"Tori, Tori, wake up." I moan sleepily and roll the other way. Someone is shaking my shoulder, and I don't care who it is or why, I just want to sleep. "Tori, Tori…Mrs. Grabiner?"

My eyes open and I roll into the warm arms of my husband. "Oh hey you."

"I'm not sure if you were faking and waiting for me to say that, but either way you need to get up."

"Get up?" I murmur groggily, blinking in the dim light. I was reading a book on white magic and must have dozed off. "What time is it?"

"4:30 AM."

"What?" I roll around to face him. "Wait, what?"

He sighs. "I came in here last night to find you drooling on one of my books, so I tucked you in and put you to bed. But it's 4:30 AM now and you have your treasury duties to get to."

"You know, ordinarily I'd be looking forward to getting up so I can see you," I mutter as I sit up.

"Yes," he says dryly. "You always looked so cheerful in the mornings whenever you saw me."

"Oh," I groan, rubbing my eyes. "How can you be this sarcastic so early in the morning? My brain is all…fuzz." I groan again and throw myself back on the bed.

"Are you always this pleasant in the morning?" he asks with a note of good humor in his voice. I roll over onto my stomach and stick my tongue out at him, scooching myself out of bed slowly. It's cold in his room, and I'm just in my shorts and a tank top.

"Are you coming with?" I ask, and he sighs.

"Might as well, I'm already up."

"I mean, you can stay in bed-"

"I'm up, Tori," he says. "Besides, with the two of us working it will get done faster."

"Not like there's that much to do anyway," I shrug. "A bunch of people left for Spring Break already."

"But others were waiting to leave today," Hieronymous replies. "Which means we still have our duties to perform."

"Duties," I scoff. I throw on my robes over my pajamas, slip on striped black-and-blue fuzzy socks and then slide them into my sneakers. "Okay, I'm ready when you are."

He stares me up and down. "That's it?"

I squint at him in the dim light. I'm too tired for this. "What's this?"

"That's how you get ready in the morning?" he asks.

I shrug, letting my shoulders rise and drop. "Does my hair look okay?"

"It looks fine," he replies. He obviously needs a lot more time to get dressed. "Very…blue."

"Oh, wow, you noticed?" I ask sarcastically. "What an eye you have for color. Did you ever think about being a painter because really-"

"Tori, it is entirely too early in the morning to deal with your bickering."

"You started it," I mumble as I walk into the bathroom. My hair is thick, and long, and so it doesn't really require me to do anything to it, besides run my fingers through it to get out any tangles. It's not going to change anything anyway. I actually tried magically straightening it with Virginia and Ellen once last year, and I had no desire to reek of burnt hair for a week again.

I suddenly notice him standing in the doorway. "May I?"

"You may," I say sleepily, but make no move to get away from the sink. He sighs and grabs me one by arm and forcibly removes me from the bathroom.

"Okay, I can take a hint," I say through the door. I want to yell, but my voice hasn't worked its way up to that volume yet. "I'm going to get a head start. I'll meet you there."

I don't wait for a reply as I walk outside into the damp wet. It's dark, it's grey, it's cold, it's raining and there are literally a thousand other places I would rather be than-

I feel someone grab me from behind and all of a sudden I am standing in the hallway outside the mail room. I spin around, fists raised, ready to fight, but it's only Hieronymous. I let out a deep sigh, collapsing in on myself. "What the hell did you just do?"

"I have no desire for you to get sick from standing out in the wet," he says. "Are you all right?"

I pause for a moment. My heart is fluttering and I feel like I am raking in bigger breaths than I should be. "Don't sneak up on me," I say firmly. "A, 'hey Tori, I'm going to grab you and teleport you inside now' will suffice."

"Duly noted," he says as he unlocks the door to the room. I step inside and look around. It doesn't look much different than it had any other day of the year, and I don't know why I expected it to. I guess it was the first time that I was entering it with Hieronymous instead of Professor Grabiner.

"Okay, I'll do my thing, you do your thing, and then we can go back to sleep."

He looks at me. "Is that really what you do when you get done here? Go back to bed?"

"Um, I read sometimes?" I offer. "But I still am in bed reading, so…yeah."He shakes his head like reading in bed is the most absurd idea he's ever heard of. "Okay, then, what do you do?"

"I read," he says. "I study, I make notes, I-"

"Do basically the exact same thing as me," I counter.

"Tori, just get done with your work."

"Of course, Professor Grabiner," I wink at him as I sit down at the table and start to sort money through the envelopes. There's about a dozen less than usual, and I figure that the envelopes for the people who have been staying have already been removed. I'm working as fast as I can so we can get back to bed when suddenly Hieronymous moves to stand directly behind me. "What are you doing?" I ask as I feel fingertips caressing my cheek.

"Seeing how you'll react," he replies.

I inhale a breath slowly through my nose and then breathe it out through my mouth. "Well, you're not going to get a reaction from me."

"Oh no?" He moves his hand around to the front of my neck, sliding a finger down my throat. I close my eyes and relish the sensation as he moves his fingers up my jaw, gently running his thumb against the curve of my lower lip.

"No," I whisper as he pulls his hand away. He continues this malicious teasing until I start to squirm in my chair. "No, Hieronymous-"

"Hm?" He bends down to whisper it in my ear, so close that I can feel his tongue against my earlobe. "What do you want?"

"You," I pant. I have my hands gripped so tightly to the chair on either side of me that I think my knuckles are turning white.

"Here?" he asks. "Now?"

"Yes," I moan loudly. My hips are starting to gyrate against the chair now, and I am flush with need. "Yes, Hieronymous-"

He pulls away from me suddenly, and I open my eyes. "You better hurry up then," he says.

My mouth opens in shock. "What was that supposed to be? Incentive?" He shrugs, but there is a nasty little smirk playing on his lips. "You know, two can play at that game."

He raises his eyebrows, still gloating. "I'm looking forward to it. I'll see you back at the room once you've finished your duties." With that, he sweeps out of the room leaving me sitting there, a frustrated bundle of need.

"So not fair."

I quickly place the few envelopes I had remaining and then sort the mail. There's not much of it, and it doesn't take more than a few minutes. There's only three packages to go out, and I see that one of them is for Virginia.

Grimacing, I quickly take all the packages and mail and exit the room, making sure to lock up behind me, and go about my deliveries. I'm going as fast as I possibly can, partially because I want to go back to Hieronymous sooner than possible, but also now because I don't want to run into Virginia, and the earlier I show up, the less of a chance there is that that could happen.

I slide the envelopes for her and Ellen underneath the door roughly and then put the package down on the floor, knocking twice to signal a delivery. To my surprise, Virginia opens it before I've even had time to put my hand down.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey," I respond curtly. "You've got a package."

I'm about to continue with my deliveries when she calls my name, and I turn back to face her. "Look, me and Ellen have been talking about it-"

"It's fine," I say. "Really. Have a good Spring Break."

"It's not fine," she says. "Look, I know that you've been through a lot and we've been really bad friends about it. But Jason came to talk to us last night-"

"Oh my-" I rub my eyebrow with frustration. "Jason needs to take a chill pill, okay? He came to visit me yesterday too. He's insisting Hieronymous is bad for me which isn't true at all. Despite how he may seem in class, he can actually be really sweet." I hesitate for a moment. "Although he might literally kill me if he knows I told you that."

Virginia just shakes her head. "But how can we believe that? We've seen him. We've seen you. We've seen how he treats you."

"He doesn't handle frustration in the best way possible," I say carefully. "But we are working on it. Together. So if that's all-"

I start to walk away when she grabs my arm. "They think he's only using for-" She looks up and down the hall and mouths the word "sex."

"Oh really?" I raise my eyebrows. "And who is they? You? Jason? And our marital affairs are on a strictly need to know basis-" I lower my voice. "And if you really want to be in the know, we haven't done anything yet. He is being a perfect gentleman about it and wants to wait and make sure I'm ready. And I'm waiting for a special, romantic occasion." Like, literally, as soon as this conversation ends and I can get back there.

"Really?" Virginia asks, and I can tell by the look on her face that she didn't see that coming.

"Look," I say. "I don't have anything against you for kicking me out. It was hard to deal with the drama and I get it. But we're still friends, right?" She hesitates for a moment, then nods. "I'd have to talk to Grabby about it, obviously, but maybe when you and Ellen get back from Spring Break we can all have dinner together or something and you can see that he's really not that bad."

She eyes me suspiciously. "He is never going to agree to that."

I wink at her. "Oh, I think I can manage it. He has a soft spot when it comes to me."

I can see her thinking it over. "All right," she says. "You tell us when it's all going down. Donald might want to come too, just to see the nice side of Grabby."

"That's never going to fly," I laugh. "I can probably swing you and Ellen, but not Donald."

"Yeah, I know," she says, then punches my arm lightly. "Hey, don't be a stranger. And you're being missed at Sports Club, you know."

"The gym's been a bit of a weird place for me," I say as casually as possible. "But yeah. I need to do some running or something."

We nod at each other for a few moments. "We're not going to have to hug or anything, are we?" she asks.

"No, please, let's not," I say quickly. "I got to deliver the rest of this stuff though. Enjoy your Spring Break."

"You too," she whispers as she shuts the door.

I turn around and head down the corridor, almost suspicious as to how well that went down. Did Jason tell her to get closer to me? Was she going to pretend to be my friend and report everything I said back to him? Or did she genuinely feel sorry about kicking me out and wanted to be my friend again? She had been my roommate for two years, and yet I didn't have the answer to any of those questions. I'm not sure if that said more about her, or about me.