Jerrie Oneshot Book

Key to Romance

Summary: Perrie has a missing room key and a very forgetful roommate, and she finds herself frequently locked out of her own dorm. Jade works for the Campus Police and she finds herself outside Perrie's dorm door an unusually frequent number of times to let her in.

The first time it happened was totally accidental.

"Fucking goddammit, Leigh-Anne," Perrie muttered furiously under her breath. She tried twisting the doorknob several more times, but she knew it was pointless. Perrie sighed heavily and smacked her head against her stubborn door. She stayed there for several long moments, the cool wood doing little to ease the headache nagging behind her eyes. She had spent close to six hours that day staring down her computer and trying to tackle a particularly frustrating essay, and had little to show for it except 3 miserable pages of writing and a shoddy works cited page.

Perrie pulled her phone out of her back pocket, still refusing to lift her head from its position against her door. She pressed Leigh-Anne's contact and lifted the phone to her ear. It rang four long times, and Perrie was worried no one would pick up.

"Perrie, it's 11pm."

"That is not a good greeting."

Leigh-Anne sighed into the line. "I was almost asleep."

"Not in our room, I'm guessing?"

"No." There's a slight pause, before, "Why?"

"The door's fucking locked, Leigh."

"Well, where's your key?"

"You know I lost it."

Leigh-Anne groaned, and muttered in a low voice, "Fuck, Perrie, I'm sorry. I totally forgot."

"Well, come back here and let me in, then."

"Perrie..." Leigh-Anne trailed off and Perrie heard what sounded like the rustling of bed sheets, before Leigh-Anne's whispered voice bit at her. "I'm sort of busy right now."

"And I'm fucking tired, Leigh-Anne. Please come let me in."

"Okay, first of all you're being very rude, which, given the late hour and that midterms are coming up, I will kindly forget come tomorrow." Perrie opened her mouth to retort, but Leigh-Anne cut her off. "And secondly, Perrie, I'm not on campus, I'm at Andre's. You knew I was staying here tonight."

Perrie lifted her head only enough to bring it crashing back down to the door with a frustrated groan. "I've had like the longest day of my life, Leigh-Anne, please-"

"I'm downtown at his apartment and I'm not going to catch a bus back to campus at 11 just to let you into our room. Call Campus Police."

"They take forever, Leigh-Anne, please..."

"Perrie, I'm sorry. Look, if it's about the lockout fee, I'll throw you the money tomorrow. This is pretty much my fault anyways, though you did lose your key after only three weeks, so..."

"Thank you for being absolutely no help to me."

"You're buying me ice cream tomorrow for being an ass right now."

Perrie bit her lip and took a deep breath. She knew she was being unfair. It wasn't Leigh-Anne's fault that she had lost her key. She knew Leigh-Anne was going off campus for the weekend. She should have reminded her to keep the door open. And besides, Leigh-Anne wasn't the one who assigned her three term papers due in the same number of days. "I'm sorry, Leigh," she said in a low voice, pulling away from the door and turning so her back was pressed firmly against the adjacent wall, before she slid to the floor. "I'm sorry. It's just been..." She trailed off, unable – or maybe unwilling – to vocalize the frustrations of her life in the two months since term started.