The Roommate Rulebook

The Unexpected Entry

POV: ZOE

It was already morning after everything that happened yesterday with my so-called roommate.

I was so pissed because I'm not a morning person, never have I been and never will be.

Back home my mom used to stand at my bedroom door every single morning and call my name at least six times before I even opened one eye.

My little brother thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He would stand behind her and count how many times she called and his personal record was eleven times.

So yeah… Mornings and I have a complicated relationship.

Which is why when my alarm went off at 7 am on our first official morning as roommates I did what I always do.

I turned it off and went back to sleep.

What I did not know, and what I could not have known, was that Liam Carter had been awake since 6 a.m.

I found that out the hard way.

"My alarm went off twelve minutes ago."

I opened one eye and saw that Liam was standing by his desk already fully dressed with a white shirt, dark trousers, hair neat and properly brushed, like he had been up for hours. Which apparently he had.

I stared at him from under my blanket.

"Good morning to you too," I said. My voice was still half asleep and croaky.

"You have an 8am class." He said it like he was reading from a schedule.

He probably was. "It takes approximately fifteen minutes to walk to the main building from this dorm. You need to get up." He said

I pulled my blanket over my head.

"Zoe."

"It's before 9am," I said from under the blanket. "Rule number two says there should be no unnecessary conflict before 9am."

I heard him exhale and then I heard the sound of his chair moving. Then the sound of him sitting down and opening his laptop and deliberately ignoring everything I said

I smiled under my blanket.

Then I fell back asleep.

I woke up forty minutes later in a full panic.

I grabbed my phone and looked at the time.

Threw the blanket off and jumped out of the bed so fast that I nearly knocked my cactus off the windowsill.

"Sorry Spike," I whispered while grabbing the first clothes I could find off the floor.

Liam was still at his desk.

He watched me run around the room throwing things into my bag without saying a single word.

"You could have woken me up!" I said pulling a hoodie over my head.

"I tried," he said. "But you quoted the rulebook at me."

"I was half asleep, I didn't know what I was saying!"

"Does the rule apply whether you are fully conscious or not?"

I stopped and looked at him.

He was staring at his laptop screen with the most neutral expression in the world.

Like watching me have a morning crisis was just normal background noise to him.

I grabbed my bag and ran out the door.

I was twenty-two minutes late to my first-ever college class.

When I got to the class, unfortunately for me, the class had already started.

I entered the class and greeted the Professor.

A woman with huge glasses called Dr.Reeves She looked at me over those glasses while I walked in and did not say a word.

She just looked and somehow that was worse than if she had actually said something.

I found an empty seat near the back and slid into it as quietly as I could.

The girl sitting next to me passed me a small piece of paper without looking up from her notes.

I opened it and read.

Rough morning? It said with a small smiley face drawn next to it.

I looked at her, and she was pretty with curly red hair and paint stains on her fingers.

She glanced at me quickly and smiled.

I wrote back

“You have no idea” and passed it back.

She read it and pressed her lips together trying not to laugh.

After class, she introduced herself properly.

"Maya," she said, holding out her hand.

"Zoe," I said, shaking it.

We looked at each other.

"Best friends?" she said.

"Obviously," I said.

And just like that I had my first college friend. See? New York was already working.

We walked to the campus café together and I told her everything.

The housing glitch in Room 214.

Liam, the rulebook and all of it.

By the time I finished, Maya was gripping her iced coffee with both hands and staring at me with wide eyes.

"He actually made a rulebook," she said slowly.

"He printed it out last night," I said.

"Printed it on actual paper, with a border around it.

And then he stuck it on the wall with a little sticky tack.

He used a ruler to make sure it was leveled."

Maya blinked. "A ruler."

She sat back in her chair.

"Zoe, that is either the most annoying thing I have ever heard or the funniest."

"Both," I said. "It is absolutely both."

She laughed and I laughed and honestly, it felt good.

It felt like exactly the kind of first-day story you tell people for years.

The kind you look back on and shake your head at.

We both had our moments, then we started preparing to attend the second class.

But unfortunately Maya said she won't be able to attend, that she has something important and personal things to do.

I tried asking her what it was, but she kept telling me it's personal.

She left, then I headed to the hall for the second class.

It was 2 pm already and the class was over.

I walked back to the dorm after the second class feeling much better than I had that morning.

The sun was out, the campus was busy, loud and full of people finding their feet just like me.

Someone was playing guitar outside the library.

A group of girls were taking pictures by the fountain.

I liked it here, even with the disaster of a morning I had.

I liked the noise, the life and the feeling that something was just beginning.

I got back to my Room 214 and pushed the door open without knocking.

Liam was in the middle of changing his shirt.

We both froze.

His shirt was half off, and my hand was still on the door handle.

We stared at each other for what felt like a very long time but was probably only about two seconds.

Then I spun around so fast and hit my shoulder on the door frame.

"Oh my, I'm sorry! I forgot.”

“I didn't know please, I'm sorry!"

I saw him pull his shirt down. "Rule number one," He said.

His voice was very flat and very calm.

"I know!" I said still facing the hallway. "I know I know I know. I'm sorry. I forgot."

"You forgot."

"It was an accident!"

"That is exactly why the rule exists."

I turned around slowly.

He was fully dressed again with arms crossed.

Looking at me with that expression he seemed to save specifically for moments when I had done something that confirmed every concern he had about living with me.

I pressed my lips together.

"I'm genuinely sorry, it was my fault.

He held my gaze for a moment and then he nodded once and turned back to his desk.

I walked to my side of the room and sat on my bed.

My heart was beating slightly faster than normal. Which was just because of the shock obviously. The shock of the whole situation and that was all.

I tucked my feet under me and opened my sketchbook.

The room was quiet.

"For what it's worth," Liam said after a few minutes without turning around. "You should set two alarms.

The first one is to wake you up and the second one should be fifteen minutes later as backup."

I looked up from my sketchbook.

He was still facing his laptop and typing something on it.

"Is that what you do?" I asked.

"Yes," Liam said

I thought about it. "That's actually really smart."

I rolled my eyes and then smiled

"You know you could have just said that this morning instead of lecturing me about the rulebook."

"I did not lecture you. I stated facts."

"It felt like a lecture."

"Then perhaps you should wake up on time and there won't be any facts to state."

I grabbed my pillow and held it to my face so he wouldn't see me laughing.

Because it was funny, it was really funny.

Like he wasn't trying to be funny at all but somehow he just was for me.

I put the pillow down and went back to sketching while Liam kept typing.

Outside the window the sun was starting to go down and the sky was overcast.

New York had turned this soft pink and orange colour that made everything look like a painting.

I turned to a clean page in my sketchbook and started drawing the sky and the buildings.

"What are you drawing?" Liam asked.

I looked up.

He had turned his chair slightly just enough to glance at my sketchbook.

"The sky," I said.

I turned it around to show him.

He looked at it for a moment then something moved across his face, quick enough that I almost missed it.

"It's good," he said quietly.

Then he turned back to his laptop.

I looked down at my drawing, then looked back at him.

It was just two words Zoe “It's good”

Very short and simple with no extra attached to it.

But for some reason, it sat warm in my chest for the rest of the evening.

Which was absolutely nothing.

Just a roommate saying two words about a drawing.

That's all it was.

Right Zoe? She asked herself