Like You Mean It: A Fake Dating Roommates Romance Read online

  Like You Mean It

  Zarah Bentley

  COPYRIGHT © 2022 BY ZARAH BENTLEY

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Like You Mean It

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Intermission

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Four Years Later

  Author’s Note

  Zarah Bentley

  Like You Mean It

  Chapter One

  I t takes four seconds for the heavy entrance door to shut behind her.

  Nila did the count yesterday, when she came back from an afternoon run and couldn’t shake off that creepy sensation of being followed—the nearby park is druggy central, so as far as she’s concerned, exercising caution is good common sense rather than small-town paranoia. Not that she hails from an actual small town, but through the eyes of Berlin, the rest of Germany is province.

  She locates her mailbox, its lid bent slightly out of shape from what might have been a collision with a drunken body. After a week of living here, Nila’s got the routine down pat: she wiggles the key as she pushes against the lid, and her mailbox opens with an unhappy creak of metal. She fishes out a flyer for pizza delivery and another for tarot readings, along with something from the university.

  Shouldering her backpack, she eyes the elevator. Tempting: she’s bloody tired after her fifth day of introductions, of meeting other first-year medical students for organized pub crawls, trying to make a good impression so she’s not immediately branded as Ms Indian Tiger Baby. She held on to a bottle of beer for most of the evening, taking the occasional sip even though she doesn’t enjoy the taste no matter how often she tries. Drinking is normal, though, and not drinking makes you a weirdo. So she drinks, at least where others are watching.

  After another moment of reflection, she decides not to risk getting stuck in an elevator that has a habit of breaking down. Also, her only exercise today comprised a campus tour, signing up for various courses, and keeping a wide smile on her face, so she trudges up the stairs as she tears open the letter with the university seal—the invoice for her public transport pass. Ah, yes, bills: the sweet taste of adulthood.

  She reaches the sixth floor a little out of breath, unsurprised that the motion detector that controls the light still needs fixing, and unlocks the front door in the dim brightness bleeding over from the stairs. Home sweet home.

  The first thing she notices is that her next-door roommate, as yet unknown, must have found Nila’s welcome note as it’s longer sitting in front of the guy’s door. The second thing she notices is that either Justin has a very girly voice and likes to moan his own name, or there’s a girl in that room.

  Terrific. Maybe Nila can live vicariously through him.

  With a wave at Sarah, who’s watching TV in the kitchen, Nila walks past Justin’s door and enters her own room. The moaning is even louder in here: even with the kitchen TV on, she’s pretty sure she can hear the bed shift with each of Oh-My-God-Yes-Justin’s thrusts. Either the guy has got some serious moves, or that girl is an aspiring actress. And what are those walls made of—papier mâché? Looks like Nile needs to invest some time into researching effective earplugs.

  Great. Just great.

  ***

  Since sleep is not an option, Nila relocates to the kitchen that acts as a bridge between the two rooms that belong to Justin and her, and the other two that house Sarah and Ben. Sarah is sipping from a cup of hot chocolate, almost certainly spiked with rum, and watching some old-school comedy show. Nila joins her on the couch, and they chit-chat for a little while about the official start of term next week, about Sarah’s thesis, and noisy conquests who should consider a career in the porn industry. “If it’s any consolation,” Sarah says, a wide laugh pressing dimples into her round face, “Justin will be too busy to get out much once classes are back on.”

  “Thanks,” Nila tells her, smiling back, and hopes she doesn’t sound awkward. “That’s actually reassuring. Wasn’t looking forward to pulling all-nighters to the sound of Pirates.” At Sarah’s questioning look, Nila adds, “Most expensive porn movie of all time, last I heard.”

  “And here I thought you were a sweet, innocent child.” Sarah is grinning approvingly, though, so Nila doesn’t think she committed a social faux pas.

  “Before my best friend decided to study political science as part of her ploy to rule the world, she wanted to be the next Peter Jackson. Or Kathryn Bigelow, I guess. Means that I am a fountain of useless movie trivia.”

  “I admire useless knowledge in a person.”

  That’s when the door to Justin’s room opens. It’s in full view of the couch, and since Sarah makes it a point to turn around, openly watching, Nila does the same. The girl is pretty, and Nila’s opposite in just about every way: blonde to Nila’s black hair, tall to Nila’s average height, creamy skin and big boobs that nearly spill out of a tight dress where Nila is all about jeans and loose sweaters.

  Sarah lowers the volume of the TV and whistles when Justin emerges right after. He’s shirtless, jeans riding low on his waist, showing off a flat stomach, a nicely sculpted chest and muscular arms. Dark brown, wavy hair, straight nose, and strong chin. He’s really bloody attractive—and Nila hangs out with a successful Armani model.

  Justin flips Sarah off without even bothering to turn his head, walking the girl to the door and whispering something that makes her duck her head with a giggle. Huh. Even though she must be a couple of years older than Nila, Nila doesn’t think she’s ever been that girly. Which, incidentally, might say more about her than the blonde.

  If Justin’s got a type, it’s not Nila. For general reference.

  “Welcome home, slut!” Sarah tells Justin as soon as the door has closed behind the girl. “Nice catch there. Also, way to impress the newbie.”

  Justin turns like he’s got all the time and gives none of the fucks in the world, one eyebrow raised as he ambles over. He’s hot, and he carries himself like he’s well aware of that fact. “Not looking to impress anyone,” he drawls, before his assessing gaze slides to Nila. “No offence.”

  Nila smiles and meets deep brown eyes, keeps her focus above the neckline, and strives to suppress all signs of awkwardness. Most people her age treat sex like doing the laundry: it’s just a thing you do. “None taken.”

  “You’re Nila?” Justin draws close enough that Nila has to tilt her head back where she’s sitting next to Sarah.

  “Yep. And Justin, I take it.” Nila lets a corner of her mouth tug up. A silver necklace glints against Justin’s chest, a tattoo curved around his left hip bone—a double helix flowing seamlessly into a heartbeat—and Nila snags her gaze away, rubs a hand over the back of her neck. “I’d ask if you’re having a good evening, but I think the answer’s kind of obvious.”

  Justin’s smile is slow. “I’ve had worse.”

  Sarah snorts. “I’ve seen you have worse.”

  “Funny,” Justin tells her, deadpan, but there’s an amused gleam in his eye. He wanders past the couch to open the fridge, then stands in front of it like he doesn’t quite know what it was he came here for.

  “The others told me you study medicine too?” Nila asks his back.

  “Mhmm.” Justin glances over his shoulder. “Heard you’re a first-y
ear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Enjoy it while it lasts. It’s all downhill from there.” His tone is dry as dust, and Nila can’t quite tell if it’s a joke. Possibly. Probably not. Well, that’s... uplifting.

  “How’re things with your dad?” Sarah asks, and Justin throws another glance over his shoulder, expression tight in the cool illumination of the fridge.

  “Same as always.”

  Sarah sighs. “That bad, huh?”

  One shoulder lifts and drops again, Justin’s back muscles shifting with the gesture. Nila tears her gaze away. Clearly there’s a story there, but these two have been living together for a couple of years, so it’ll be a while until Nila can hope to catch up to their level of familiarity.

  “So, the girl. Did it help?” Sarah nods at the door, tone light enough to pass for a joke, but her eyes are sharp.

  Justin closes the fridge without actually taking anything and turns around with another shrug. “Momentarily.”

  And on that mildly depressing note, Nila decides it’s time for her to bow out. She’ll have other chances of getting to know Justin, preferably when he’s fully dressed and she doesn’t have to spend thirty percent of her brain power on reminding herself that eyes up here, girl.

  “Hey, Justin?” Nila stretches her back before she gets up. “Okay if I use the shower, or did you want to go first?”

  Justin quirks a smile at her. “Why would I need a shower?”

  “Stop being a dick,” Sarah tells him comfortably. “Nila will have plenty of time to figure that out for herself. No need to make it quite this obvious.”

  To Nila’s surprise, Justin laughs, even if there’s a rough edge to it. “You say the sweetest things.”

  “Just calling it like I see it.”

  “Eh.” Justin turns half a smile on Nila. “Go ahead. Way I see it, it’s first come, first serve. But don’t piss in the shower like the guy before you because we take turns cleaning, and that’s just nasty.”

  Well, good to know Justin won’t be taking golden showers with his girls in the cramped bathroom he and Nila share, identical to the one shared by Sarah and Ben at the other end of their horseshoe-shaped apartment. Given the bathrooms look like something straight out of a NASA engineering tutorial filed under ‘how to maximize tiny spaces,’ Nila would rather not have to wonder about traces on the white plastic walls.

  “I think,” she says wryly, “I can manage to hold it in given the toilet’s, like, a step away.”

  “Good girl,” Justin tells her, and Nila squints at him for a moment before glancing at Sarah, who’s already looking at her.

  “He grows on you,” Sarah says.

  “Promise?” Nila asks before she can think better of it—pissing off her next-door roommate within an hour of meeting him seems like a surefire way to make her life more difficult.

  Sarah laughs, though, and Justin does too after just a beat, so Nila guesses it’s okay. If playful banter is how these people roll, well, she’s been best friends with Julia long enough to keep up.

  “I promise,” Sarah tells her, and while Justin shakes his head, exasperated, there’s a small smile twitching around his mouth.

  Later, after a shower and brushing her teeth, Nila peeks into the kitchen to find Justin and Sarah slumped into each other, the TV a low lull in the background as they’re talking in quiet voices, sharing another cup of hot chocolate between them. Nila doesn’t want to interrupt, so she retreats to her room without saying goodnight and settles in for bed, even though it’s barely past eleven.

  She’s trying out for a new basketball team tomorrow, the first time she’d be with a team that does actual competitions rather than just goofing around on the court. She’s not sure she’s got what it takes, but a good night’s sleep seems like the right place to start. The murmur of voices from the kitchen is strangely comforting, reminds her of home, falling asleep right next to the living room to the sound of her parents talking, sometimes on the phone to her brother Vivaan.

  Not lately, of course. Not anymore.

  She rolls over, closes her eyes, and takes a few deep breaths until the sadness and frustration ebb away. The last thing she remembers is Justin barking a laugh that blends in with the jingle of a vaguely familiar commercial.

  ***

  Tryouts go well. They’ll let Nila know next week, but she thinks she’s got an excellent shot.

  She meets up with Julia right after, and they catch up about their respective weeks while they follow vague directions Julia got from a fellow art student to some café in a Kreuzberg park. Julia is talking a mile a minute, hands waving, describing the two boring as fuck, Jesus Christ are you kidding me? law students she somehow ended up rooming with—luck of the draw. Nila suppresses a smile: they won’t know what hit them.

  “What about your roomies?” Julia asks, after a colorful tirade about one of the two law students proposing that they all keep track of their grades on the fridge, as a motivator to do well. “They any fun?”

  “Well.” Nila considers it. “First one’s a history major. Seems nice, but my eyes kind of glazed over when he started talking about personal hygiene in the Middle Ages. Second one’s studying to become a teacher, and she’s pretty cool. Think she’s dating a girl on the floor below us, but I could be wrong about that.” They pass a playground that’s all crooked wood, like how Nila would have pictured a pirate hideout when she was younger. “Third one’s a med student like me, but in his fourth year. He only got in last night so didn’t talk to him much, but he’s hot. Knows it, too.”

  “Guys who know they’re hot are either gay or they’ll grow into massive assholes,” Julia states with the accumulated wisdom of her nineteen years—not that Nila is one to judge. “Which one shall it be?”

  Nila snorts. “Definitely not gay.” Then again, it took her brother twenty-one years, four girlfriends and one Simon to figure it out. There’s a reason Nila calls him slowpoke sometimes. “Best guess is he’s somewhere in the mid-range on the asshole scale, however. Pretty sure there are girls in this city who would agree.”

  “Hey, speaking of hot gays—”

  “We were?”

  “How’re Vivaan and Simon?”

  “Stop objectifying my brother.”

  Overgrown, tangled trees sit to their right, a hand-painted sign inviting them to continue just a little further to the café. Julia smirks, pushing blond dreads out of her face. “Fine. How’re your brother and his hot-ass fiancé?”

  “Busy planning their wedding.”

  “Still not talking to your parents?”

  “Nah.” Nila presses her lips together. “Goes both ways, though. Talked to my mum yesterday, and you know this thing people do when they really want you to bring something up, but they don’t want to ask?”

  “Yeah. Like my ex-boss when he was trying to figure out whether I’d actually distributed the flyers or had just dumped them into the nearest paper container.”

  “You had dumped them into the nearest paper container.”

  “The design was poor, and they advertised a place with crappy Indian food—you said so yourself. I did it for the greater good!”

  “Two thirds of Indian restaurants are crappy. It’s just a fact of life.”

  “And with that kind of attitude, it won’t change,” Julia announces, all reproach. In the last three years, she’s tried to sign Nila up to five different causes, from climate change to marching against racism—all of them good and worthy, yet Nila never developed a taste for political activism.

  The café turns out to be a typical Berlin place: repurposed pallets that now serve as tables and chairs, flowers spilling out of old wheelbarrows, painted wood, homemade cakes sold by what is essentially a glorified kiosk, yet cooler. They order salads and ginger tea before they find a spot a little off to the side, one plastic and one wood chair along with a rickety metal table in a sunny yellow, everything mismatched and improvised.

  “Fuck, I already love this city,” Jul
ia says, heartfelt, and while Nila isn’t quite there yet, she thinks it will only be a matter of time.

  A couple of hours later, she drops by the completely renovated 19th Century coach house Vivaan now shares with Simon. It’s part of a complex of old buildings that overlook a courtyard, hidden in the second row behind one of the quarter’s principal streets. She loves it for its exposed brick walls, its open spaces and modern kitchen, but most of all she loves it for how there’s a reduced risk of running into people she has successfully avoided for the better part of three years. People. Specifically, Vivaan’s jackass of a best friend who doubled as his roommate until this summer.

  Nila won’t be able to avoid the guy forever, not with the wedding coming up. But she’ll cross that particular bridge over troubled waters when she gets there.

  With Simon off on some shoot, Nila has dinner with her brother and would have stayed the night if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s on her period and forgot to pack a spare tampon—she should take a leaf out of the squirrel’s guide to preparedness and leave small stashes around the city. So she drags herself home around eleven, finds the apartment empty and quiet, no sign of the others, the door to Justin’s room left a crack open.

  It’s strangely lonely.

  The others are still out by the time she turns in for bed, and when she wakes up in the early morning hours to take a pee, Justin’s door remains open a crack. Got to give it to the guy—he doesn’t waste his looks.

  There’s still no sign of him when she gets up the next morning. He finally stumbles in around eight thirty, looking cranky and tired, and returns Nila’s good morning with a half-assed grumble before he makes a beeline for his room, presumably to catch up on sleep.

  Well, looks like someone had a big night. If this is the result, Nila isn’t sure she’s missing out on much.

  ***

  By the time the next weekend rolls around, Nila has learned the following:

  School did not prepare her for this.

  If she bought every book recommended by one of her professors, she could single-handedly equip a library.