THE DRUMMER'S ROOMMATE
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He burns for her…but she can’t hear him.
“Unbelievably attractive male seeking roommate. Must be able to tolerate loud drumming and even louder sex. Serious inquiries only.” That was the ad “delicate” wallflower Thea replied to. Stuck in L.A.—jobless and homeless—after leaving her cheating ex, Thea’s best option is to move in with tattooed rocker and sex symbol Draven Maxwell. To Draven’s dismay, Thea does not trip all over herself when Draven plays his sexy music—mostly because she cannot hear it. A drummer living with a deaf woman sounds like a match made in roommate heaven, but the scorching attraction between the two utter opposites is hot as hell. She thinks he is a smug playboy, but he only craves her. When the heartthrob drummer reveals he is learning sign language to communicate with her, Thea’s perception of bad boy Draven cracks. He’s…nice? And funny. And puts subtitles on the TV without her asking. Could the cocky rocker have a heart of gold behind his chiseled chest? And what’s up with all those pining looks of agonized yearning every morning he sees her trudge around the apartment in modest pajamas and no makeup? From enemy roommates to best friends, speaking different languages will not lessen their undeniable connection and sizzling chemistry. Through the thin walls, something becomes much louder than the nightly drum set, and it might sound like love. |
First Chapter Available Below
“Unbelievably attractive male seeking roommate. Must be able to tolerate loud drumming and even louder sex. Serious inquiries only.”
Thea blinked several times after reading the online advertisement glowing on her phone.
She was supposed to live with the cocky, arrogant man who wrote that ad? Just because she was desperate to find a cheap place to stay in L.A. as soon as possible?
She looked up from her phone and quirked a single dark eyebrow at her closest friend, Mallory. Slowly picking up her large cappuccino cup—trying to exude the calm energy of a confident mob boss and not a woman who lost her job, boyfriend, and place of residence within days of each other—Thea took a long sip, licking foam from her lips.
After placing the cup back onto a table at their favorite local coffee shop, Thea signed, “Who do you take me for?”
She would not move in with drummer and playboy Draven Maxwell, no matter how desperate she was for a place to stay with cheap rent.
“Look,” Mallory signed, “I know he’s a bit of a manwhore, but you’re not going to find a cheaper apartment to rent. He cut the original rent to a third of what others cost.”
“Because he can’t keep a roommate,” Thea signed back with an expression screaming, “Duh.”
“Only because of the loud drumming, which wouldn’t be a problem for you,” Mallory stressed. “He is not that bad.”
Thea’s eyebrow somehow curved even higher on her forehead in disbelief. Yes, Mallory dated one of Draven’s rock star friends and had been around him in more social settings than Thea, but Thea knew Draven.
Maybe she’d never conversed with him, but she knew his type.
The man was the living embodiment of sex. The dirty kind. The taboo kind that involved handcuffs and his thick fingers cupping her throat as he thrust--
Thea! She shook herself.
The first time she saw the drummer at one of the band’s gigs, Thea had stared, swallowed the sudden dryness in her mouth, and broken eye contact. Before or after the eye contact, she may or may not have squirmed, fidgeted, and pressed her thighs tightly together when they threatened to spread themselves for the man.
But after her body’s tactless reactions, she recognized him for what he was: a self-centered, selfish player who never slept with the same woman twice.
But the one thing Thea hated the most? Draven Maxwell believed he was better than everyone else. Hell, he described himself in the ad for a roommate as an “unbelievably attractive male.” Was he honest? Sure.
But would it kill a muscular white man with perfect bone structure to have a little modesty? Damn.
“I hardly know him, and I already dislike him,” Thea signed to Mallory. “If I move in, he will expect me to cook, clean, and do his laundry. I know it.”
To Thea, Draven was the kind of man who grew up having other people do all of his work for him in group projects in school. Meanwhile, Thea worked harder than anyone. The word “overachiever” did not scratch the surface when describing her.
When you are underestimated, you want to be better than everyone in the room. And she had been.
What hard work had Draven ever had to do? Movie star—or more like porn star—good looks. A charming and addicting charisma.
Perfect teeth—had he ever needed braces? Thea had worn braces for six years throughout middle school and high school. He has probably been allowed to eat popcorn his entire life, yet, his teeth are perfect and white.
Asshole.
“You don’t know that, Thea,” Mallory shot back. “He might offer to do your laundry.”
“Yeah, to fondle my underwear.”
Mallory rolled her eyes and laughed. “Babe, you wear granny panties.”
“High-waisted, full-coverage panties are comfortable, and being sexy is about being comfortable.”
That earned Thea another eye roll from her closest friend.
“He is not a bad guy, really. He just probably has too much sex,” Mallory signed. “I already told him not to hit on you, though. I think my exact words were, ‘Try to seduce her, and I’ll strangle you with Wren’s guitar strings.’”
Thea scoffed. Men like Draven Maxwell—thirty, tattooed, and emanating waves of sinful pleasure—did not go for women like Thea, a twenty-five-year-old deaf woman who wore a strand of pearls and dresses that puffed out at the waist like she walked out of a 1950s film.
“You need a place to stay, Thea,” Mal reminded her.
“I know.” Swallowing her pride and nearly choking on it, Thea thought, I need a new place to stay immediately for as little money as possible.
Within three days, her whole life had fallen apart.
Last week, she had the perfect job, the perfect apartment, and the perfect boyfriend. A few days later, her cheeks were covered in smeared mascara and tears as her long-term boyfriend Alec told her, “She didn’t mean anything. It won’t happen again.”
Plus, she got fired from her job in a manner that suggested no flowery, kind-hearted reference would be offered to help her find new employment.
Cheated on and fired. Now, homeless. You’re really living the wild L.A. life now, Thea.
“If you still had your finance job, you could think about other apartments, but Draven’s is the only thing you can afford right now,” Mallory added; her hands signed slowly as if she didn’t want to offend Thea by driving the point home too harshly.
My only option is a sleazy drummer. Fantastic. “How irresponsible with money does the guy have to be to need a roommate? Wren is dripping with money from the band. He has you guys set up in a mansion,” Thea commented.
The band Medusa’s Tears had started selling out at arenas over the last few years. They would go on an international tour soon. Thea hadn’t heard of them—she wasn’t a rock kind of girl—but she’d looked them up when Mal said she dated the lead guitarist.
Thea could assume, from her background in finance, that the band members were rolling in some serious cash.
So, why did Draven only have a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in L.A. that he rented to a roommate?
Yes, city real estate was outrageously expensive, and it had to be one of the nicest apartment buildings she would step into without being promptly escorted out, but… How?
Did Draven spend all his hefty paychecks on things like beer, condoms, and sports gambling? Thea wanted answers to the financial mystery.
Mal shrugged.
Thea exhaled a lengthy sigh. “And Draven already agreed to it?” she signed. “He is fine with me moving in so quickly?”
“A deaf roommate is basically the only kind of roommate a drummer can have,” Mal signed back with a grin.
Thea nibbled on her lip and stared into her creamy cappuccino. She wrung her fingers in front of herself before signing, “Does he know about Alec?” The whole being-cheated-on-with-a-member-of-her-friend-group was a situation Thea did not want to rehash.
“He knows you’re single now,” Mal replied. “But not how it happened.”
Alec had never seemed like a liar. Like someone who would throw away everything he had—they had—for sex. Some men hid it, and some men were like Draven—confident and blatantly honest with their utter lack of morals and commitment.
If she was expected to live with someone like that, she did not want him to know about Alec. She did not want to hear a flimsy excuse of “Boys will be boys. Better to accept it now.”
Not that she planned on listening to any nuggets of wisdom Draven had to say. She imagined living with him to be like living with a ghost. She planned on interacting with him only to provide the monthly rent payment.
As long as he kept his threesomes in his bedroom and not their shared living room, all would be fine.
It will just be a place to live. Until I’m back on my feet, she thought.
Yes. Temporary.
Like all of Draven’s hook-ups.
* * *
“If you fuck her, I’ll kill you,” Wren threatened Draven again, tallying the death threats to twice in less than one hour as the two men waited for Wren’s fiancé Mallory and her friend Thea to show up and take a look at the apartment.
“Dude, why do you keep saying that?” An aggravated groan rumbled from Draven’s lips as he ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair. “I’m not going to fuck her. Stop acting like I’m some kind of animal.”
“You are an animal.”
“She is her own person. What if she fucks me, huh?” Draven questioned, gesturing to his chiseled frame.
Wren shook his head. “You are such a gentleman.”
Draven grumbled as he continued cleaning the kitchen—with no help from Wren. “Besides, I’m sure she’ll be back with that on-again, off-again boyfriend soon anyway. She will probably be gone within two weeks.”
“Actually,” Wren said in a cautious voice. “I’d say they are one hundred and ten percent done now. I don’t see her taking him back.”
That piqued Draven’s interest. “What did he do?”
Wren shrugged. “I’m not supposed to say.”
“Cheated,” Draven guessed. “Didn’t he?”
Wren frowned and shrugged again, not denying it. Draven’s friend had no poker face.
“Asshole,” Draven grunted. If a man wanted to play the field, fine. But then have the balls not to promise exclusivity.
Draven wasn’t all that surprised, though. He had seen Thea two to three times in his life, and in two of those moments, she stood next to her boyfriend Alrick or Alex or some dumb name.
He resembled that boring, pompous, trust fund Wall Street type, and he had never even held Thea’s hand. At parties where other men lurked and looked at his girl, he didn’t touch her at all. Not a hand on her back or an arm around her shoulder.
She had stood, stiff as a board, beside the man. A well-loved woman had some curve to her spine. Thea was constantly stern-faced. Poor girl probably hadn’t experienced an orgasm in months. Oh God, what if it had been a year?
What if, after a few weeks under the same roof, she snuck into Draven’s bedroom, climbed on top of him, placed his hand to the wet heaven between her legs, and begged him to show her everything she had been missing--
“You’re thinking about sleeping with her now that you know she is single, aren’t you?” Wren asked in an annoyed, knowing tone.
Draven dismissed the thought. “Never gonna happen.”
The few times Draven and Thea had met gazes at various bar gigs or parties, she glared at him with a displeasure that mimicked his third-grade math teacher, Mrs. Scardina.
“She hates me,” Draven added, his voice transforming into something softer and more vulnerable than he wanted.
It shouldn’t matter what some stranger thought of him, right? She was the opposite of his type. Well, no. He was the opposite of hers.
That constant pearl necklace around her neck that she fooled with—she was practically a stereotype. A future Mrs. Governor of some state.
A year or two down the line, she would marry a preppy, trust fund man with political aspirations. She would pop out two kids in a house with a picket fence and live happily ever after with three golden retrievers and several designer purses to keep her company when her husband was out on “business trips.”
And that was fine if that was what she wanted.
But I would want more, Draven thought. Someone to hold and drag on world tours with him. Someone to write songs about. Someone who sang to his soul.
But if he admitted to any of that, his friends would rag on him until Draven’s tombstone read, “Here lies a man who admitted to wanting a woman to ‘sing to his soul’ in front of his rocker bandmates.”
“I wouldn’t say she hates you.” Wren tapped a finger to his chin. “She just thinks you toy with women’s hearts and do nothing but drink beer and party. And she hates you.”
So, she thinks I’m a drunken manwhore. Just like everyone else.
Wren watched as Draven threw empty red plastic cups and beer cans into trash bags and swept crumbs from the floor. The apartment was—in one word—trashed.
This is what I get for being a good friend, Draven thought to himself as a miscellaneous potato chip crunched under his left shoe. Rock bands and rock groupies are such messy goddamn eaters.
“How come the afterparties always have to be at my place?” Draven asked.
“Because you are the only member of the band who is single and kid-less.”
Not my fault women are only interested in me for one-night stands. Draven kept his thoughts to himself, trying to ignore that rising memory of his ex-girlfriend telling him, “Look, babe, you fuck a drummer. You don’t date one.”
Draven was sure Thea would agree with that ex’s opinion. After all, I’m just a drunken manwhore, right? A frustrated huff came from him as he tied off another trash bag. “If she sees all of this mess, she will think I caused it,” he muttered.
“What do you care what she thinks of you?” Wren asked.
Exactly. Why would he care what Thea thought?
But he did.
For some reason, he cared what she—and her strand of pearls—thought.
He still remembered the first time he saw her standing in a back corner at a local bar where his band played.
He remembered how she closed her eyes and swayed with her friends, able to feel the vibrations of the music. He remembered hitting his drums with more fervor, more force, silently pleading with her to look at him and pay him any attention.
He remembered walking up to her and asking for her name, but she kept her back to him, ignoring him—or, at the time, that was what he thought. He had not realized she could not hear him. His dejection had only increased when he realized she had a boyfriend.
She had never shown any interest in Draven.
He had never had a single conversation with her because A) He did not know sign language, and B) She clearly hated him.
But yeah, he stupidly and inexplicably cared what she thought. I really am a dumbass, he thought.
The woman who, odds were, grew up being seen as a stereotype, saw him as one. Immature, shallow, untalented man candy—Draven had heard it all from people who believed drummers were only good for a “good time.”
Sue him for hoping the owner of those piercing gray-blue eyes would be the first person to make him feel seen.
He bit his inner cheek, opened another trash bag, and shoved more items into their rightful place.
Thea blinked several times after reading the online advertisement glowing on her phone.
She was supposed to live with the cocky, arrogant man who wrote that ad? Just because she was desperate to find a cheap place to stay in L.A. as soon as possible?
She looked up from her phone and quirked a single dark eyebrow at her closest friend, Mallory. Slowly picking up her large cappuccino cup—trying to exude the calm energy of a confident mob boss and not a woman who lost her job, boyfriend, and place of residence within days of each other—Thea took a long sip, licking foam from her lips.
After placing the cup back onto a table at their favorite local coffee shop, Thea signed, “Who do you take me for?”
She would not move in with drummer and playboy Draven Maxwell, no matter how desperate she was for a place to stay with cheap rent.
“Look,” Mallory signed, “I know he’s a bit of a manwhore, but you’re not going to find a cheaper apartment to rent. He cut the original rent to a third of what others cost.”
“Because he can’t keep a roommate,” Thea signed back with an expression screaming, “Duh.”
“Only because of the loud drumming, which wouldn’t be a problem for you,” Mallory stressed. “He is not that bad.”
Thea’s eyebrow somehow curved even higher on her forehead in disbelief. Yes, Mallory dated one of Draven’s rock star friends and had been around him in more social settings than Thea, but Thea knew Draven.
Maybe she’d never conversed with him, but she knew his type.
The man was the living embodiment of sex. The dirty kind. The taboo kind that involved handcuffs and his thick fingers cupping her throat as he thrust--
Thea! She shook herself.
The first time she saw the drummer at one of the band’s gigs, Thea had stared, swallowed the sudden dryness in her mouth, and broken eye contact. Before or after the eye contact, she may or may not have squirmed, fidgeted, and pressed her thighs tightly together when they threatened to spread themselves for the man.
But after her body’s tactless reactions, she recognized him for what he was: a self-centered, selfish player who never slept with the same woman twice.
But the one thing Thea hated the most? Draven Maxwell believed he was better than everyone else. Hell, he described himself in the ad for a roommate as an “unbelievably attractive male.” Was he honest? Sure.
But would it kill a muscular white man with perfect bone structure to have a little modesty? Damn.
“I hardly know him, and I already dislike him,” Thea signed to Mallory. “If I move in, he will expect me to cook, clean, and do his laundry. I know it.”
To Thea, Draven was the kind of man who grew up having other people do all of his work for him in group projects in school. Meanwhile, Thea worked harder than anyone. The word “overachiever” did not scratch the surface when describing her.
When you are underestimated, you want to be better than everyone in the room. And she had been.
What hard work had Draven ever had to do? Movie star—or more like porn star—good looks. A charming and addicting charisma.
Perfect teeth—had he ever needed braces? Thea had worn braces for six years throughout middle school and high school. He has probably been allowed to eat popcorn his entire life, yet, his teeth are perfect and white.
Asshole.
“You don’t know that, Thea,” Mallory shot back. “He might offer to do your laundry.”
“Yeah, to fondle my underwear.”
Mallory rolled her eyes and laughed. “Babe, you wear granny panties.”
“High-waisted, full-coverage panties are comfortable, and being sexy is about being comfortable.”
That earned Thea another eye roll from her closest friend.
“He is not a bad guy, really. He just probably has too much sex,” Mallory signed. “I already told him not to hit on you, though. I think my exact words were, ‘Try to seduce her, and I’ll strangle you with Wren’s guitar strings.’”
Thea scoffed. Men like Draven Maxwell—thirty, tattooed, and emanating waves of sinful pleasure—did not go for women like Thea, a twenty-five-year-old deaf woman who wore a strand of pearls and dresses that puffed out at the waist like she walked out of a 1950s film.
“You need a place to stay, Thea,” Mal reminded her.
“I know.” Swallowing her pride and nearly choking on it, Thea thought, I need a new place to stay immediately for as little money as possible.
Within three days, her whole life had fallen apart.
Last week, she had the perfect job, the perfect apartment, and the perfect boyfriend. A few days later, her cheeks were covered in smeared mascara and tears as her long-term boyfriend Alec told her, “She didn’t mean anything. It won’t happen again.”
Plus, she got fired from her job in a manner that suggested no flowery, kind-hearted reference would be offered to help her find new employment.
Cheated on and fired. Now, homeless. You’re really living the wild L.A. life now, Thea.
“If you still had your finance job, you could think about other apartments, but Draven’s is the only thing you can afford right now,” Mallory added; her hands signed slowly as if she didn’t want to offend Thea by driving the point home too harshly.
My only option is a sleazy drummer. Fantastic. “How irresponsible with money does the guy have to be to need a roommate? Wren is dripping with money from the band. He has you guys set up in a mansion,” Thea commented.
The band Medusa’s Tears had started selling out at arenas over the last few years. They would go on an international tour soon. Thea hadn’t heard of them—she wasn’t a rock kind of girl—but she’d looked them up when Mal said she dated the lead guitarist.
Thea could assume, from her background in finance, that the band members were rolling in some serious cash.
So, why did Draven only have a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in L.A. that he rented to a roommate?
Yes, city real estate was outrageously expensive, and it had to be one of the nicest apartment buildings she would step into without being promptly escorted out, but… How?
Did Draven spend all his hefty paychecks on things like beer, condoms, and sports gambling? Thea wanted answers to the financial mystery.
Mal shrugged.
Thea exhaled a lengthy sigh. “And Draven already agreed to it?” she signed. “He is fine with me moving in so quickly?”
“A deaf roommate is basically the only kind of roommate a drummer can have,” Mal signed back with a grin.
Thea nibbled on her lip and stared into her creamy cappuccino. She wrung her fingers in front of herself before signing, “Does he know about Alec?” The whole being-cheated-on-with-a-member-of-her-friend-group was a situation Thea did not want to rehash.
“He knows you’re single now,” Mal replied. “But not how it happened.”
Alec had never seemed like a liar. Like someone who would throw away everything he had—they had—for sex. Some men hid it, and some men were like Draven—confident and blatantly honest with their utter lack of morals and commitment.
If she was expected to live with someone like that, she did not want him to know about Alec. She did not want to hear a flimsy excuse of “Boys will be boys. Better to accept it now.”
Not that she planned on listening to any nuggets of wisdom Draven had to say. She imagined living with him to be like living with a ghost. She planned on interacting with him only to provide the monthly rent payment.
As long as he kept his threesomes in his bedroom and not their shared living room, all would be fine.
It will just be a place to live. Until I’m back on my feet, she thought.
Yes. Temporary.
Like all of Draven’s hook-ups.
* * *
“If you fuck her, I’ll kill you,” Wren threatened Draven again, tallying the death threats to twice in less than one hour as the two men waited for Wren’s fiancé Mallory and her friend Thea to show up and take a look at the apartment.
“Dude, why do you keep saying that?” An aggravated groan rumbled from Draven’s lips as he ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair. “I’m not going to fuck her. Stop acting like I’m some kind of animal.”
“You are an animal.”
“She is her own person. What if she fucks me, huh?” Draven questioned, gesturing to his chiseled frame.
Wren shook his head. “You are such a gentleman.”
Draven grumbled as he continued cleaning the kitchen—with no help from Wren. “Besides, I’m sure she’ll be back with that on-again, off-again boyfriend soon anyway. She will probably be gone within two weeks.”
“Actually,” Wren said in a cautious voice. “I’d say they are one hundred and ten percent done now. I don’t see her taking him back.”
That piqued Draven’s interest. “What did he do?”
Wren shrugged. “I’m not supposed to say.”
“Cheated,” Draven guessed. “Didn’t he?”
Wren frowned and shrugged again, not denying it. Draven’s friend had no poker face.
“Asshole,” Draven grunted. If a man wanted to play the field, fine. But then have the balls not to promise exclusivity.
Draven wasn’t all that surprised, though. He had seen Thea two to three times in his life, and in two of those moments, she stood next to her boyfriend Alrick or Alex or some dumb name.
He resembled that boring, pompous, trust fund Wall Street type, and he had never even held Thea’s hand. At parties where other men lurked and looked at his girl, he didn’t touch her at all. Not a hand on her back or an arm around her shoulder.
She had stood, stiff as a board, beside the man. A well-loved woman had some curve to her spine. Thea was constantly stern-faced. Poor girl probably hadn’t experienced an orgasm in months. Oh God, what if it had been a year?
What if, after a few weeks under the same roof, she snuck into Draven’s bedroom, climbed on top of him, placed his hand to the wet heaven between her legs, and begged him to show her everything she had been missing--
“You’re thinking about sleeping with her now that you know she is single, aren’t you?” Wren asked in an annoyed, knowing tone.
Draven dismissed the thought. “Never gonna happen.”
The few times Draven and Thea had met gazes at various bar gigs or parties, she glared at him with a displeasure that mimicked his third-grade math teacher, Mrs. Scardina.
“She hates me,” Draven added, his voice transforming into something softer and more vulnerable than he wanted.
It shouldn’t matter what some stranger thought of him, right? She was the opposite of his type. Well, no. He was the opposite of hers.
That constant pearl necklace around her neck that she fooled with—she was practically a stereotype. A future Mrs. Governor of some state.
A year or two down the line, she would marry a preppy, trust fund man with political aspirations. She would pop out two kids in a house with a picket fence and live happily ever after with three golden retrievers and several designer purses to keep her company when her husband was out on “business trips.”
And that was fine if that was what she wanted.
But I would want more, Draven thought. Someone to hold and drag on world tours with him. Someone to write songs about. Someone who sang to his soul.
But if he admitted to any of that, his friends would rag on him until Draven’s tombstone read, “Here lies a man who admitted to wanting a woman to ‘sing to his soul’ in front of his rocker bandmates.”
“I wouldn’t say she hates you.” Wren tapped a finger to his chin. “She just thinks you toy with women’s hearts and do nothing but drink beer and party. And she hates you.”
So, she thinks I’m a drunken manwhore. Just like everyone else.
Wren watched as Draven threw empty red plastic cups and beer cans into trash bags and swept crumbs from the floor. The apartment was—in one word—trashed.
This is what I get for being a good friend, Draven thought to himself as a miscellaneous potato chip crunched under his left shoe. Rock bands and rock groupies are such messy goddamn eaters.
“How come the afterparties always have to be at my place?” Draven asked.
“Because you are the only member of the band who is single and kid-less.”
Not my fault women are only interested in me for one-night stands. Draven kept his thoughts to himself, trying to ignore that rising memory of his ex-girlfriend telling him, “Look, babe, you fuck a drummer. You don’t date one.”
Draven was sure Thea would agree with that ex’s opinion. After all, I’m just a drunken manwhore, right? A frustrated huff came from him as he tied off another trash bag. “If she sees all of this mess, she will think I caused it,” he muttered.
“What do you care what she thinks of you?” Wren asked.
Exactly. Why would he care what Thea thought?
But he did.
For some reason, he cared what she—and her strand of pearls—thought.
He still remembered the first time he saw her standing in a back corner at a local bar where his band played.
He remembered how she closed her eyes and swayed with her friends, able to feel the vibrations of the music. He remembered hitting his drums with more fervor, more force, silently pleading with her to look at him and pay him any attention.
He remembered walking up to her and asking for her name, but she kept her back to him, ignoring him—or, at the time, that was what he thought. He had not realized she could not hear him. His dejection had only increased when he realized she had a boyfriend.
She had never shown any interest in Draven.
He had never had a single conversation with her because A) He did not know sign language, and B) She clearly hated him.
But yeah, he stupidly and inexplicably cared what she thought. I really am a dumbass, he thought.
The woman who, odds were, grew up being seen as a stereotype, saw him as one. Immature, shallow, untalented man candy—Draven had heard it all from people who believed drummers were only good for a “good time.”
Sue him for hoping the owner of those piercing gray-blue eyes would be the first person to make him feel seen.
He bit his inner cheek, opened another trash bag, and shoved more items into their rightful place.
