THE ROOMMATE RULE

[ Cade POV ]

The list was practical. Necessary. A straightforward operational framework for a living situation that had been created by a housing coordinator who apparently did not understand the concept of gender-separated team housing, and a coach who I was increasingly certain had not only known about it but had arranged it on purpose. I would deal with that later. For now: the list.

I'd printed it. Not written, printed, because printed conveyed a different level of seriousness, conveyed that this had been thought through and formalised rather than scrawled as an afterthought. Seven items. Font size eleven. Margins even on both sides. I set it on the kitchen table at 5:45am and had my coffee made and my bag ready before she came downstairs.

The rules were reasonable. Separate bathroom schedules, she had mornings at 6:00am, I had 6:45am, no overlap, no ambiguity. No shared meals unless team events required shared attendance. No personal conversations beyond basic household logistics: fridge space, utilities, maintenance issues. Guests required forty-eight hours' notice. Common area usage would be staggered by floor. The microwave was not to be occupied simultaneously, because simultaneous microwave use in a two-person household was a documented source of unnecessary friction and I was not going to have unnecessary friction in my own home.

Item seven: this arrangement was professional in nature and was to be treated accordingly by both parties.

I heard her on the stairs at 6:08am. She came into the kitchen in a Northgate hoodie that was a full size too large, probably an equipment department handout, same issue everyone got on arrival, with her hair in a knot and the particular unhurried expression of someone who had decided, before her feet hit the floor, not to be bothered by anything today.

She saw the list. Picked it up. Read it slowly, from the top, with the focused attention of someone working through a moderately interesting problem.

I kept my face neutral. This was not a confrontational document. This was a helpful one.

She turned it over. Confirmed there was nothing on the back. Set it down.

"You have a bullet point for the microwave, " she said. Not a question.

"Simultaneous use creates unnecessary, "

"Cade." She said my name the way you'd say it at the end of a sentence you'd already decided to close. Not loud, not sharp. Just final. "You have a bullet point. For the microwave."

I said nothing. I had reasons for bullet point five and they were sound reasons and I was not going to justify them in response to a tone of voice.

She looked at the list for another moment. Then she went to the junk drawer, which she had apparently located and catalogued before this morning, which was either impressive or unsettling and I hadn't decided which, and took out a pen and a sticky note. She wrote something. Pressed it to the fridge next to the cabinet, smoothed the edge down.

Then she poured herself coffee from my pot without asking. Picked her bag up from the floor where she'd dropped it. And walked out of the kitchen without another word. The front door opened and closed. A minute later I heard her car.

I looked at the sticky note.

One line. Her handwriting was fast and angular and looked like someone who wrote the way she skated, no wasted movement, straight to the point.

DON'T BE INSUFFERABLE.

I stood in my kitchen and read it twice. Then I went back to my side of the counter, drank my coffee, and looked at my printed list, which was still on the table where she'd set it down. Seven items. Eleven-point font. Even margins.

I picked it up. Read it again, from the top, with what I hoped was a degree of objectivity.

Item five caught my eye.

After a moment, I folded the list in half. Then in half again. Put it in the recycling. The relevant operational expectations would be communicated verbally when the situations arose, like a functional adult.

I rinsed my mug. Checked the time. Had twenty minutes before I needed to leave.

I spent them looking at the sticky note, which I did not take down.

The thing was, she could have made the whole morning difficult. She could have argued each item, or laughed at it openly, or gone straight to Briggs and made it a team issue. She hadn't done any of those things. She'd read it, written one line back, taken my coffee, and left. The response was disproportionately clean for someone I'd been prepared to treat as a complication.

I looked at the recycling bin where the list was. Then at the note on the fridge. Then at the coffee maker, where the level in the pot was lower than I'd left it.

I was going to need to buy more coffee this week. I made a note of that. Just a logistical note, about household supplies. Nothing more complicated than that.

I picked up my bag. Stood at the kitchen door for a moment. The sticky note was there, yellow and precise, one line in angular handwriting, and it occurred to me that I had put seven items on my list and she had answered all of them with four words. That was either the most efficient communication I'd experienced in years or a sign that I had significantly misjudged who I was dealing with. Neither option was particularly comfortable to sit with. Both were probably true.

***

That night I lay awake thinking about the fact that she hadn't flinched. Not at item one. Not at item five. Not at any of it. Seven items and not a single flinch. I kept trying to find a way to make that irritating and kept arriving, instead, at something else entirely.