Room to Grow 1 (Patreon)

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By the first week of August, 23-year-old Lucas “Luke” Conroy had discovered that an apartment could feel strangely different when one person disappeared from it. The place was a fairly ordinary two-bedroom apartment a little over 10 minutes from campus on foot. The living room was large enough for a couch, an armchair, a television stand, and the little dining table Luke mostly used as additional desk space. The kitchen was narrow but functional, and the bedrooms were at opposite ends of a short hallway, separated by a small bathroom.

It wasn’t luxurious, but after living there through the previous school year and then the summer, Luke knew every squeak in the floorboards, every temperamental burner on the stove, and how hard the front door needed to be pulled before the deadbolt would turn smoothly.

For nearly a year, he had known the apartment with another person inside it, but it felt abruptly empty after his former roommate had moved out that morning. The roommate had been dating his girlfriend seriously for more than a year, and moving in together had been an obvious next step. Luke had known it was coming, and they had talked about it for weeks.

Financially, Luke had been given about as gentle a transition as he could reasonably ask for. His roommate had even paid his half of August’s rent before leaving, even though he officially moved out during the first few days of the month. Emotionally, it still felt like somebody had removed a supporting wall.

He stood in the doorway of the second bedroom, studying the empty room. He rubbed a hand over his face and stepped backward into the hallway. “Okay,” he whispered. “This is fine.”

Luke was used to solving problems by simplifying them, which was one of the reasons engineering suited him so well. But a missing roommate was different because Luke would be responsible for the entire rent in a few weeks—something he absolutely could not afford. The solution was simple: getting another roommate before September. Unfortunately, Luke was much better at understanding numbers than choosing strangers to share a bathroom with.

He was 5’10” tall and about 168 pounds, lean without being described as athletic. Years of walking around campus had kept his legs reasonably firm, and he had naturally good shape on his shoulders and arms, but nobody looking at him would have assumed he spent meaningful time inside a gym. His waist was narrow, and his chest had only enough definition to give his T-shirts a mostly flat line down his torso. There was some softness around his lower stomach, though it had never been heavy enough to consider it a problem.

His face was more noticeable than his physique, though Luke himself would not have said so. His gray-green eyes were captivating but often slightly tired from too many nights spent staring at computer screens. He had a straight nose and defined but slightly soft cheekbones. His skin had a warm undertone from the summer sun, and his thick brown hair had reached the point where he needed a haircut, but not urgently.

He sat at the little dining table with his laptop open, staring at the roommate listing he had been editing for nearly 40 minutes. He leaned closer to his laptop and read it again. “Two-bedroom apartment, 11-minute walk from campus,” he whispered. “Private bedroom. Shared bathroom. Utilities average—” He stopped and included some more important information, including that there were three full cabinets available to the incoming roommate.

By the time he finally posted it, the ad was long enough that Luke suspected most people would stop reading halfway through. But anyone who couldn’t survive three paragraphs of basic apartment information probably wouldn’t survive living with him.

The first response arrived 17 minutes later. Luke opened it eagerly, but the applicant wanted to know whether he could pay the first two months “once some money came through.” Luke closed the message immediately.

The second person had two cats. The third had four reptiles and asked whether Luke thought the landlord’s pet rule applied to animals that spent “most of their time in tanks.” He didn’t even bother responding. He understood why people complained about finding roommates. One person apparently wanted to move in with his girlfriend despite the listing clearly stating that the available room was intended for one tenant. Another asked whether Luke minded “occasional parties” and then clarified that occasional meant perhaps twice a week.

Luke answered the respectable messages, ignored the ridiculous ones, and created a small spreadsheet because that was what he did when his brain felt overloaded.

The following morning, though, he opened another message from someone named Mason Everett. He read the first paragraph and sat up. Mason was 23, a business major at the same university. Non-smoker, no pets, and looking to move in as soon as possible. He specifically mentioned that the apartment’s proximity to campus was ideal for him because his current housing arrangement was becoming inconvenient.

Everything looked perfectly normal until Luke saw the profile picture. “No,” he said, rolling his eyes and tapping the picture to enlarge it. “No way.”

The man smiling in the picture looked like he belonged on the front of a university admissions brochure specifically aimed at convincing parents that their sons would become successful, athletic, and suspiciously attractive adults if they enrolled.

Mason had sandy-brown hair, shorter at the sides and longer at the top. His skin was lightly tanned, his jaw was broad and cleanly shaped, and his bright blue eyes looked annoyingly vivid beside a charming smile. He seemed to have been outside when the photograph was taken. Even in a profile photo cropped below the chest, the man’s physique was impossible to miss—Mason was muscular.

A fitted navy T-shirt stretched across shoulders significantly broader than Luke’s. They widened heavily beneath the sleeves. His arms were thick, and the fabric fitted tightly around them. Most noticeable, though, was his chest projecting in two rounded pectorals that looked unusually developed even compared with the rest of him.

Luke stared, and then he looked back at the written profile. It described him as a business major, sports fanatic, and former fraternity member, according to a line mentioning previous housing. Luke slowly lowered the phone. The man was essentially a checklist of personality traits Luke had spent most of college observing from a comfortable distance.

“Catfish,” he said firmly since that explanation was comfortable.

Somebody had taken a photograph of an attractive college athlete and paired it with an aggressively normal roommate application. Perhaps the next message would ask Luke to send money somewhere. Maybe “Mason” lived in another country. Maybe Luke’s bank account would somehow disappear if he clicked the wrong link.

He brushed his teeth while examining the profile again. The picture really was unfair. The contrast between himself and Mason was almost comical. Still, he spat toothpaste into the sink and returned to Mason’s application, deciding to investigate further.

It took less than 15 minutes to discover that Mason Everett seemed to be depressingly real. Luke found a university-related page listing a Mason Everett among students who had participated in a business program the previous semester. The name matched, a photograph was small but recognizable, and he found a public social media account with enough posts involving the university, so Luke no longer suspected the applicant was fictitious.

Still, Luke left Mason’s message unanswered while he went through his morning routine. But about an hour later, a new message from Mason appeared. He was worried that the room might be taken before Luke responded. The message was polite but direct. He reiterated that the location was exactly what he was looking for and offered something Luke had not expected. If Luke could hold the room for him and allow him to move in during August, Mason would cover all of September’s rent himself.

Luke reread the sentence three times. His first thought was “Absolutely not.” But 5 minutes later, he couldn’t stop thinking that “it would be extremely helpful.”

He tapped his fingers against the table before typing back. “You’re offering to pay the entire September rent? Not just your half?”

Mason replied immediately. “Yep. Figured that might sound wild, lol. But I really want the location. I’ve been trying to find something that close for weeks.”

Luke studied the words.

Then another message appeared. “Obviously, I’d want to see it first. And you probably want to make sure I’m not an axe murderer.”

Luke snorted before he could stop himself. “That had crossed my mind.”

Mason replied. “Fair. For the record, I’ve never murdered anyone with an axe.”

Luke stared at the response, smiling. “That is an unusually specific qualification.”

“Trying to be transparent.” Another message came. “Maybe we could meet tomorrow?”

Luke snorted and agreed—immediately regretting it. Not because anything Mason had done seemed threatening. But the man had been polite and willing to meet in person. Luke’s discomfort came from imagining what living with Mason would actually be like. He pictured 6 AM gym alarms, football blaring from the television, fraternity friends appearing without warning, protein powder occupying every flat surface in the kitchen, and even imagined Mason’s enormous chest on full display all day long.

The next afternoon, Luke cleaned the entire apartment despite insisting to himself that he wasn’t nervous. He vacuumed, wiped down kitchen counters that were already clean, reorganized the bathroom cabinet, and moved the little pile of mail beside the front door; even though none of these things had any meaningful relationship with whether Mason would be a tolerable roommate.

At 2:50, Luke checked his phone; at 2:55, he looked through the front window, and at 2:59, he heard a knock at the door. He froze halfway between the kitchen and living room, but the knock came again. He crossed the room, opened the door, and for half a second, he forgot the sentence he had prepared.

Mason stood proudly at the doorframe, proving the photographs hadn’t been exaggerated. If anything, Luke felt mildly betrayed by how much worse they had been at conveying reality.

He was about 6’2” tall, so Luke had to tilt his head upward a bit. But it was the width rather than the height that made the biggest impression. His shoulders spread broadly beneath a pale blue polo shirt, filling the doorway and making him look imposing. He looked around 200 pounds, maybe a little over, but since his waist was narrow and athletic, almost all of that weight seemed concentrated across his upper torso, arms, back, and legs.

The thick chest drew Luke’s attention. The polo stretched across two thick pectorals that pushed several inches outward from his sternum before narrowing again toward his waist. They were almost absurd even though Luke had certainly seen larger men before. The difference was that Mason’s chest had an unusually full shape, especially along the upper portion, giving his torso a powerful appearance.

The shirt’s sleeves strained around muscular upper arms that looked every bit as large as they had online. His forearms were tan and lightly veined as he held a large black duffel bag in one hand. The khaki shorts stretched almost too tightly across his thick thighs, accentuating the breadth of his hips and what seemed to be a big bubble butt behind him.

Mason’s face was also better in person, which Luke considered excessive. The sandy-brown hair was neatly styled, falling slightly forward above bright blue eyes. His skin had an even summer tan, with faint freckles visible near his forearms and a few scattered along the open collar of the polo. And the broad smile that spread across his face as soon as Luke opened the door made him look devastatingly charming.

“Luke?” The big guy asked.

Luke remembered how speech worked. “Yeah.”

Mason changed the duffel bag to his other hand and offered his right. “Mason. Good to finally meet you, man.”

Luke took it, speechless for a few seconds. “Likewise.”

Mason looked briefly past him into the apartment, then back. “Also, I’m glad you’re real.”

Luke blinked. “You’re saying that to me?”

Mason laughed. “You have no idea how many roommate ads I’ve answered where someone either stopped responding or suddenly changed the rent.”

“I spent yesterday checking whether you existed.” Luke moved aside. “You looked fake.”

Mason walked inside, smiling. “That’s either really flattering or incredibly insulting.”

“Let’s not explain the details.” Luke chuckled and closed the door. “Well, the living room is obviously here. The television is mine, and the couch belongs to the apartment—technically the landlord’s—and the table is mine. You can use all of it. Just don’t put anything hot directly on the table because the finish is terrible.”

“Got it.” Mason nodded.

“The kitchen’s small, but there’s more storage than it looks like.” Luke pointed as they moved closer. “Those three upper cabinets are empty. Half the pantry too. Refrigerator’s basically split down the middle.”

Mason opened the oven, crouching slightly to examine the interior.

“The stove’s fine except the back-right burner takes forever to heat. The dishwasher works. Mostly,” Luke added, shrugging.

Then, they moved down the hallway.

“Bathroom’s shared. There’s space in the cabinet and shelves behind the door,” Luke explained. “Nothing fancy to see here.”

Mason nodded, and they turned into the empty bedroom.

Luke pushed the door open. “And this would be yours.”

Mason walked inside and looked around for a moment. “This is perfect,” he finally said, turning to smile at Luke.

“Oh. Cool.” Luke stared at him, surprised that there were no complaints. “You haven’t even looked in the closet.”

Mason walked over and opened it. “Closet’s perfect.”

Luke folded his arms. “You are remarkably easy to impress.”

“Dude, you don’t understand.” Mason walked toward the window and looked outside. “I can literally see part of campus from here.”

“That’s why you’re willing to pay September’s rent,” Luke asked, still doubtful.

“Yeah.” Mason shrugged. “I know it’s a lot. But I can do it.”

Luke leaned against the doorframe. “And after September?”

“Half, like normal,” Mason replied. “Everything would be exactly like the listing.”

“You actually read the whole listing?” Luke asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“Of course I did,” Mason confirmed.

“Most people apparently didn’t.” Luke was impressed, but he studied Mason for a few more seconds. “You know what? Maybe this might work.”

By the time Mason left an hour later, Luke had agreed in principle to give him the room, assuming the paperwork went smoothly.

Mason shook his hand again at the door. “I can send the September payment as soon as everything’s signed,” he said, smiling kindly. “And I can move in on Thursday if that works.”

“That fast?” Luke asked.

“I told you I wanted this place,” Mason answered, winking.

Luke nodded. “Thursday works.”

“Awesome. See you then, man,” Mason said and left.

...

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