A Bonus Chapter from The Roommate Bet · by Aurora North

The Wall

The bonus chapter that was too hot for the bookstore.

We do it on a Tuesday.

We do it on a Tuesday because we have, on Saturday and Sunday and Monday, been too tired and too sore and too distracted to do it properly, and Jade Miller has, with the calm efficient discipline of a woman who is not going to let three more days go by without her napkin wall, declared that Tuesday is the day, and Tuesday is, currently, three minutes past nine at night.

Theo flew home Sunday morning.

Our mothers — both of them, in the same Hyundai, with Linda Miller driving — left for back east on Monday at noon, after one final argument in the kitchen between Linda and Marian about whether Marian needed a new sweater for the drive (she did) and whether Linda was qualified to pick it out (she was), and after my mother, on the curb, hugged me in the new daylight on West Eighteenth Street with the navy scarf around her neck — my scarf — and said, honey, I will see you in October, and meant it.

The apartment is quiet now.

The apartment is quiet, and the radiator in the kitchen is silent because it is August, and the candle on the kitchen counter — the Mercer Street candle, the candle that has come with us — is burning, and Maren’s RECOVERY playlist is on, low, on the speaker we have, with Theo’s help, mounted on a shelf in the kitchen, and Jade Miller is standing in the middle of our living room in pajama shorts and one of my t-shirts with a roll of clear tape in one hand and a small pencil between her teeth and the brown-paper-wrapped stack of fifty-three Mara’s napkins in the other hand, and she is looking at the bare wall above our new couch with the focused, calculating expression of a woman who is about to do math.

“Chlo.”

“Mm.”

“You did the layout on the old wall, right.”

“I did the layout.”

“How.”

“What do you mean how.”

“I mean — what was your system, Vance.”

I look at her in my t-shirt with the pencil between her teeth and the tape in her hand, and I say, slowly: “Jade. There was no system. I taped them up in the order I wrote them. That was the system.”

She — Jade Miller — stares at me.

“Vance. You taped fifty-three napkins to a wall above our old couch with no system.”

“Correct.”

“For five days.”

“Correct, Miller.”

“And you expect me to —”

“I expected you to find it charming, J.”

“I — did find it charming, Vance, I am, however, telling you that now we have a — bigger — wall, and we have a chance to — do this right —”

“Jade. Are you about to measure the wall.”

She does not say anything.

She does not say anything because Jade Miller, in her own apartment in Pilsen on a Tuesday night at three minutes past nine, with the candle burning and the playlist on and her partner in pajamas on the couch, is about to measure the wall.

I lose it.

I lose it on the couch. I lose it for a full minute. I lose it so completely that Jade — who has, in the last forty-five seconds, gotten a tape measure out of the kitchen drawer that she has, in fact, unpacked specifically in advance of this Tuesday — has to put down the tape measure and sit on the couch next to me and rub my back while I laugh into my own knees.

She lets me laugh. She is — patient.

After a minute, when I am sniffling and wiping my eyes and looking up at her, she puts her hand on my chin. She tips my face up. She kisses me.

She kisses me, slow, on the couch, and her thumb is on my jaw, and her hair — which has been, in the August heat of moving day, in a knot — has come down somewhere in the last hour, and is, currently, falling around our faces. She kisses me until I have, in fact, stopped laughing, and she pulls back, and she says: “Help me hang the napkins.”

“Yeah, J.”

We hang the napkins.

It takes us an hour.

It takes us an hour because Jade has, despite my objections, in fact decided on a system, and the system is: numbered order, four rows of approximately thirteen napkins each, with a small pencil mark Jade puts on the wall behind each napkin to make sure it is, and I quote her exactly, “level, Vance, level, level, Vance, look at it, it is not level.”

I sit on the couch in pajama shorts and her green sweater — which I have, by now, fully annexed, and which she has, since we got to Pilsen, made approximately zero protest about — and I drink an iced tea, and I watch her, and I hand her the napkins one by one in order, and she presses the tape, and she steps back, and she examines, and she adjusts, and she says, every time, good, good, good, next, Vance, and I love her so much I almost cannot stand it, and I do not say that out loud, because if I say it out loud I am going to cry, and if I cry, the wall does not get done.

I will say it later.

For now I just — watch her.

When we are done, the wall is — the wall.

Fifty-three Mara’s napkins, in four neat rows, in the order I wrote them. The original — the napkin, the bet napkin with clause six on the back — is taped, separately, in the center, in a small frame Jade has, somehow, in the last seventy-two hours, bought and brought home and not told me about, because Jade Miller is a menace.

The Polaroid is also there — Sloane’s Polaroid, the one of us walking out of Mara’s the night of the open mic. The chicken Post-it is in the corner. The deciding-zone receipt — DAY 1 / DAY 2 — is bottom left. The brown blazer dry-cleaning tag — Linda’s brown blazer — is, against my better judgment, in fact taped to the wall, because Jade insisted. The Mara’s open-mic flyer in its frame — the one Sloane gave us at our going-away party with YOU SHOWED UP in Sharpie — is also on the wall, on a separate finishing nail, slightly above the napkin grid.

The whole thing is — the wall.

It is the same wall, just in a new city.

Jade steps back. Jade steps back from the wall and stands in the middle of the living room in my t-shirt, with the pencil still behind her ear, and she looks at it, and she doesn’t say anything, and after a long moment I see her — I see her — swallow, and I see her chin do the thing it does when she is not going to cry but is, in fact, about to cry, and I get up off the couch, and I cross the living room, and I put my arms around her from behind. I press my face into the back of her neck. She puts her hands over mine on her stomach. We stand like that for a minute.

“J. You okay.”

“Mm.”

“Use your words, Miller.”

She laughs — short, wet, surprised — and she leans back against me, and she says, hoarse: “It’s the same wall, Chlo. It’s the same wall and it’s a different wall. And it’s — ours.”

“It’s ours, J.”

“And next year, when we — when we get the new place, in — wherever we get it — we are going to bring it. With us.”

“We are going to bring it, J.”

“Ours, Chlo.”

“Ours, J.”

She turns around in my arms. She turns around and she puts her hands at my face and she kisses me, slow, against the wall, on the couch side, in the lamp light, with the candle burning, and her mouth tastes like the iced tea I gave her an hour ago and toothpaste, because she brushed her teeth before we started, because Jade Miller is the kind of woman who brushes her teeth before she hangs napkins on a wall, and she pulls back, and she says, quiet: “Vance. I want —”

“Yeah, J.”

“You — I haven’t even —”

“Yeah, J.”

“How did you —”

“Your face, Miller.”

She is quiet, and I see her face do the thing, and I see her — decide — and she takes my hand, and she walks me, slowly, down the small hallway of our small apartment, past the bathroom, past the linen closet, into the bedroom, and she closes the door behind us — not because there is anybody else in the apartment, because there is not, but because Jade Miller has, in eighteen months of living together with closed doors, developed muscle memory, and I love her for it.

She turns me to face her in the small bedroom with the streetlight through the new window over the new tree and the lamp on her side and the Mercer Street candle in the kitchen still burning beyond the door, and the navy sheets — the navy sheets — on the bed, and she says, quiet: “Strap.”

I freeze.

I freeze because Jade Miller has, in our bedroom in Pilsen on a Tuesday night at ten twenty-three p.m., said the word strap out loud in our shared vocabulary for the first time, and I am — I am — vibrating.

“J. You bought one.”

“I bought one.”

“In May?”

“In May, Vance.”

“Jade —”

“I have been waiting for the right night, Chlo.”

“Jade —”

“Tonight is the right night.”

I — I am.

She crosses the bedroom. She opens the bottom drawer of her dresser — the dresser that has, until twelve hours ago, been on the moving truck, and which she has, this afternoon, while I was at dance practice, unpacked specifically and reorganized — and she takes out a small black drawstring bag I have, in fact, never seen in my life. She brings it to the bed. She sits on the edge of the bed. She unties the drawstring. She tips the bag upside down.

A harness.

A harness — leather, soft, broken-in, the kind that has been worn before by exactly one person, who has been her — and a strap on, in a color that is a careful, deliberate, not-too-much shade of dark teal, that is, I clock, the exact same color as the bridge over the river back home.

She bought it in our bridge color.

She bought it in our bridge color and she has had it for three months and she has not used it and she has not told me about it and she has been, waiting, and I — I am — I am.

“Jade Miller. You — bought a strap in our bridge color, Miller.”

She closes her eyes and she — laughs, soft, embarrassed — and she says: “Chlo, I am —”

“You are unmasked, Miller. You romantic, menace, J.”

“Chloe.”

“Mm.”

“Take the sweater off.”

I take the sweater off.

I take the sweater off and her t-shirt that I am wearing under it off, and I am, in our bedroom on a Tuesday in August, naked from the waist up in pajama shorts in front of Jade Miller, and she — Jade Miller, in my t-shirt — looks at me, and her face does the thing.

The thing. The open thing.

“Vance. Come here.”

I come.

I come and she sits up on the edge of the bed, and I stand between her thighs, and her hands come up to my hips, and she rests her forehead against my stomach, just below my ribs, and she breathes — slow, careful — and I put both my hands in her hair, and I hold her there, and I close my eyes.

We do not move for one full minute.

After a minute she lifts her head. She looks up at me. “On the bed, baby. Pajamas off.”

I take the pajama shorts off. I take the underwear off. I get on the bed. I lie back on the navy sheets, in the lamp light, naked, with the streetlight on the ceiling making the new shape, with Maren’s playlist still playing very faintly through the wall from the kitchen, and I look at her.

She is, still, dressed.

She is in my t-shirt and pajama shorts and she is — slowly, with the same focus she brings to everything — taking the t-shirt off, and the bra under it off, and her own shorts off, and her own underwear off, and she is naked too, except for the harness, which she is — putting on, with the calm precise movements of a woman who has fitted this harness on her own body in her own room with the door locked at least once before, in May, when she bought it and could not, yet, use it.

Of course she has. Of course she test-fitted it. Of course she has had this harness in a drawer for three months and she has — at least once, in our old apartment, with the door locked, while I was at dance practice — tried it on, to make sure that when the right night came, she would not fumble, because Jade Miller does not fumble.

She finishes adjusting the harness.

She stands at the foot of the bed in the lamp light, naked, in the harness, in our bridge color, and she looks at me, and her face is — open, careful, slightly nervous, the way she was on the bridge in February, and she says, in the smallest version of her voice: “Vance. Is this —”

“Jade Miller, get on this bed.”

“Vance —”

“Get on this bed, J. Now, Miller.”

She gets on the bed.

She crawls up the bed slowly, in the lamp light, in the harness, and she settles between my thighs, and she — for one long second — does not do anything. She just looks at me with both her hands flat on the sheets on either side of my hips, with her hair falling around our faces, with her mouth swollen from the kiss in the living room, and she says, quietly: “Tell me what you want, baby.”

“You, J. I want you to fuck me, Jade.”

She closes her eyes for one half-second. When she opens them, the open thing is gone. Her face is — focused. Her face is the face she had on the rug in the entryway in February. Her face is the face she has when she is about to do a thing carefully, slowly, deliberately, and absolutely.

“Show me how.”

I take her hand. I bring it down. I bring it between my legs. I press her fingers against me — wet, ready, the open obvious confirmation that I have been ready for this since she said strap in the living room — and her face, briefly, does the small private smile.

She works her fingers slow with the focused care she always uses, the way I taught her, the way she taught me to teach her, and I am — quickly — gone. I am, in our bedroom in Pilsen on a Tuesday night, going to come on her fingers in approximately ninety seconds if she does not slow down, which she does not, because she is deliberately not slowing down, because she is — preparing me — for what is coming next.

“Jade — Jade — don’t —”

She stops. She stops because she has been waiting for me to say it, and she pulls her fingers out, and she — replaces them. She slides her fingers up to my hipbone and she rests them there, and she shifts her hips down, and she lines up the strap — slow, careful, watching my face — and she presses, gently, against me, just at the entrance, and she stops.

She stops there. She does not push in. She holds.

“Chlo. Look at me.”

I open my eyes. I look at her. She is — Jade Miller, naked, in our bridge color, in the lamp light, on top of me, with her hair falling around our faces, with the open thing back, and she says, low: “You good?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure, baby?”

“Yes, Jade. Please —”

She pushes in. She pushes in slow.

She pushes in slow and careful and deliberate, the way she does everything, and I — I — I have, in the last sixteen months, had a lot of sex with Jade Miller. I have had a lot of good sex with Jade Miller. I have had hands. I have had mouth. I have had her in approximately eight different configurations on six different surfaces in two different apartments, and this — this — this is — this is, possibly, the moment I have been waiting for since the moment the harness sat in her drawer.

She pushes in slow until she is — fully — in, and she stops, and she looks at me, and her face is — unrecognizable, the open thing has gone, the careful thing has gone, what is left is the Jade Miller is fucking me with a strap she bought in our bridge color face, and it is — it is — it.

I am.

“Jade — move, J. Move, Miller.”

She moves.

She moves slow at first, the same slow she has used everywhere else, the slow that is her signature, the slow that has, in sixteen months, ruined every man and woman who came before her — and there are not many — and she watches my face, the whole time, because Jade Miller is the kind of woman who watches your face, and her hand on my hipbone tightens, and her other hand braces beside my head on the pillow, and her hair is in my face, and her mouth is on my throat, and she is —

She is fucking me.

She is fucking me on the navy sheets in our new bedroom in our new apartment in our new city in the lamp light with the napkin wall in the living room and the candle in the kitchen and Maren’s playlist on low and our mothers two thousand miles away and Theo asleep in his apartment back east and the bridge over the river and the bet napkin in its frame in the next room, and I — am — coming.

I am coming inside of ninety seconds because she has, in fact, learned my body in sixteen months, and she knows exactly how to angle, exactly how hard, exactly how slow, exactly how much, and she does not stop because she has, also, in sixteen months, learned that one orgasm is a first orgasm, not a last orgasm, and she rides me through the first one and keeps going.

She keeps going in the slow, focused, deliberate way she does everything, and I am — clutching the back of her shoulders, and her hair is in my mouth, and I am whispering her name into the side of her face, and she is — making the sound, the sound she makes, the small unsteady sound she has made since the first night, the sound that I have, in sixteen months, learned to recognize as the only completely unguarded sound she ever makes, and the sound is, in our bedroom on a Tuesday night, constant.

She is — affected. She is affected the entire time. She is not, at any point during this, the calm efficient operator she has been about measuring the wall.

“Chlo — Chlo — I —”

“I know, baby. I know, J. I know.”

She comes — herself, the harness pressing on her in the right way, on top of me, with both my hands in her hair — and her face does the thing, the thing it did the first time, the thing it did the night of the open mic, the open-and-closing thing, and she sobs once, into my throat, and I hold her, and I keep my hand on the small of her back, and I let her have it.

I let her have it.

I have, in sixteen months, become a person who lets her have it.

She comes down slow with her face in my throat and her hand still on my hipbone and the harness still in me and her breath unsteady against my collarbone, and I rub her back, and I press my mouth to the top of her head, and after a long minute I say: “Miller. You did that, J.”

“Mm.”

“You — you have had a strap in our bridge color in the bottom drawer for three months — and you waited until — until tonight — until the wall, Jade.”

She laughs — wet, surprised, into my throat — and she lifts her head, and her face is — open, soft, the rare open soft, the one from the bridge, the one from the kitchen-floor moment with my mother on the call — and she says, hoarse: “Until the wall, Chlo.”

“Until the wall, J.”

She kisses me. She kisses me slow, and she pulls out — slow, careful, the way she does — and she sits up, and she takes off the harness, and she sets it on the navy sheets next to us, and she lies back down, and she pulls the comforter up over us, and she tucks her face into my throat, and she says: “Vance. My turn next.”

I freeze.

I freeze because Jade Miller has, in fact, just announced that she is going to — use the strap on me, then ask me to use it on her, and I am — I am — vibrating again.

“Tonight?”

“Possibly tonight. Or in the morning. It is your first day off in a week, Vance. You can take a long morning, Vance.”

“Jade Miller, you are unmasked.”

“Sleep, baby.”

I sleep with my face in her throat and her hand on my stomach and the harness next to us on the navy sheets and the candle in the kitchen burning beyond the door, and Maren’s playlist on the speaker on the kitchen shelf, and the wall in the living room with all fifty-three napkins and the framed bet napkin and the chicken Post-it and the deciding-zone receipt and the brown blazer dry-cleaning tag and the open-mic flyer with YOU SHOWED UP in Sloane Bex’s handwriting, and our new city around us, and the radiator in the bedroom corner that will, in October, clank, and our new life — our new life — beginning, finally, here.

In the morning the kitchen smells like vanilla.

In the morning the kitchen smells like vanilla because the candle is, of course, still burning. In the morning Jade is, of course, awake before me. In the morning I get up at seven thirty and I put on her hoodie and I walk into the kitchen, and she is at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and her glasses on and the Argonauts open beside her, and she looks up.

“Hi, baby. I made tea. Chamomile.”

“You made me chamomile.”

“I made you chamomile, Vance.”

She is calm, the way she is calm in the morning when she has, in fact, the night before, fucked me in our bridge color.

I sit down across from her at the kitchen table. I drink my tea. I look at her. She looks at me.

The morning sun is coming through the new window over the new tree. The radiator is silent. The candle is still burning. Maren’s playlist is, of course, still playing. The wall in the living room is still — the wall. The harness is, possibly, still on the navy sheets in the bedroom, but I am not yet at the stage of dealing with that.

“J. You said my turn, last night.”

She looks up over her glasses. “I did.”

“Are —”

“Drink your tea, baby. Drink your tea first.”

I drink my tea, and she watches me, and she does the small private smile, and after a minute, when I have, in fact, finished my tea, I set the cup down, and I look at her, and I say: “Miller. It is now your turn.”

She closes her book. She marks her page first. She always marks her page first. She gets up. She picks up the mug of coffee and brings it with her. She walks over. She holds out her hand.

“Come on, Vance.”

I come on.

In our new bedroom, on a Wednesday morning, in our new apartment, in our new city, I come on.

Later, much later, when we are showered and dressed and the harness is, at her request, on a hook in the closet, Vance, please not on the sheets, baby, I am begging you, and the candle is, somehow, still burning, and Maren’s playlist has looped twice, and we are in the living room on the new couch with our coffee and tea and we are, both of us, looking at the wall, Jade puts her head on my shoulder.

“Vance. Forever, right.”

“Forever, J.”

“You sure?”

“I am sure, baby.”

She is quiet for a second. She is quiet, and then she says, very small, into my shoulder: “Me too.”

I smile against the top of her head. The wall watches us. The candle burns. Outside, on West Eighteenth Street in Pilsen on a Wednesday morning in August, somebody walks a dog. Somebody runs to catch a bus. Somebody, two doors down, opens a window. The radiator is silent because it is summer. Maren’s playlist plays. The coffee is going cold. The tea is going cold. We do not move.

We do not move for a long time. We do not need to. We are home.

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