Page 21 of My Roommate Is Trying To Kill Me

Every muscle in Hakeem’s shoulders sharpened.

He tried to answer normally and probably failed. “Sometimes.”

Antonio looked straight at him. “Don’t.”

Hakeem went very still.

Antonio went on, perfectly calm. “The latch catches in the humidity. If it clicks all the way and the frame swells, you can get stuck inside. I had to shoulder it open once.”

There was a brief silence in which Hakeem pictured, against his will, Antonio on the other side of a locked door, throwing his weight against it hard enough to splinter old wood.

“Good to know,” he said.

Antonio’s gaze lingered on him.

Then, with the faintest lift at one corner of his mouth, he said, “You look like you think I’m planning something.” Antonio chuckled lightly. Darkly?

The mug nearly slipped in Hakeem’s hand.

“What? No.”

“Hm.”

“That is an insane thing to say to someone over coffee.”

Antonio rinsed the press under the sink. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

Another small, unreadable pause.

Then Antonio said, “I’m trying to figure out the house rhythm. That’s all.”

And there, embarrassingly, was the truth of it. Nothing sinister, adult practicality. Shared-space, cohabitation, nobody-gets-woken-up-or-locked-out sensibility. That should have made Hakeem feel relieved. Instead, it made him feel exposed, like his nerves were visible from across the room.

He covered with offense. “Well, maybe don’t ask questions in a sequence that sounds like a coming-soon-to-Netflix docuseries.”

Antonio dried his hands on a dish towel. “I’ll work on my tone.”

“You should.”

“Unlikely.”

That, stupidly, made Hakeem smile. He had a thing for bad boys. And Antonio might be very, very bad.

Antonio glanced toward the back door. “I’m heading out for a while.”

“Where?”

The word came too fast. Antonio looked back at him.

Hakeem corrected with as much dignity as he could recover. “I meant that in a normal roommate way. Like if you got hit by a Tesla, I’d need context.”

“Coffee shop,” Antonio said.

Of course, he was the kind of man who left the house to quietly do laptop things with intention and strong shoulders.

He picked up his keys from the table. “If you use the back door, lift before you pull. It sticks less.”