The Roommate Arrangement

by Jae

  “Yep. And I don’t regret it for a second. Making people laugh is addictive. Better than sex.” Steph paused, then seemed to consider it for a moment. “Okay, it’s a close second. Besides, who was I kidding? My grades weren’t good enough to get into vet school anyway.” She took off the lid of her milkshake and stirred it with her straw. Then she replaced the lid and regarded Rae across the rim of her cup. “How about you?”

  “Straight Bs. I have no idea if that’s good enough for vet school.”

  Steph shook her head. “You know that’s not what I meant. Do you regret becoming a police officer?”

  Did she? Rae wadded her napkin and the burger wrapper into a ball and stuffed it into the empty bag. No one had asked her that before. “No,” she said after a while and felt deep in her gut that it was the truth. She had a lot of regrets, but becoming a police officer wasn’t one of them.

  “Do you miss it?” Steph asked softly.

  “Parts of it.” She couldn’t say what she missed most—the camaraderie, the satisfaction of protecting and helping people, the feeling that she was trained to handle any challenging situation that could come up. But then again, that had turned out to be an illusion. That day, when Mike had been shot, everything had spiraled out of control. Rae tried to flash a grin, but her lips felt stiff. “Not the endless paperwork or spending my days off in court.”

  For once, Steph didn’t smile back or make a joke. “Couldn’t the LAPD assign you to a new position? Something you could do with one eye?”

  “They did, but I didn’t want a desk job. If I could no longer work patrol, I didn’t want to hang around and have the constant reminders of what I couldn’t do anymore.” Rae snapped her mouth shut, amazed at how much she had said.

  Steph reached across the middle console, somehow found Rae’s hand in the dim light as if by pure instinct, and squeezed softly. Her fingers were cold from the milkshake, but the touch didn’t feel as unpleasant as Rae had expected. “I’m sorry.”

  Rae bit her lip so hard that she tasted the coppery tang of blood. “Not your fault.”

  “Yeah, but I can still be sorry, can’t I? I don’t know much about how your life was before or what exactly happened—and I’m not going to ask—but I can imagine you lost a lot.” She gave another soft squeeze to Rae’s hand.

  This time, it felt like too much. Rae pulled away. “Yeah, well, I gained a thing or two too. Now I get to protect the most promising comics in LA from creepy guys, hecklers, and little old grannies who’re smuggling bourbon and God knows what else into the showroom.”

  Again, Steph didn’t take the bait. She regarded Rae with a serious expression before reaching over and tapping her shoulder. “You know what? You and I have more in common than I thought.”

  “Us?” Rae waved back and forth between them with a faux horrified expression.

  “Yeah. I’ve been accused of using humor as a defense mechanism. You do that too.”

  It was the truth, but Rae didn’t want to admit it. “You sound like your therapist sister.”

  The straw slid out of Steph’s mouth, and her eyes widened. “Damn, you’re right. Blame it on the sugar rush from the milkshake.” She slid the cup into the holder. “Okay, enough deep conversation for one night. I’m usually not one for that either. But if you ever need to talk…you know where I live.”

  “Thanks,” Rae said but already knew that she would never take her up on that offer.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Rae looked over at her warily. She had really reached her capacity for today.

  Steph’s smile changed and became more the carefree grin Rae was familiar with. “You’re thinking you need dessert.”

  A relieved chuckle burst from Rae’s chest. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Great. Let’s switch seats and get going. I know a twenty-four-hour diner that makes an amazing waffle sundae.”

  “Jeez, you’re not serious, are you?” Rae clutched her belly. “You’re not considering having a waffle sundae after the burger, milkshake, and animal fries you just had?”

  Steph opened the passenger-side door and grinned like a pirate about to capture a ship loaded down with riches. “Stick with me and find out.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Monday before Christmas week, Steph tossed her keys onto the table next to the door. “Honey, I’m home.”

  No response came from Rae’s room.

  Steph stepped farther into the apartment. “Rae? Hey, you home? There was a taco truck parked around the corner, so I brought you some tacos. Am I the best roomie ever or what?”

  Again, there was no reply from Rae’s room.

  The door was open, so Steph peeked in.

  No Rae.

  In the past, when her roommates hadn’t been home, Steph had always enjoyed having the apartment to herself, but now she found herself being disappointed. It was just because eating alone wasn’t fun, she told herself.

  Despite Rae’s protests about having a waffle sundae after devouring a burger, milkshake, and fries, she had matched Steph bite for bite at the diner the previous Thursday, and Steph had enjoyed sharing a meal with a woman who wasn’t a dainty eater. Well, Rae could have her tacos later, once she got back from wherever she had gone.

  Unless I eat hers too. Steph grinned to herself. But first, she’d jump into the shower to get rid of the dog smell she had accumulated on her walks today.

  She left the tacos in the kitchen, got a change of clothes from her room, and headed to the bathroom.

  As she opened the door, a cloud of steam wafted out. A feeling of reversed déjà vu overcame her. This time, it was Rae who stood in front of the sink completely naked and Steph who’d walked in on her.

  Holy moly! Clearly, she was sharing an apartment with a goddess. Steph didn’t know how she managed not to drool as her gaze trailed up sculpted calves, strong thighs, and…

  Rae cleared her throat. “Enjoying the view?” she asked without a hint of self-consciousness.

  “Yes,” Steph answered before her brain kicked in. Her gaze snapped up to Rae’s face. “Um, sorry, I was—” Then she forgot the rest of what she’d been about to say.

  Rae had taken out her prosthetic eye. Her lid had closed three-quarters of the way, but beneath it, Steph could glimpse the pink flesh of her empty eye socket.

  “Shit.” Rae only now seemed to remember that she’d removed the prosthesis. While she hadn’t appeared to care much about Steph seeing her naked, she covered her socket with her hand and glared at Steph with her remaining eye. “Would you mind?”

  Steph whirled around so fast that she nearly fell against the doorframe. “I’m really sorry, Rae. I—”

  “Out!”

  “Sorry. I’m so sorry.” Steph fled the room. She closed the door behind her, sank against it, and muttered a litany of four-letter words. God, just when she had gotten Rae to relax around her. Now she had ruined everything. She knew instinctively that Rae wouldn’t want anyone to see her like this.

  Steph stumbled to the couch and flopped down on it to wait for Rae.

  It seemed to take an eternity for Rae to emerge from the bathroom. Was it hard to put the prosthetic eye back in, or was Rae avoiding her? Steph had a feeling it was the latter.

  Finally, the bathroom door creaked open, and Rae stepped out.

  Her hair was still wet and stuck to her skull, emphasizing her striking features. Her jawline was so tense that her entire face seemed to be carved out of stone. She was fully dressed in her work uniform, and the prosthetic eye was back in. She hurled the darkest of glares in Steph’s direction before marching toward her room.

  “Rae, wait!” A dozen thoughts tumbled through Steph’s mind as she searched for something that would stop Rae’s retreat. “I got you some tacos.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Rae said witho
ut stopping.

  “Please, Rae. There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

  “I’m not.”

  Steph got up from the couch but held herself back from moving toward Rae, no matter how much she wanted to. She sensed that she’d chase her off if she did. “Then come eat with me.”

  Already at the door to her room, Rae stopped and turned. An expression Steph couldn’t quite identify crossed her face like a cloud trailing over the sun. “I said I’m not hungry. Besides, I would have thought you’d have lost your appetite now anyway.”

  It would have been easy to miss, and Steph nearly did. But she had grown up in a household where every little gesture, every facial expression, every change of tone was interpreted and discussed to death. For once in her life, growing up in a family of therapists was a good thing because now she caught it: Rae wasn’t angry. Not really. She was scared, probably of Steph rejecting her or reacting with disgust.

  “Me? Losing my appetite?” Steph made good use of her comedy skills to let out a convincing chuckle. “That never happened before, so why would it now? Because I saw you with your eye out?”

  Rae flinched back from the open words, but Steph knew they needed to be said.

  “Do you honestly think it would gross me out?” Now she took a step toward Rae and slowly shook her head. “Why would it?”

  Rae laughed, but it was a sound full of pain, bare of any humor. “Well, most people can’t take out their eye like some…some zombie.”

  Steph’s heart went out to Rae. She bridged the rest of the distance between them but carefully stopped just out of touching distance. “You are not a zombie, and you’re not most people. Christ, you survived being shot in the head! This”—she pointed at Rae’s prosthetic eye—“is part of survival. I’m not grossed out by it, okay?”

  Rae looked at her for several more seconds. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” It came out in a whisper so soft that Steph nearly didn’t hear it. Then Rae squared her shoulders, and her usual armor of confidence settled back into place. “What kind of tacos?”

  Relief flooded Steph’s body, making her knees wobbly for a moment. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got a combination of six different ones. Carne asada, chorizo, shrimp, grilled veggies, chicken, and a fish taco.”

  “Can I have the carne asada one?” Rae asked.

  “Hmm, depends.”

  “On?” A bit of wariness crept back into Rae’s tone.

  God, she was like one of the shy or fearful dogs who backed away from her, watching Steph’s every move for the first few times she came to take them for a walk. But Steph had always patiently gained their trust, and she hoped she could do the same with Rae. She flashed her a teasing grin. “On whether you’ll continue not to lock the bathroom door when you take a shower so I can accidentally sneak another peek.”

  Rae stiffened.

  “Jeez, I’m talking about a look at that hot body of yours, not your eye.” Steph gently elbowed her, then turned and walked to the kitchen. She busied herself putting the tacos on plates and getting two bottles of water from the fridge to give Rae some time to get herself together.

  Finally, Rae joined her, wordlessly took the water bottles, and carried them to the couch.

  Steph followed, but then, halfway to the sofa, she remembered that she had forgotten to close the cupboard after taking the plates out. Old habits really died hard. She returned to the kitchen, nudged the cabinet door closed, and then took a seat next to Rae. Her stomach gurgled a protest as she slid the plate with the carne asada taco in front of Rae.

  “Thanks,” Rae said.

  That one word seemed to encompass so much more than the tacos or remembering to close the cupboard door. Steph gave her a soft smile. “You’re very welcome.”

  Rae rubbed her left eye, then picked up the taco and studied it from all sides as if to decide how to best eat it without it falling apart. “If you continue to feed me fast food, I’ll have to up my workout.”

  “Please.” Steph snorted. “I just saw you in all your naked glory. You don’t need to up your workout.”

  Rae let out a noncommittal grunt and took a big bite of her taco. Guacamole dribbled out, and a piece of steak dropped onto the plate.

  Steph watched her with a grin.

  “What?” Rae picked up the morsel of steak and popped it into her mouth.

  “You’re eating it all wrong.”

  “There’s a right and a wrong way to eat a taco?” Rae gave her a skeptical look. “Open mouth, insert taco, chew, swallow, repeat. You have a better method?”

  “Yeah. Well, not for the chewing part, but I’ve had tacos with Gabe’s family, and they hold theirs like this.” Steph pinched the top shut between her thumb, index, and middle finger. “That way, the filling can’t fall out. Here, I’ll show you.” She reached over and guided her fingers into the correct position. Rae’s skin was warm and surprisingly soft beneath her fingertips, and Steph’s hand lingered for a second.

  “Got it. Thanks.” Rae held still for a moment but then pulled her hand away by lifting the taco to her mouth. This time, she managed to take a bite without losing half of the filling.

  Steph gave herself a mental slap and picked up her fish taco. Danger, Will Robinson. She’s your roommate and a club employee. Look, don’t touch, remember?

  Rae finished her first taco, wiped her hands on a napkin, and then rubbed her left eye with the back of her hand.

  “Something wrong with the eye?” Steph asked. “You keep rubbing it.”

  “It’s fine.” Rae rubbed it again.

  Steph kept gazing at her with an I-don’t-believe-it-for-a-second look.

  “It’s irritating me a little today,” Rae finally said. “I thought an eyelash got trapped behind it or something. That’s why I took it out after my shower to rinse the socket with saline.”

  “Oh, so you don’t…you know…take it out every day?” Steph asked.

  A mild smile darted across Rae’s face. “What? You thought it’s like false teeth that I take out every night and put in a glass of water on my bedside table?”

  Steph shrugged. “How was I supposed to know? I’ve never met someone with a prosthetic eye. At least not that I know of.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that,” Rae said. “In the past, I think doctors told their patients to take it out every day to clean it, but nowadays, the consensus seems to be that you should leave it in as much as possible, unless it bothers you. I only take it out every couple of weeks to clean it.”

  Steph studied the prosthetic eye. The skin around it was a bit red from Rae’s rubbing. “Does it hurt?”

  “No. I don’t know what’s up with it right now. Most of the time, I don’t even feel the prosthesis anymore.”

  “I meant when you take it out and put it back in.”

  “Doesn’t hurt either,” Rae said. “It’s a bit like putting in a contact, only a lot bigger and thicker.”

  Steph didn’t ask to see it, even though she was curious about how the prosthetic eye would look once it was out. But she didn’t want Rae to feel as if she had to take her eye out to amuse her audience, like a magician performing a trick. “I was always thankful to have 20/20 vision. The thought of putting in contacts, much less something bigger… Not sure I could do that.”

  “You would get used to it. Not like I had a choice. My only alternative was an eye patch.”

  Steph’s mind bombarded her with images of a dashing pirate wearing thigh-high leather boots, a rakish grin, and a billowy, white blouse that was unbuttoned a little too far. She put down her taco to fan herself with both hands. “Ooh, I don’t know. I think you’d rock that look.”

  “I don’t even want to know what’s going through your mind right now, do I?”

  Steph chuckled. “Probably not.”

  Rae regarded her with a shake of her head. “You�
�re impossible.”

  “Impossible not to like,” Steph added and stuffed the rest of the taco into her mouth.

  Rae huffed but didn’t object.

  CHAPTER 14

  The holiday season was a busy time at the club, so Rae had worked every night for the past two weeks. On her first day off in what felt like ages, she lay stretched out on the couch, using Steph’s Netflix subscription to watch The Fall. She’d never watched much TV, but she needed a way to shut off her brain at night, and too much reading on the small screen of her phone tired her eye. Plus she had to admit that the shows Steph had introduced her to were amazingly good—and Gillian Anderson was still sexy as hell.

  Steph came out of the bathroom and hopped around the living area on one foot while sliding a high-heeled shoe on the other.

  Talk about sexy as hell… Without looking at it, Rae reached for the remote and paused the show. Wow. That sure wasn’t the jeans, T-shirt, and blazer Steph normally wore when she went to a comedy gig. Her black miniskirt was only an inch or two shy of getting her arrested, and the tight, black top with short, lacy sleeves molded to her every curve.

  “What?” Steph, now with both shoes on, paused in the middle of the living room and slid her hands down her skirt, smoothing it down and raising the temperature in the apartment. “Do I have a run in my pantyhose?”

  “You’re not even wearing pantyhose,” Rae muttered. She knew, because damn, it was hard to keep her eyes off those legs.

  Steph flashed her a grin. “Why, I didn’t know you’d notice.”

  “I don’t.” Rae pressed the play button. “Wear whatever you want. Just seems like overkill for a comedy show or going to an open mic with Gabe.” Was there still something going on between the two of them? The rumor mill at the club had it that they had shared a short fling before Steph had kicked him to the curb.

  “I’m not going to a show or an open mic. I’ve been booked for a holiday party pretty much every day this month. Now I need a break. I’m going out.”

  One of the bad things about only having one eye was that Rae couldn’t keep watching her out of the corner of her eye while pretending to be focused on her show. “Hot date?”