eat at all, and Liam had volunteered to deliver extra food personally.

"Lucien sent you?" Roxanne asked, skeptical. "I’m deeply offended by your tone," Liam said. "I’m deeply suspicious of your presence," she countered. He glanced past her into the wrecked room. "Did a furniture store explode in here?" he asked. Tessa told him to come in and help clean, and he refused on principle until Isla pointed out that he had two perfectly functional hands.

During his brief, reluctant visit, Liam noticed Roxanne laughing freely and looked genuinely pleased about it, though the evening remained firmly about the three girls rather than anything he might have felt about it. Before leaving, he warned them that if they woke the entire corridor, he would deny ever knowing them. Roxanne shut the door directly in his face, and his muffled voice came through the wood. "That’s going to hurt my feelings!" "Excellent!" all three girls shouted back in unison.

After Liam finally left, the girls cleaned enough of the room to make it liveable and settled into their beds, thoroughly exhausted from the dinner disaster and the pillow fight combined.

Isla asked, sleepily, whether they should make the temporary room-sharing arrangement a regular thing whenever their schedules allowed. Tessa agreed, provided Roxanne stopped pretending she didn’t enjoy their company. Roxanne rolled onto her side. "I never said I didn’t," she said. "You act like being happy is something you have to defend," Isla said. Roxanne considered that for a moment before admitting she was getting better at enjoying things without constantly waiting for them to fall apart.

They agreed to arrange another night like this one once the rooms were finally repaired, on the strict condition that nobody was allowed anywhere near the kitchenette ever again. Tessa protested loudly that this restriction was deeply unfair. Neither of the other two listened.

Just as the lights finally went out, the dormitory supervisor sent a message announcing that repairs would take longer than originally expected. The three of them would have to share the room for two more nights. A long, heavy silence followed, broken only by the creak of someone shifting in bed. Then Tessa whispered into the dark, "I have another excellent idea." "Go to sleep," Roxanne and Isla answered together, almost perfectly in sync.