Page 40 of Rent: Paid in Full

After a few hours, Em and I are tired, so we decide to head home. We’re less than a minute down the road when Miller comes bounding over. He inserts himself between Emily and me and slings an arm over both our shoulders. He dominates the conversation the whole way back, hardly letting Emily get a word in edgewise.

When we get to our building, he makes a point of depositing her on her floor and all but manhandling me along with him as he takes the next flight of stairs to our floor.

“See you tomorrow,” she calls after me, sounding more than a little bewildered.

Good.

At least now, she might start to believe me when I tell her Miller’s the worst.

Instead of stopping at our floor, Miller drags me up another flight of stairs to the top floor. It’s quiet. It’s late, the hallway floor looks shiny and wide, and there isn’t a breath of air moving. It’s well after midnight, and the entire floor is completely deserted.

“This way,” he says, forcing the window at the end of the hallway open.

“W-we can’t go out there.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Um, the sign that saysStrictly No Exit.” He laughs softly and bundles me out of the window onto the roof without giving me time to make more strenuous objections known. “Oh fuck,” I groan when I see how high up we are.

“Sit and don’t look down.”

I do as he says because I’m not sure what else to do. We lean back against the dormer window, his legs splayed out in front of him, my feet scrabbling for purchase. The roof tile is bumpy and rough under my ass, which brings me some comfort—I don’t think it would be all that easy to roll off it and fall to my inevitable death.

The campus looks different from this vantage point. There seem to be more trees from up here. Frozen in the moonlight. I can see the library. Just the outline of it, washed with warm white lights that I’ve never noticed at ground height. I can see the quad and the arch too, but my bench is hidden from view.

“Did you have a good time tonight?” Miller asks.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Nothing bad will happen to you when you’re with me.”

I’m suddenly overcome with exhaustion. Inexplicably, bone-crushingly tired. I must be because the urge to lean my head against Miller’s shoulder is almost overwhelming. My head feels heavy and my neck aches for respite.

“So you and Emily, huh? You like a thing, or what?”

Jesus.

I’ve had just about as much of Miller as I can possibly handle in one day. “I told you. We’re just friends.”

“Hmph.”

The way he says it, or laughs it, or whatever you’d call it, infuriates me. I’m shutting this shit down. “She has a crush on someone else, you dork, and even if she didn’t, I’m not interested in her like that.”

As I say it, it occurs to me that it’s true. It’s a shock. Emily is very, very pretty. Beautiful, in fact. And she’s a lovely person. Kind and weird, a bit of a mess, and funny to boot. She’s exactly my type.

Why the hell am Inotinto her?

I gulp down rivers of horror, looking straight ahead, unseeing but feeling. Feeling many things, but most of all, feeling the heat of Miller’s body despite the fact we’re not touching at all.

I jump up and wrestle the window open, stepping in with a high, awkward step that almost sees me stuck precariously in a position that would be less than favorable to my balls. Miller takes my arm, trying to help, but I slap him away.

“Freaking out again, huh?” he asks as we walk to our room.

“No,” I say a little too loudly. “I’m fine.”