Bad Boy Roommate

"I wasn’t looking for chaos—but it came in leather boots and a motorcycle helmet."

The flyer read "Roommate Wanted – No Drama, No Pets, No Weirdos." Ironically, the moment I taped it to the bulletin board in the student union, I had already summoned my worst nightmare.

Enter Jaxon Rivers. Tattooed arms, devil-may-care smirk, a history of academic probation, and the kind of swagger that belonged more on a magazine cover than in my quiet two-bedroom apartment in downtown Portland.

"You're Claire?" he asked, glancing around the apartment like he was already bored. "You look like you alphabetize your spice rack."

I did.

Still, with rent prices soaring and my last roommate eloping with a guy she met at Coachella, I had little choice. Jaxon was the only one who showed up. And despite my better judgment, I said yes.

The first week was chaos.

He played guitar at midnight, burned pancakes every morning, and parked his motorcycle illegally—getting my spot ticketed. I found mysterious girls’ earrings in the couch cushions and empty Red Bull cans on the bathroom sink. Worst of all, he never apologized.

But he wasn’t mean. Just... different.

One night, during a thunderstorm, the power went out. I found him sitting on the kitchen floor with a candle and a sketchpad.

“You draw?” I asked, surprised.

He shrugged. “Helps me think. Also keeps me from punching drywall.”

That was the first time I saw a crack in his armor. His sketches were stunning—portraits, landscapes, comic-style panels. Raw, emotional, and detailed in a way that contradicted everything I assumed about him.

“I wanted to go to art school,” he admitted. “But my dad thought it was a waste. Said I should ‘man up’ and do engineering.”

The way he said “man up” made my stomach twist. Suddenly, his rebellion made sense.

Over the next few weeks, our icy distance melted. He helped me paint my bedroom, even though he got more paint on himself than the walls. I edited his essays, and he introduced me to street tacos and skateparks. We still argued—often—but something shifted.

I found myself laughing more. Sleeping better. Wondering what he was drawing in his room late at night.

Then came the night everything cracked open.

I came home early from class and found Jaxon in the kitchen, shouting into the phone. His voice shook—not with anger, but with desperation.

“I’m not coming back there!” he yelled. “I’m not going to be your punching bag just because you hate yourself!”

He saw me and froze. Then he ended the call and walked out without a word.

He didn’t come back for three days.

I worried. I texted. I waited. When he finally returned, he looked like he hadn’t slept.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That was my father. He used to... well, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” I said. “It matters if it still hurts.”

That night, we didn’t sleep. We talked—about our childhoods, dreams, failures. He told me he’d been running so long he didn’t know how to stand still anymore.

I told him I was tired of being so “perfect” that I forgot how to feel.

We were opposites, yes. But somehow, we fit.

Spring arrived, and Jaxon applied—secretly—to the art program at a college in California. When the acceptance letter came, I found it folded under a coffee mug on the table.

“I think I’m going,” he said, not meeting my eyes.

“You should,” I replied, heart cracking and proud at once. “You were never meant to stay still.”

Before he left, he handed me a wrapped canvas. It was a painting of our apartment, sun streaming in through the window, with both of us in the kitchen—laughing.

“I drew it the night the power went out,” he said. “The first time this place felt like home.”

Lesson:

Sometimes the people we resist the most are the ones who teach us what we truly need—freedom, courage, and the reminder that healing doesn’t always come wrapped in perfection. It comes in unexpected chaos, too.