After Calling My Brooding Roommate My Wife

Chapter 2: The Rule

I spent the next morning trying not to look at Rowan.

It was surprisingly difficult. We shared a room, a bathroom, a mini fridge, and the single patch of floor that didn't have a chair or a backpack on it. Every ordinary thing became an opportunity to prove that I had remembered what he'd asked.

I didn't call him my wife when he found my missing student ID under his textbook.

I didn't call him my wife when he shoved my lunch toward me after I forgot it on the desk.

I didn't call him my wife when he came back from class with two coffees and set one beside my laptop.

I said, "Thanks."

He said, "You're welcome."

Then we both went quiet.

I discovered that respecting a boundary did not automatically tell me what to do next. It just meant I had to stop trying to use the old way.

For a while, I'd thought Rowan's quietness was an invitation. I could fill any silence and expect him to let me. I'd called him names because his reactions were small, and small reactions were easy to interpret as approval if I wanted to.

Now I was less sure.

At lunch, I sat with him at a table in the dining hall. I asked how his seminar went. He told me one of the guest speakers had spent half an hour describing a paper he'd never read. I laughed. Rowan almost smiled.

I wanted to ask if that was a real smile. I didn't.

Instead I told him about a video project I was working on for the student radio station. It was supposed to be a short piece about the old theater on campus, but I kept getting distracted by the maintenance staff's stories. They had worked there for years and remembered the place before it got renovated.

"Then make the piece about them," Rowan said.

"It's supposed to be about the theater."

"They're part of the theater."

I pushed a fork through my food. "That's annoyingly sensible."

"You asked."

"I didn't ask. I just complained near you."

"That's how you ask."

I looked up. "You've been taking notes."

"I've been trapped in a room with you for eight months."

It was a little thing. It still felt like a door cracking open.

I wanted to rush toward it. I didn't.

That afternoon, I worked on my project in the media lab. At the end of the session, I opened the folder where I'd stored my interviews. One recording had no label. I clicked it, expecting to hear my own voice introducing the piece.

Instead, I heard Rowan.

His voice was low and strained, as if he were trying to speak without being heard.

"Don't tell him about the call. He'll turn it into a joke. It's easier if I let him think I don't care."

A few seconds of silence followed.

Then the recording ended.

I sat motionless, the headphones pressed to my ears.

I had recorded interviews all week. I'd also been using my phone to capture ambient sound. The file must have picked up a conversation near the recording booth.

I should have closed it.

Instead, I played it again.

Rowan's words sounded more brittle the second time.

I removed the headphones and pressed my palms against my eyes. I'd never heard him talk about me when he thought I couldn't hear. I didn't know who he'd been speaking to or what "the call" meant.

I didn't know why I thought I had the right to know.

I deleted the file, then emptied it from the trash.

When I got back to the dorm, Rowan was at his desk with his laptop open. He didn't look up.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey."

I wanted to ask if he'd talked about me to someone. I wanted to ask what call he'd meant. I wanted to remind him that I wasn't laughing at him, that I liked him, that he could trust me with whatever he was holding back.

None of those things would help if he didn't want to tell me.

So I said, "I'm going to the library for a while. Do you need the room?"

"No."

"Okay."

I left.

At the library, I sat at a table with a view of the windows and tried to edit the theater interviews. I kept hearing the recording.

He'll turn it into a joke.

It wasn't that the words were cruel. Rowan hadn't sounded angry. He'd sounded resigned. Like he'd already decided what I would do before I did it.

The next day, I made a point of asking before I borrowed his charger.

He stared at me. "It's on your desk."

"I know. I'm still asking."

"You've borrowed it a hundred times."

"I'm trying something new."

"You don't have to make a ceremony out of it."

"I'm not. Can I borrow it?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

He shook his head, but the movement wasn't quite as severe as the one I'd earned at the mixer.

My friend June noticed the change at our campus radio meeting. She watched me stand up to hand Rowan a chair without calling him anything, then leaned toward me.

"You're doing a lot of careful walking," she whispered.

"I got told to stop doing something."

"That's good."

"Yeah."

"Do you know why?"

"No."

"Did you ask?"

"No."

June glanced over at Rowan, who was setting up a microphone. "Maybe asking is better than guessing."

"I don't want to turn it into a whole interrogation."

"Then don't interrogate him."

I sighed. "You're annoyingly sensible, too."

"I know. It's how I got a scholarship."

She turned back to her notes. I watched Rowan check the microphone levels. He moved through the room with his usual steady competence, not looking at me unless he had to.

The session ended with an argument about the theater project. I showed Rowan a clip of one of the maintenance workers describing the first time he'd fixed a broken stage light. Rowan listened without interrupting.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think he's a better story than the building."

"Are you saying my project has a plot?"

"I'm saying the person in it does."

I was quiet for a moment. "That's helpful."

"I know."

I wanted to make the joke about him knowing everything. I wanted to say "wife" and see whether he'd smiled.

I didn't.

As we left the studio, Rowan slowed near the doors.

"Eli."

"Yeah?"

"I know you're trying."

I stopped. "I am."

"You don't have to be weird around me."

"I'm not trying to be weird. I'm trying to respect what you said."

"I asked you to stop calling me that. I didn't ask you to stop talking to me."

That was fair. It was also the first time he'd said something that sounded like a request for me to stay.

"I want to talk to you," I said. "I just don't want to make you explain anything you don't want to."

He looked down at the sleeve of his sweater. "Then don't make me."

"I won't."

He nodded once and opened the door.

I walked beside him.

We didn't talk about the recording. We didn't talk about the mixer. But on the way back to the dorm, Rowan asked me whether I'd settled on an ending for the theater piece.

I told him I hadn't.

He said, "You will."

That night, he didn't fold my laundry.

I did it myself.