My Roommate Hates Me, So He Only Kisses Me in the Dark novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Pehrson and Maki
Lights on they are enemies; lights off Mattias goes still at the sound of Linus reading aloud, and the professor pairs them for the semester.
By daylight, Mattias Pehrson did not know his name.
On Tuesday Linus said good morning and got a stare.
On Wednesday Mattias walked past him in the hall with a girl on his arm and stepped on his shoelace on purpose.
On Thursday there was a yellow sticky note on Linus's desk that said STAY ON YOUR SIDE in thick marker.
Linus read it, peeled it off, and stuck it on Mattias's pillow with a second note underneath.
Your side has a sock on it, the second note said. It is not mine.
When he came back from the library that night, the sock was on Linus's pillow.
A third note was stuck to his lamp.
PRICK, it said.
Linus smiled at that, alone in the room.
He was learning the schedule of the thing.
Mattias came in after midnight on weeknights, smelling like beer and cold, and said nothing.
At the lights-out hour he lay with his back to the room.
For three nights the dark did not count, and nothing happened.
Linus lay awake across the floor, wanting to hear him say something.
On the fourth night he gave up on waiting and opened his Lit 210 reader instead.
He read the way he always had, quietly aloud, under the sheet with his phone for a light.
His grandfather had gone blind when Linus was seven, and Linus had read him the Hibbing paper every morning for ten years.
He could not study any other way.
The words had to be said or they did not stay.
"The house stood on a hill above the sea," Linus murmured.
"And the lamp in its window had not gone out in forty years."
A shoe hit the wall above his head.
"Shut up, Maki."
"I'm reading," Linus said.
"Read in your head for once."
"I can't," Linus said. "The words have to be said."
"Then take it to the bathroom," Mattias said.
Linus lowered his voice and kept going.
He read two more pages in a whisper, and the shoe did not come again.
After a while he noticed the quiet on the other bed was different.
Mattias was not sleeping.
He was lying on his back with his eyes open, listening to the story, perfectly still.
Linus stopped.
"Don't," Mattias said into the dark, rough. "Keep going."
"You told me to shut up."
"In the daytime I tell you a lot of things." There was a long pause. "Read."
Linus read.
He read until his voice went thin.
When he finally stopped, Mattias was breathing slowly and evenly.
Linus turned the last page without a sound.
Friday was Lit 210, Introduction to Fiction, in a cold lecture room in the Humanities building.
Dag Hartman dropped into the seat beside him with a bagel and a laugh that turned heads.
"You're the one who lives with Pehrson," Dag said.
"The whole floor is taking bets on which of you leaves in a bag."
"Who's winning?" Linus asked.
"You, believe it or not. People like the quiet ones."
"I am not quiet," Linus said.
"You're very quiet, man," Dag said. "It's terrifying."
Linus liked him at once.
The professor came in, a tall woman in a green scarf with a stack of papers and no patience.
"Semester project," she said. "Paired close reading."
She tapped the stack.
"You'll choose a novel, read it together, and present it aloud in December. I've paired you myself. No trades."
She read the names off a list.
Linus's attention wandered to the back of the room, because the door had opened.
Mattias slid into the last row with his cap low, twenty minutes late.
He sat with his arms folded and his gaze fixed on the clock.
She paired Dag with a girl in the front row and went on down the list.
Mattias's jaw tightened.
"Pehrson," said the professor, and a few people turned. "Pehrson and Maki."
Every head in the room swung from Linus to the back row and back again.
Mattias stood.
He picked up his bag without a word and walked out of the room, and the door swung shut behind him.
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