He Chose My Roommate—So I Chose His Brother

For six months I'd been secretly seeing Truman Hargrove online — heir to a realestate dynasty.

Then, out of nowhere, my roommate announced that the guy she had been talking to online for a week was Truman.

I froze for a second, and it came out before I could stop it. "That isn't Truman." "The guy sending you those pictures has a tattoo on his wrist.

Truman doesn't." "Don't let him play you…" My roommate stared at me for a few seconds, raised an eyebrow, and got Truman's number off someone right then and there. "Is this Truman?

This is Sienna Lyle." "I want to ask you something. The guy who's been talking to me this past week — is that you?" Silence on the other end.

A long moment passed before Truman's familiar, cool voice came through. "It's me." Chapter 1 The second the call ended, I went rigid where I stood.

Sienna's online boyfriend was Truman's roommate. Owen Meacham.

The week before, I'd snuck over to the basketball courts to watch Truman play, and that was when I saw the tattoo on Owen's wrist. So why would Truman say he was the one?

I lowered my head, ducked away from Sienna's excited eyes, and opened my messages.

The one at the top was still what Truman had sent me half an hour ago. [Baby, I want to see you.] My fingertip hovered over the screen.

Before I could ask, a message from Truman came in first. [You're not Sienna?] My chest dropped hard, and almost in the same instant I understood what he meant.

My fingers were shaking as I typed back. [No.] The other end went quiet for a long time.

Then the new messages came through one after another. [I'm sorry.] [Back at the start you said you didn't want it crossing into real life for a while, that you just wanted to keep it online, so I never checked.] [But for six months I thought you were her.] And right after that, a transfer.

Thirty thousand dollars. [This ends here.] [Don't go telling her things.] I stared at that string of digits with my head blank for a few seconds, and still, without thinking, I asked. [But the one Sienna's been talking to is Owen.] Truman wrote back fast, level and cold. [It's me now.] [I've already told Sienna that account is my second one.] I sat there stunned, and something in my chest closed slowly, like a hand. [And Owen was fine with that?] Truman sent back a single line. [I gave him what he wanted.] I bit my lip, and in the end I asked anyway. [What about me?] This time Truman didn't answer.

The chat stayed quiet for a long while. I sent the money back.

I typed and deleted, typed and deleted, and in the end I sent only two lines. [Let's block each other.] [I won't say anything.

Don't worry.] The messages had barely gone through when a line of gray text came up on the screen. This account no longer exists.

I looked at that line for a long time without moving. He wouldn't even say the words "break up." He didn't care in the slightest who I was. Of course.

As far as he was concerned, we had never started.

He had just gotten the wrong person. "God, Sienna, how lucky are you?" I hadn't even gotten my screen turned off before the roommate in the bed across from mine spoke up. "That's Truman Hargrove!" "Top of the architecture program, and his family donated a research building to the school.

You have no idea how many buildings on the good blocks in this city have Hargrove on them." "People throw themselves at him constantly and he doesn't give a single one of them the time of day." Sienna heard that and let the corner of her mouth curve up. "Is it really that dramatic?" "He's been pretty forward with me, though." Then she turned her head and looked at me. "Though, Nadine." Chapter 2 "How do you know Truman doesn't have a tattoo on his hand?" "You know him that well?" I paused, and my throat went a little tight. "Truman and I went to the same high school." "I heard his family kept him on a short leash.

He probably wouldn't get a tattoo." Sienna went "Huh," dragging the end of it out slow. "Just… high school?" She looked me up and down, the smile on her face thin. "The way you jumped in back there, I almost thought—" "that you had a thing for him." "But then I thought about it, and no, you wouldn't." "I mean, the gap between one person and another can be pretty wide." I didn't argue.

Because she wasn't wrong. The gap between Truman and me really was wide. My freshman year of high school, I was so broke I could afford one twodollar slice of pizza a day.

Larchmont Academy was a private day school. It ran a hardship grant out of its own fund, and eligibility was based on your parents' combined income.

So when applications opened, I didn't even qualify. Because both my parents earned well. But after the divorce they each had a new family. I asked my mother for money to live on.

She said, "Your father makes more than I do. Go to him." I asked my father. He said, "You're your mother's only daughter.

She isn't going to leave you with nothing." They each assumed the other one would give in. They were both wrong. Around then I was hungry enough that I couldn't sleep at night.

So I borrowed the phone of the girl sitting next to me and searched: [can you eat the crabapples off street trees] She saw it, and she chased me around laughing about it for an entire period of gym. "Nadine, are you actually starving?" That sentence was overheard by Truman, who was in a different class.

That day he only turned his head and looked at me once. He didn't say anything.

The next day my advisor at school told me the Hargrove Family Foundation had added one more scholarship spot, out of cycle. And it landed on me.

A girl's heart has no selfrespect sometimes. Especially a girl as drab as I was.

When you're at your lowest and someone that clean and bright reaches down and pulls you up, it's very easy to remember it for years.

I was about to shut off my phone when the screen lit up again. It was a message from Iona Hadley. [Ms.

Bennett, my parents had to go out of the country on short notice, so I'm staying at my cousin's for a while.] [Could you come here Saturday afternoon to tutor me?] Underneath was an address in Georgetown.

My fingers stopped where they were. Because Iona's cousin was Truman. Iona had come to me through an upperclassman in my department.

It was only after a few sessions that I found out she was Truman's cousin. And found out, without meaning to, that Truman had a second account.

The day he messaged me from it, I was so happy I could hardly stand it. Looking back now, all I feel is humiliation.

Because everything he'd said in those six months, every line that made my pulse jump, had been said to Sienna. I stared at the screen for a long time.

In the end I typed one word. [Sure.] Iona's lessons paid sixty dollars an hour. I wasn't in any position to turn that down.

Saturday afternoon, I stood outside that house in Georgetown and rang the bell. The wroughtiron gate to the front yard opened from the inside a moment later.

The man standing behind it wore a black shirt with the cuffs rolled to his forearms.

His wristbones stood out sharp, and the blue veins on the backs of his hands rose faintly under the skin. His eyes and brows had something of Truman in them.

But he looked older than Truman, and far more imposing. When he saw me, his gaze held for half a second. "Nadine Bennett?" His voice was low.

I hadn't expected that. "You know me?" The man glanced down at me, and the corner of his mouth tipped up, very slightly. "Iona's been going on about you all morning." Then he stepped aside. "Come in." Chapter 3 It was the kind of house where you took your shoes off at the door.

A pair of women's slippers with the tags still on them had already been set out by the shoe cabinet in the entry. I bent down to change.

The man seemed to remember only then that he hadn't introduced himself. He put out his hand, palm up, unhurried. "Colin Hargrove." "Iona's cousin." That stopped me for a beat.

So Truman wasn't the only cousin Iona had. I reached out and shook it lightly. His palm was hot.

It was over the instant it happened, and yet when I drew my hand back my fingertips felt scalded. Colin didn't seem to notice anything off about me. He took me up to Iona's room.

By five, Iona finally had those sets of Spanish verb conjugations down cold. She got up and walked me back downstairs. Colin was sitting on the living room couch.

He looked up at the sound of our steps, the gold wire frames making his eyes look deeper set. "Done?" I nodded. "Yes." He closed his laptop and stood, coming toward us.

He was tall, and when he got close the light in the room seemed to dim for a second. "Iona's staying here for now." "If anything changes with the schedule, contact me directly." Then he took out his phone with a new contact card open on the screen and held it out to me.

I hesitated. "For the lessons, I've always just gone through Iona." Colin's expression didn't change. "She has an AP exam coming up." "Her mother won't let her have her phone." Beside him, Iona looked completely lost. "Huh?" Colin turned his head and gave her one flat look.

Iona shut her mouth immediately. "…Right." There was nothing to do but take his phone and type in my number. Truman never came back the whole time I was there.

I'd just gotten back to my dorm room when Sienna came at me. "Nadine, let me borrow that white dress in your closet." She was already pulling the closet door open as she said it. "Truman's the type who likes things understated, you can tell just looking at him.

Yours is perfect." Only then did I remember. Today was the day they were meeting.

I reached over and shut the door. "I haven't even worn that dress yet." The smile on Sienna's face thinned out. "It's one night." "No." She pressed her lips together like I'd wounded her. "Fine, don't." "So stingy." I didn't say anything else.

I got my things and went to shower. But when I came out, the room was empty. My closet door was hanging open. The white dress was gone. Fifteen dollars in cash sat on my bed.

And a note. [You buy all your clothes off Shein.] [That much, you're still coming out ahead.] [The dress is mine now!] I stood there.

Water ran down the ends of my hair and dripped slowly onto my collarbone. That dress cost six hundred dollars. I bought it with a month of shifts at the boba shop.

I'd been saving it to wear when I met Truman. And only two days ago, I'd sent Truman a picture of it. I didn't even dry my hair. I threw on a jacket and ran downstairs.

The second I came out the front doors of the dorm, I saw Truman and Sienna standing under the magnolia tree.

Truman was in a white buttondown, standing there cool and remote, and that alone was enough to turn the heads of people walking past.

And Sienna, in my dress, had her face tilted up to him, smiling. My instinct was to turn around and go back inside. It was already too late. Truman raised his eyes. He looked over.

One look, and he stopped. My hair was still wet, my jacket thrown on in a hurry. I was a complete mess.

Chapter 4 But the way Truman was looking at me was like something had hit him. For that one second, my heart slammed. I closed my hand around my sleeve and was about to go.

Sienna got there first, like she was afraid of what I might say. "Nadine!" "You already said I could borrow the dress!" "You took the money and now you're chasing me down here?

That's not a great look, is it?" I opened my mouth. Truman turned his head and looked at her instead. His tone was flat.

There was nothing in it to read. "That dress is hers?" Sienna stopped short, like she hadn't expected that to be his first question.

But she recovered fast and smiled. "It is." "Her clothes never cost more than fifteen dollars." "I borrowed it for a couple of hours and I already gave her money for it." My fingers curled. "I never once said you could borrow it." "And that dress isn't just—" "Stop!

That's enough!" Sienna cut me off, like she was terrified of whatever outrageous number was about to come out of my mouth. "I'm a broke college student.

I really don't have that kind of money for you to squeeze out of me." "Don't get greedy, Nadine." Then she reached over and shook Truman's arm. "Babe, help me out here!" Truman shifted without thinking, sliding out of reach, and the move looked like nothing at all.

The smile on Sienna's face locked up, and her voice turned wounded. "Honestly, after I paid her, I don't even have enough left to get through the month." "I wouldn't have spent it on anything but seeing you." "And then she goes back on her word…" Truman's eyes came to rest on my face.

After a while he said, evenly, "How much?" "Name a number." "I'll pay double." Double. That was twelve hundred. I should have said yes. I needed money. I always had.

But right then, I just didn't want Sienna to have that dress.

I looked away from Truman and spoke only to her. "The dress isn't for sale." "You're coming back up to the room with me right now and giving it back." She started to argue.

Truman had already turned his face toward her. "Be good." "I'll take you to buy a new one." Every trace of temper went out of Sienna's face and her eyes lit up.

She turned and ran into the dorm. I started to leave too. Truman's voice came from behind me. "Why won't you take the money?" My steps slowed.

I didn't turn around. "I told you before