The Problem with Emerson

03 | The Problem with Roommates

THE PROBLEM WITH ROOMMATES, a lot of the time, was the fact that a layer of privacy was almost nonexistent.

The problem with Brie's best friend having a roommate was that it made it very hard for her to avoid said roommate.  So, when Emerson opened the door and Brie stepped inside, she let out a quiet breath of relief as she realized that his roommate was — thankfully — nowhere to be found.

She and Jax had fooled around more than once and it had been fun.  But then things had gotten weird and for the past couple months, Brie had been avoiding Jax like the Black Plague.  She knew a run-in was inevitable when she was best friends with his roomie, but that didn't stop her from prolonging the inevitable.  It helped that her best friend was unknowingly playing the role of double agent.

"Where's Jax?" she asked innocently.

Some kids really shit on their universities for the housing accommodations they provided, but Brie thought that Waverley University was rather good to their students.  If the students paid them enough, that is.  If Brie didn't commute the twenty minutes from her house to school, there was no way she would be able to afford housing like Emerson, and she definitely wouldn't have such a luxurious amount of space.

Emerson pushed his glasses up his nose.  As much as Brie joked about him being a hipster, wearing glasses when he really didn't need them, he did have a bit of a prescription (and she had to admit that he looked damn good in those thick frames).  Glasses didn't suit a lot of people, but they sure did suit Emerson.

"I don't know," Emerson replied as he returned to his computer chair, naïve to the real reason Brie had asked.  "He said he was going out.  He's usually not back until late on Fridays though.  Sometimes not until Saturday morning."

Brie nodded.  She wasn't a stranger to late nights like that — admittedly, she had gone a little party crazy in the first couple months of university.  She had tried to get Emerson to come out a couple times, but he much preferred staying in, so Erica was usually the one that accompanied her to any social gatherings that exceeded ten people.  By second semester, she had toned it down a lot.  She still went out and enjoyed herself from time to time, but she also liked to balance that with weekends where she stayed home and watched Netflix.

"Cool, cool."

Since she was safe for the time being, Brie shed her coat and her hoodie.  Emerson's apartment was of the upscale variety, and that meant amazing air conditioning in the warmer months and overpowering heat in the winter.  Unlike her house, which was almost strictly heated by the fireplace (when someone remembered to stoke the flames), she didn't need layers when she hung out in Emerson's room.

She threw her outerwear, along with her purple Jansport backpack that she'd had since grade eight, onto the couch in the living room, which was already a dishevelled mess thanks to Jax, as she knew that Emerson wouldn't appreciate her mucking up the neatness of his bedroom.  Then, she flopped onto Emerson's bed, on her stomach, and began scrolling through her various social media apps, totally ignoring the textbooks weighing her backpack down.

"Shouldn't you be studying?" Emerson asked.

Brie looked up from her phone and zeroed in on Emerson's laptop.  To the untrained eye, it would look like he was writing an essay.  But Brie could tell that the paragraph breaks and the italics were indicative of his current work of fanfiction.  "Shouldn't you be studying?"

Emerson closed his laptop.  He hated when people other than his professors read anything he wrote.  Little did he know, Brie had accidentally stumbled upon one of his books a couple years ago, and he was good.