The Playboy Hid His Roommate, So the Whole Quad Watched Him Beg novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Wrong Bed
Dash finds the freshman from the Gentry's back hall unpacking paint in his spare bed, refuses the swap, and in the dark kisses him and is told: say my name.
The freshman from Gentry's was sitting on the spare bed in Dash's room, unpacking tubes of paint.
Dash stood in the doorway with his duffel on his shoulder and his key still in his hand.
Twelve days ago he had watched this boy in the back hall of a bar.
His head had been tipped against the wall, and a stranger's mouth had been at his ear.
He had thought about it every night since, and he hated that he had.
"Frye," Dash said, reading the name off the housing slip taped to the door.
The boy did not turn around.
He set a tube of cobalt blue on the desk and lined it up with a tube of yellow.
White-blond hair fell over his ears, and a silver stud caught the lamp.
"Frye," Dash said again, louder.
Nothing.
Dash crossed the room and closed a hand on his shoulder.
The boy came around fast, twisting out of the grip and into Dash's space, a paint-stained palm flat on Dash's chest.
Gray eyes, calm and furious.
Dash knew those eyes.
They had looked at him from that wall in the back hall of Gentry's, wide open over a stranger's shoulder, and had not looked away.
"Don't grab people from behind," the boy said.
"I said your name twice."
"Then come around where I can see you. Right side, the left one's lazy."
He took his hand off Dash's chest.
"Wilder Frye. I'm your roommate."
"I don't have a roommate."
"You do now." Wilder nodded at the empty bed. "Housing put me here. There's a letter."
"I have a double I've had alone for two years. My family built this house."
"Then your family can build me a better bed."
Wilder looked him up and down.
"Dashiell Haverford. The posters in the lobby undersold you."
"There are no posters of me in the lobby."
"No," Wilder agreed. "I just wanted to see your face."
Dash heard himself breathe out through his nose.
He had been called a lot of things in three years at Hartwell, and none of them had ever made his neck go hot.
"You were at Gentry's," he said.
"A lot of people were at Gentry's."
"The back hall. Mill Street. August sixteenth."
"Is that what you do?" Wilder asked. "Keep a calendar?"
Dash dropped the duffel.
He took one step, and Wilder did not retreat.
Dash took another and walked him backward until the wall met his shoulders.
He put one hand flat beside Wilder's head and leaned down.
Up close, Wilder smelled of turpentine and cold air and something faintly sweet.
His eyes dropped to Dash's mouth and stayed there.
"You have until the RA gets here to ask for a different room," Dash said.
"Or what?"
"Or I make this the longest year of your life."
"Try," Wilder said, softly, and did not look away from his mouth.
The knock came before Dash could decide what he was going to do.
The RA stood in the hall with a lanyard and a clipboard and the face of someone who had already had a long day.
"Haverford. I've got a paperwork problem."
The RA held up the clipboard.
"Housing overbooked and put a freshman in your double. I can get him moved to Dunn Hall by Monday."
"Great," Dash said. "He's leaving."
"I'm not," Wilder said, from the wall.
"I can have it done tonight if you'd rather," the RA said to Wilder. "It's no trouble."
"I'm fine here."
"You're not fine here," Dash said.
"Why do you care where I sleep?"
The RA looked from one to the other.
Dash opened his mouth to say the sentence he had practiced in the elevator.
That he needed his space.
That he did not do roommates, and he did not do freshmen.
Wilder was watching his lips.
Not his eyes. His lips, steadily.
"He stays," Dash said.
The RA blinked. "Okay. Sign here, both of you."
Dash signed.
Wilder signed under him in block letters, with a hand that left a streak of blue on the page.
When the door shut again, Dash picked up his duffel and carried it to the bed by the window without a word.
He put on the desk lamp, took off his jacket, and did not look at the other bed.
Wilder did not look at his.
They lay in the dark for an hour.
There was a gray flat pad under Wilder's pillow, and Dash had seen him set it there with great care.
"What is that?" Dash had asked.
"My alarm."
"It's a rectangle," Dash said.
"It's a good alarm."
Now the room was quiet except for the radiator and the river wind on the window.
Dash lay on his back and told himself he was thinking about the Econ 340 syllabus.
He was thinking about a bar hall, and white-blond hair, and a boy who had not stopped looking at him.
"Haverford," Wilder said into the dark.
Dash turned his head.
Wilder was on his side, facing him, one pale hand under his cheek and his eyes open.
"Why did you say I could stay?"
"I didn't. I said I wouldn't help you leave."
"That's the same thing," Wilder said.
"It's not."
"It is," Wilder said. "And you know it, because you've been staring at the ceiling for an hour."
Dash sat up.
He did not remember deciding to cross the room.
Suddenly he was kneeling on the spare bed with one knee in the blanket and his hand at Wilder's jaw.
Wilder's skin was warm and his breath came short.
"This is a mistake," Dash said.
"Probably," said Wilder.
Dash kissed him.
It was nothing like the kisses he handed out on weekends, light and quick and forgotten by Monday.
Wilder made a small sound and got a fistful of Dash's shirt, and the whole room went hot at once.
When Dash lifted his head, they were both breathing hard.
"Say my name," Wilder said.
"What?"
"You haven't said it. Say it."
Dash looked at the mouth under his thumb, swollen and bright, waiting.
"Wilder," he said.
Wilder shut his eyes.
Something went across his face that Dash could not name, a flinch and a relief at once.
"Again," he whispered.
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