Roommates With Benefits [BL]

I dragged a hand down my face. My palm came away damp. I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or from the fact that my eyes had started stinging at some point without permission.

Okay Jeremy was behind all these, sure.

But that left only one question. If Jeremy liked like he claimed he did, why would he tell Melanie that if Damien and I broke up that Melanie could finally get me back again?

Or was it just because of Abernathys’ and Lockwoods’ family rivalry?

Did he do it because he liked me? Because he hated Damien?

For money?

What was the actual plan here?

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‎"I don’t know all of it," Melanie said. She was still crying, quieter now. "He talked about Damien a lot. How Damien always got everything. How it wasn’t fair, I should have walked away the second he started. I didn’t."

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I thought about Jeremy. His comments about Damien. How he’d plant seeds of doubt when he spoke... The offhand jokes he’d made about rich students. The questions he’d asked me about my relationship.

"He said if I helped, you’d realize you actually loved me."

I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because the alternative was to scream.

"He was wrong."

Her eyes brimmed again, "I realize that now. I...I never wanted them to hurt you."

"But they did."

My voice cracked slightly.

"And they hurt Damien too. You can’t say you didn’t know what would happen. Maybe you didn’t know exactly how far it would go, but you knew you were helping someone destroy our relationship."

"Please don’t hate me, Oliver." She sobbed, "I know I fucked up, I couldn’t handle losing the way I thought I could. That you’d actually choose a guy over me, I know that’s fucked up because I’m not a homophobe, but I wished I was the one you liked that much."

For a moment, we fell silent. The park had gotten colder while we talked. The wind rustled through the trees, carrying dry leaves across the pavement.

"I’m so sorry, Oliver." She whispered.

A car passed behind us, its headlights briefly lighting up the grass before fading away, leaving us in the dark, only the streetlamp shining down on us.

I looked again at the photographs. There were just so many. Too many. Every picture felt like another piece of my privacy being ripped away.

"Why bring them to me now?"

Melanie glanced at the envelope. "Because I couldn’t do it anymore."

"What changed?"

"I saw you."

"When?"

"At the hospital."

My eyebrows knitted together.

"You saw me at the hospital? I thought you said a friend who worked there saw me, lemme guess...you lied about that too."

She wiped her eyes. "I saw you walking with Damien. You looked exhausted, Oliver. You seemed like you hadn’t slept in days, yet you were still holding onto him."

Her voice softened. "And I realized I was still hurting you on top of everything you were going through."

I looked down. "That’s when you decided to confess?"

She nodded. "I couldn’t keep watching what was happening, especially since you were never actually trying to hurt me."

"You could’ve told me sooner." The envelope felt heavier than it had any right to. "You don’t get to fix this with a park-bench confession and some tears. You helped put a target on both of us. Damien lost things he can’t get back. We’ve been looking over our shoulders for weeks. And the entire time the person helping make it happen was someone I used to date and someone I was tutoring. That’s not something you get to cry about and walk away from feeling lighter."

I gathered the photos from the bench one by one, sliding them back into the envelope with more care than I wanted to, my hands moving on autopilot while my mind was struggling to catch up with everything I’d just learned.

Melanie watched me. "Oliver..."

I looked at her. "I don’t hate you."

She seemed surprised. "But I’m not forgiving for this either."

Her face fell. "I understand."

"I need you to stay away from me."

She nodded. "And Damien as well..Don’t contact him. Don’t come to the dorm. Don’t try to explain yourself to him, if you do any of these things...I’ll get the police involved."

She winced, "I...I won’t."

"Take that as my act of kindness for telling me the truth."

She turned away shamefully. "What are you going to do about Jeremy?"

I turned away and began walking, "Damien and I will handle him."

"Oliver."

I paused but didn’t turn back.

"I’m really sorry."

I closed my eyes for a moment, then I walked away.

The campus felt different as I crossed it, even though nothing had really changed. The same buildings loomed beneath the dark sky, the lamps still lit the paths, and students moved in groups, laughing and chatting about mundane things that seemed impossibly distant from my life now.

My hand clutched the strap of my bag tightly. The envelope was in there, the photos were in there. And now the truth was swirling in my head, too.

Jeremy had been behind it all. Jeremy, who sat across from me while I tutored him. Jeremy, who smiled at me and acted harmless. Jeremy, who had apparently been keeping an eye on Damien and me while I was too lost in everything else to see.

I stopped under one of the streetlights and pulled a photo from the envelope. It was a shot of Damien looking at me. Not at the camera. At me. There was something warm in his expression that made my heart ache.

I stared at it for a moment before sliding it back into the envelope. Then I looked toward the path ahead.

I had to tell Damien. There was no way around it. He deserved to know who was behind all of this, and he deserved to hear it from me before anyone else twisted the truth.

I started walking again, my thoughts already racing toward the conversation waiting for me at the dorm.

The worst part wasn’t that Melanie had wanted me back. The worst part wasn’t even that she had helped Jeremy. It was that all of this had kicked off because she saw the way I looked at Damien and wanted to ruin what she couldn’t have.

She had helped tear us apart because I never smiled at her the way I smiled at him and couldn’t handle it.

I had no idea how Damien was going to react knowing the truth. I only knew that the weight in my chest wasn’t going anywhere until the words were out, and even then it probably wouldn’t leave.

I tightened my grip on the envelope one last time and kept walking back to Preston Hall.

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