Wretched Roses √

Chapter 16-Stay

Rowan^

Freya
"What? Why? When?," she sputtered the words out, putting her hand on her mouth and her thumb on her jaw.

"So, I should probably explain why." I took a deep breath and looked down at my lap. It had only been a couple of weeks but the thought of already leaving this dorm, her, formed a knot in my stomach that wouldn't go away. You hardly know her, this shouldn't be this fucking hard, I kept repeating to myself.

I continued. "I already told you most of it, I expected I would be able to avoid this whole, getting married when I'm not ready yet, thing but I wasn't able to. Since I'm getting married in two months that also means I will be moving in with Rowan," I explained, my voice trailing off and becoming much quieter as I mentioned Rowan. There was just something about talking about him around her that felt wrong, for some reason that I couldn't quite explain, which bothered me.

"Oh." She bit her lip slightly and avoided eye contatct.

Oh?

Call me selfish but I was expecting some reaction rather than just that. For some reason her simple answer bothered me.

"Oh?," I asked her, wondering what she meant by oh, maybe she was just surprised I would be moving out so soon.

"I don't really know what to say. I had a fun time living you, I'll miss you when you move out, but we can still be friends after you get married, right?," she asked me, like it was a question that she was unsure of. She furrowed her eyebrows slightly while saying the last word, tilting her head a little bit. I gave her a weak smile and chuckled a little bit as I nodded before answering. "Of course," I answered, like it was obvious, because for me, it was, I liked Leona and within a few weeks I had grown to like her more and more. Just because we wouldn't be roommates anymore didn't mean we couldn't stay friends. She smiled and leaned forward, pulling me into a hug. I let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding in and hugged her back.

We stayed like that for a minute or so, just holding each other until she finally pulled away and looked away for a second, I could see she was blushing, causing me to let out a chuckle. "You're cute." She blushed even harder and looked down at her lap, she was now the one fiddling with her fingers. She cleared her throat before speaking.

"Did you make up with Rowan?," she asked me, her voice was low and quiet, like she thought she was crossing a boundary or like she was dreading the answer.

The thing is I wasn't really sure of the answer myself, did I? I guess I did. "Yeah, I think I did." I smiled, in return she gave me a clearly fake smile. "That's good," she said, unconvincingly.

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes before I had enough of the awkwardness and broke the tension. "I should probably go study," I told her, she nodded and I walked into my room. It wasn't a lie, I really did need to study, I had an exam coming up and I couldn't afford failing it. So after procrastinating for a little while I picked up my books and placed them on the desk, took a deep breath and started studying.

After about two hours of studying, someone knocked on the door. I shouted to Leona that I would take it and put down my pencil before walking to the door and opening it. I was tired and probably looked like a mess so I yawned for a second before looking to see who was standing in front of me.

"Tired?," a deep voice that I immediately regonized asked. Rowan was leaning lazily on the door, one of his feet crossed behind the other one as he spoke. He looked me up and down as he ran his hand through his messy dark brown hair.

"That noticable?" He laughed and nodded. He was wearing black sweatpants and a white T-shirt.

"What are you doing here?," I asked, trying to not sound too rude.