Oh My God, They Were Roommates

4 | Wouldn't It Be Nice

Ray's class let out just before dinnertime, and when he returned to the apartment, he had hoped to find the lights on. When he arrived to an empty apartment, though, his hope dampened. He was alone again.

    Ray sighed as he balanced his backpack and guitar bag in the foyer. He slipped his shoes off and locked the front door behind him. It was already dark—damn the winter months—and the apartment felt hollow with the street lights streaming in through the blinds. The blue, eerie shadows dissipated the instant Ray flicked on the overhead light.

    He set his backpack on the kitchen table chair. Sora had come with furniture, but it wasn't enough to fill the sheer size of the apartment.

    We'll need to go shopping, Ray thought as he went to his room. There was a sleeping bag on the ground from the night before, and Ray crawled on top of it, laid his guitar on the ground next to him, and hugged the neck of it for as long as it took for him to fall asleep—mostly by accident, of course.

    He slept through what would have been dinner and didn't wake until a key turned in the front door. He startled to attention with a gasp, shoving himself up from the sleeping bag and twisting around to the open bedroom door. The living room lights were still on, and so he saw the moment Sora walked in, sluggish and tired, at midnight.

    "Welcome home," Ray chimed, albeit hoarse with sleep, from his room.

    Sora jerked with a start, eyes wide. Oh, right, he had a roommate. His shoulders slumped with a low curse, shoving his backpack onto the ground beside the table. He put his hands over his face and groaned, "Don't—scare me like that, Christ."

    "Sorry," Ray said, hushed and guilty. He left his room and realized instantly that his stomach hurt so much because he was painfully hungry. He clutched at his stomach and sighed. "Are you hungry at all?" he asked.

    "Starving," Sora confessed, and Ray brightened instantly.

    "We should order something! I haven't had dinner yet," he said. He reached for the refrigerator door handle, and as he did, Sora peered around him to see the very empty refrigerator. "And we haven't gone grocery shopping yet. Aye, yai yai, that's gonna be expensive..."

    "Don't remind me," Sora groaned, rolling his eyes away from the horror scene. He slumped against the kitchen table and reached for his phone. "I'd be down for pizza."

    "Domino's?" Ray suggested, and Sora agreed.

    As they waited for the pizza to arrive, the atmosphere of the apartment diminished to nothing more than a sense of awkward tension. Ray wanted to go back to his room, but Sora stayed out at the kitchen table. Perhaps they needed to talk things over? They did need to go shopping...

"Hey, Sora," Ray started, perched at the head of the table. Sora looked up from his phone. Ray's heart leapt into his throat at the look of murder in Sora's cold, black irises. He swallowed hard, ignoring every visual he had of theory class that day. "I'm thinking maybe... this weekend we could go shopping? Maybe get a futon or something..."

    "I'm not going shopping with you," Sora deadpanned, and Ray's hopes and dreams plummeted. "Just pick something out and we'll go halfsies. I don't care."

    "Really?" Ray huffed. "But going to Ikea together would be so much fun."

    "Not a chance."

    "Why not?"

    Sora sighed as he set his phone on the table, hooked an arm over the back of his chair, and said, "I just don't want to be seen in public with you, alright? We don't know each other and I'm not comfortable with it."