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Monday evening, Cal was sitting at the dining room table, staring at numbers on his laptop again. It didn’t make any more damn sense than it had yesterday morning.
Rose walked by, wearing yoga pants and a tank top.
Dammit, it was getting harder and harder not to notice how hot she looked. Was it partly because as the weather warmed up, she wore less clothing?
Ugh. He needed to focus.
She went to the kitchen and came out a few minutes later with a cup of tea. “Want to watch a show?”
Oh, did he ever, but... “I have to finish this first.”
“What are you working on?”
“Finances,” he muttered. “I have some credit card debt and...”
“That’s the worst. The interest rate is so high.”
He returned to staring at the numbers but looked up a minute later, realizing she was still there.
“Do you need help?” she asked. “In the time we’ve lived together, I’ve never seen you look so...” She made a strange gesture. “Frustrated, I guess?”
He glanced at the screen then looked back at her. “I’m really bad with numbers.”
Why was he telling her this? She was an engineer, like his dad. She wouldn’t understand.
But he didn’t shut up. “They never made sense to me, and basic stuff like paying bills and figuring out what to save is...hard.”
That was part of the reason why he’d liked the idea of renting a place that included utilities. Fewer numbers to worry about, and he wouldn’t have to concern himself with variations in hydro bills.
“Do you have dyscalculia?” she asked.
“Dis...what?”
“Dyscalculia. It’s like...dyslexia for numbers. I don’t know much about it, but...”
Huh. He’d never heard of that before.
“Anyway,” she said, “whatever the reason, do you want me to help you? I don’t know much about investing, but I can assist with interest rates and figuring out payments. Stuff like that.”
“You don’t need to.” It was far beyond the job description of a roommate, and he wouldn’t want her to lose whatever respect she had for him when she realized just how much he didn’t understand.
She didn’t say anything in response but stared pointedly at his hand, which was gripping his pen for dear life, rather like how his hands clenched when he thought of her going on a date. He wasn’t really an anxious guy, but when it came to anything related to math, it was a different story. He couldn’t help thinking of those long evenings at the kitchen table with his father, when Cal had never, ever lived up to expectations.
“We’ll take half an hour and see what happens, okay?” Her voice was upbeat.
“Well...”
“If you don’t want to share financial information with me, I get it, but I won’t tell anything to anyone, and we’ll do it all on your computer. I won’t keep anything myself.”
He did trust her, and unlike other people, she didn’t seem at all judgmental—not yet anyway. Perhaps it was worth a try.
“Okay, but you don’t know what you’re getting into.” He tried to smile.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She shot him an easy grin as she sat down, and blood pumped to his groin. With her sitting here, maybe he was going to understand even less than usual.
He brought up his online banking, since he figured that would make things easier. He also showed her the small number of bills he had, plus his pay stubs.
She pulled up the spreadsheet program and split the screen so the browser was open on one half and the spreadsheet on the other. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, typing in the numbers he’d shown her, but somehow, they all made sense to her, unlike to him.
“I wasn’t really stupid with my money,” he said. “That’s not why I have credit card debt.” She hadn’t asked, but he wanted her to know. “When I was younger, I sometimes offered to pay bills at the bar for my friends. It was on a credit card, so it seemed like it wasn’t real money... Okay, I guess that is rather stupid. Then one time, I had to help Meena get out of a bad situation. But I learned my lesson, and when I inherited a small amount of money from my grandpa, I bought myself a car outright. No payment plan.”
Her hands stopped moving and she looked at him like...well, he knew that look. It was the one people gave him when he did something particularly unintelligent. His dad had given him that look a lot.
Unlike his father, Rose quickly plastered it over with a smile. “It likely would have been better to use the money to pay off your credit card debt because those usually have the highest interest rates, so you’ll end up paying more money over time. Whereas when you buy a new car, you can get a lower rate for a financing plan—although, to be fair, if you have a bad credit score, I’m not sure how much that would affect your options. It would have been worth doing some research, though, or waiting to buy a car if that was a possibility.”
He didn’t fully understand, so he hesitantly asked her to explain it again, which, to his surprise, she happily did without rolling her eyes.
Though now that he thought about it, he would have been surprised if she’d rolled her eyes, but he was instinctively expected her to act like other people had.
Without the looming possibility of her getting super annoyed or disappointed in him, he was actually sort of able to understand what was going on, even if her thigh was now pressing against his.
She did a calculation on the spreadsheet and said, “I think you should be able to pay it off within a year and a half.” She paused. “Sorry, I don’t think I explained everything as well as I could have. I’m not very good at teaching. My dad’s great at it, but I don’t have that talent.”
He just stared at her. She thought this was a failing on her part?
“What?” she said.
“You’re way better at this than most people.”
“No, I—”
“You’re patient and you don’t think I’m an idiot.”
“Oh,” she said faintly, then tucked some hair behind her ear. “Uh, thank you.”
“You’re...” You’re amazing.
But he didn’t say that. It didn’t seem appropriate, even if it was true.
“My dad always made me feel like an idiot,” he heard himself saying. “He could never understand how things that were easy for him were hard for me.”
“I can’t pretend to know exactly what it’s like. It is easy for me—I think that’s why it’s hard for me to explain things.”
“But you’re not weird and judgy about it like he is. My mom, too. She was always saying that she couldn’t understand why I didn’t try harder. Except I did try.” And now that he thought about it, there were a few instances that made him wonder if his mother had the same issues as him and just did her best to hide it. Huh.
“We all have different strengths.”
Cal had heard that one before, but it seemed more meaningful when Rose said it. He found himself leaning forward, as though he was about to kiss her.
He needed to get out of here before he did anything he shouldn’t. “Thank you so much for your help. I gotta go, uh, make a call.”
He took his laptop and sauntered upstairs. His brain urged him to move faster, but he didn’t want to show how affected he was by her.
Since he didn’t actually have a call to make, once he was in his bedroom, he googled “dyscalculia” and found long lists of things that he identified with more than a little.
* * *
Cal vaguely remembered something about warm milk helping you sleep, so when he was still awake at two thirty in the morning, he tiptoed downstairs and warmed up a small amount of milk in the microwave.
Insomnia was a rather unfamiliar experience, but his mind had been busy over the past few hours, thinking about how there was a name for his problem with numbers, rather than his dad just saying he was stupid, over and over.
Was it actually his parents who’d failed him, by not getting him the proper help? School hadn’t been great, either, though he’d had one teacher—grade three?—who’d finally managed to teach him how to tell time, as well as some basic arithmetic.
But maybe there hadn’t been much research about dyscalculia until recently? Huh. More stuff to look up.
After drinking his milk, he headed back upstairs and noticed a light on in what Rose called the “reading room.” A small room with a reading nook that looked out onto the street.
He knocked on the door. “Rose?” He thought he heard some movement, but she didn’t speak. “Are you okay?”
When he didn’t hear anything more, he wondered if he should push open the door and check on her, or whether that would be an invasion of privacy.
Perhaps it was partly because he wasn’t used to being up at two thirty in the morning and everything felt weird and quiet, but he started thinking the worst.
“Just tell me you’re okay and I’ll leave you alone,” he said.
He heard nothing for a few long seconds, and then a quiet voice said, “Come in.”
He entered carefully. Rose was sitting on the window seat, hugging a shark, a seal, and a sheep to her chest. She was staring out the window at the dark city, and she didn’t seem like her usual self.
“I can’t sleep. Again,” she said.
He thought back to that night in August, when he’d found her crying on his couch, and his heart squeezed. She looked very different from the woman who’d helped with his finances several hours earlier. Unlike last summer, she wasn’t crying, but she looked vacant.
He crouched down on the floor next to her and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her head in his shoulder, and one of the stuffed animals fell out of her lap and onto the floor, but she didn’t move to pick it up. She just stayed there, like she was comfortable in his arms.
“I suffer from depression,” she said, “and I have anxiety, too. Sometimes in the middle of the night, my mind just keeps spinning, and I feel hollow inside. The longer I’m awake, the more tired I get, but the wider awake I feel. Usually, I don’t get to this point, not as often as I used to, but...”
“And this time, it’s not because you’re trying to share a bed with me, or because you don’t have anything to hold.” But perhaps he shouldn’t have referenced that night.
She didn’t seem bothered by his words, though. “Even my optimal sleeping conditions aren’t always enough.”
He took a moment to process everything she’d just told him. “What can I do?”
“Nothing,” she said miserably. “It’s not like anyone can solve all my problems. I’ve tried so many things...it’s just the way it is.” Her voice was a little flat.
“But right now, what would make you the tiniest bit less spinny or empty?”
She chuckled weakly, not like the way she sometimes laughed, but it was precious nonetheless.
“You only have a shark, a seal, and a sheep here,” he said, “but I could get you others. Your alpaca and sloth, and I think you also have an ice cream cone plushie. That might distract the shark from eating the seal.”
“He’s a nice shark. He doesn’t eat anyone.”
“Even nice sharks need food. You know, there’s probably a store open at this time that sells plushies.” He didn’t know what he was saying; he just felt the need to fill the silence, hoping something would amuse her.
And to distract him from how wonderful she felt in his arms. It seemed wrong to notice that when she clearly wasn’t in a good place. He desperately wished he could take all of it away from her, but if she didn’t have a solution, he doubted he could come up with one, especially since he knew little of what she was going through.
“If there was a shop down the street,” he said, “I’d buy you a plush slice of pepperoni pizza.”
“Mmm.” She relaxed against him.
They stayed there in the semi-darkness for a while—he had no concept of time right now—and then Rose said, “I should go back to bed.”
They headed to their bedrooms. His mind was quieter now, and he hoped hers was, too.
When his head hit the pillow, he fell right to sleep.
* * *
Rose woke up at seven the next morning, after an insufficient three and a half hours of sleep. She went downstairs and found coffee in the coffeemaker, as usual. But Cal had made her extra coffee, and there was also a note on the table, next to Shelly: Shelly wishes you a good day at work.
Even though Rose was tired and felt a heavy weight on her chest, the note still made her smile. The extra coffee helped, too.
Work was okay, considering she hadn’t slept enough. Perhaps it was all the caffeine she’d consumed, but when she got home at six, she was the most awake she’d been all day, and Cal was outside, weeding their small flower garden.
This was most unfair.
Her libido had been completely absent in the middle of the night when he’d had his arms around her, but it roared back now. He was wearing shorts and a white tank top, which gave her an extremely good view of his biceps, and the way the sunlight hit his brown hair made it look like it was threaded with gold.
And he was so sweet. Honestly, that was the sexiest part.
“Hey, Rose,” he said, standing up when he saw her. “How was your day?”
“It was alright,” she said. “Considering.”
He nodded. “Cool. You want me to make something for dinner?”
His offer to take care of dinner was even more of a turn-on. Seriously, what was wrong with her?
At her silence, he stepped closer to her—which didn’t help matters at all, of course. His biceps were at eye level; she tilted her head up, but that easy smile on his face was just as sexy.
He hadn’t slept well last night, either, and then he’d gone to his manual labor job. How could he look so damn good after all that? She knew she looked far from her best, and the concealer she’d reapplied at lunch was probably doing a bad job of hiding the circles under her eyes.
She should decline his offer to figure out dinner, but her tired body and mind wouldn’t let her. “That would be great, thank you. I’m just going to, uh, visit Amy first. Be back in an hour.”
That wouldn’t be enough to douse her desire for him, but hopefully it would help a little.
Amy answered her door, the baby balanced on her hip. “Is something wrong?”
Was Amy asking that because of how Rose looked? Or because she never showed up unannounced like this?
“No,” Rose said, “I’m fine. Yes, I’m fine. I just thought I could use some Hudson time. What do you think?” She addressed this last part to the baby, who giggled.
“You mind if I take a shower while you hold him?” Amy asked. “Victor’s still at work.”
Soon, Rose and Hudson were sitting together in the armchair in the front room. Rose knew she wouldn’t cope well with a baby of her own, but she did like babies.
“Is that a dinosaur onesie, Hudson? How cute. What’s your favorite dinosaur? T-Rex? Triceratops? Pachycephalosaurus?”
He giggled in that delightful way babies had.
“Do you think it’s a funny word? Pachycephalosaurus?”
He giggled again and tried to grab her glasses, so she put those aside. There was a small lion toy on the coffee table, and she handed it to him. He promptly stuck it in his mouth.
“How do you think Cal feels about me?” she asked.
Hudson looked at her curiously, then decided her question didn’t merit an answer. He pulled the toy out of his mouth and shook it around before biting on it again.
“But I’m not sure it matters,” she went on. “It’s too risky, isn’t it? He broke my heart once before, and we barely knew each other then. If it happens again, especially now that we’re living together...”
“Ba!” Hudson said triumphantly, handing her his toy.
“Why, thank you. You’re such a sweetheart.”
Hudson smiled, well aware of just how sweet he was, then apparently decided he was too sweet and started fussing.
He did a good job of distracting Rose, but when she returned home and saw Cal in the kitchen, washing lettuce, all her desire for him returned.
How was washing lettuce sexy?
God, she was screwed.