The Roommate Arrangement

by Jae

  “I’ve got one.” Steph patted the purse hanging over her shoulder.

  “God, I could kiss you.”

  A nervous chuckle escaped Steph. “Um, I think that kiss earlier was plenty, thanks. Another one would stretch the platonic-roommates limits.”

  “I didn’t mean it literally. I just don’t want anyone to see—”

  The sound of one of the stall locks being turned interrupted her.

  Steph was the first one to react. She tugged on Rae’s arm, drew her into the empty stall, and squeezed close so she could shut the door. Only when they were safely behind the locked door did she realize what situation they were in.

  Jeez. Had the stalls in the club’s restroom always been this tiny? With the toilet, the trash can, and the toilet paper dispenser taking up most of the cubicle, there was barely enough room for two adults. They had to stand so close that only a few inches of space remained between them. Was it just her imagination, or could she feel the heat emanating from Rae’s body? It reminded her of how it had felt to press her body to Rae’s and caress her amazingly soft mouth with her lips.

  Get it together, Stephanie. This wasn’t an erotically charged situation for poor Rae. She was still covering her left eye with her hand, and the tension radiating off her seemed to make the air around her crackle.

  “All right. We’re safe here,” Steph said quietly so no one could overhear them. “Now what do you need to do, and how can I help?”

  Rae closed her other eye and exhaled as if trying to release some of her tension. When she opened her eye, some of the take-charge attitude was back in her expression. “I need to take the eye out, put in some drops, and then put it back in,” she said in a whisper. “For some reason, the damn eye has been bothering me all day. It probably slipped because I wasn’t careful when I rubbed it.”

  Steph rifled through her purse until she found the compact mirror that she barely ever used. Good thing she was too disorganized to follow the current decluttering trend. “So I just hold the mirror?”

  Rae nodded, her lips compressed to a thin line. “Yeah. And…can you close your eyes?”

  “Rae, that’s…” Steph stopped herself before she could say silly. It wasn’t silly at all. She could only imagine how much trust and courage it would take for Rae to let anyone see her without the eye in. “You know I don’t mind, right? I can close my eyes if that makes it easier for you, but please don’t think you have to protect my delicate sensibilities or anything.”

  “Just do it, okay? We don’t have the time for a long debate,” Rae said. “I need to get back, and so do you. Gabe is probably wondering where you are.”

  Steph flashed her a grin, hoping a bit of humor would ease Rae’s tension. “Nah. He thinks I’m in here, having my way with you.”

  “If anything, I’d have my way with you,” Rae grumbled.

  Steph snorted. “That’s what you think.”

  Her teasing had the desired effect: Rae seemed to relax a little. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

  Steph snapped open the mirror, held it up, and closed her eyes. “They’re closed.”

  “No peeking.”

  “I promise.” Steph squeezed her eyes shut more tightly.

  Rae’s suit jacket rustled. She muttered a string of curses.

  “What is it?” Steph whispered. “Do I need to—?”

  “No. Keep your eyes closed. I’ve got it.” Rae leaned so close that Steph could feel her warm breath on her face.

  A shiver went through Steph, and she struggled to hold the mirror steady. Jeez, this little bit of closeness really shouldn’t affect her like that. She’s your roommate. A club employee. A friend.

  “A little higher,” Rae said. “Yes! Now more to the right. Yes, exactly like that.”

  A giggle rose from Steph’s chest as she adjusted the position of the mirror. “If anyone hears us, they’ll really think I’m having my way with you.”

  “Then what will they think if I let out a little cheer and tell you it’s in?”

  Steph nearly choked on her own spit. She chuckled breathlessly. “I don’t even want to know. Is it? In, I mean.”

  “Yes. You can open your eyes.”

  Steph did. She looked into Rae’s amber-flecked irises from only inches away.

  Rae’s prosthesis was now in the right place again. Her lid and the skin beneath her eye were a little red, but otherwise, her left eye looked like the one on the right. She nervously searched Steph’s face. “How does it look?”

  “Gorgeous.” Steph gave her an encouraging smile and a pat on the shoulder.

  Rae blew out a long breath that ruffled Steph’s hair.

  Steph slid the mirror back into her purse and reached for the door lock, ready to get out of this tight spot.

  “Wait!” Rae called.

  Steph let her hand drop and turned. “Do you need a minute before we head back out?”

  “No, I…” Rae’s gaze flicked down to the tiles, then rose to connect with Steph’s. Her cheeks were tinged with red. For a woman who insisted that she hadn’t blushed since 1997, her cheeks took on that lovely color a lot. “I just wanted to thank you. For holding the mirror and closing your eyes and for getting me in here so fast,” Rae said in a rush. “Your quick reaction out there saved my ass.”

  “No thanks necessary. I know you’re the lone wolf type, but I consider myself part of Team Rae.”

  The hint of red in Rae’s cheeks deepened, but a new light seemed to enter her eye—one that appeared tentatively hopeful. “There’s a Team Rae?”

  Steph nodded firmly. “There is, as far as I’m concerned. And you know, Carlos and the rest of your colleagues… I bet they’d be on the team too, if you let them. Sometimes they take their teasing and their macho lines a little too far, but they’re not bad guys.”

  “I know that.”

  “Wouldn’t it be less stressful for you to tell them about your eye?” Steph asked. “In case something like this happens again.”

  Rae stared at the floor and scraped her shoe across the tiles. “I don’t know.”

  “This,” Steph tipped up Rae’s chin with her thumb so she had to look up, then gently touched a spot below Rae’s left eye and was grateful when she didn’t flinch back, “is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not ashamed. I just…” When Rae shrugged, her shoulders didn’t drop all the way back down, revealing how tense she was. “Being the only female doorperson on staff is hard enough. I’m not ready for anyone to know about the eye.”

  “I know,” Steph said softly. “And I don’t think any less of you because of it. Quite the opposite. It makes me admire you even more.”

  “Yeah, but that’s different. You’re…” Rae raised her gaze to meet Steph’s, and a new softness gleamed in her eye. “You’re Team Rae.”

  Her acceptance filled Steph with warmth. A lump lodged in her throat, preventing her from speaking. Not that she knew what to say. For once, no jokes came to mind and no words that would express how it felt to be accepted as part of Rae’s inner circle, so she didn’t say anything at all. Instead, she smiled at her, and in reply, a tentative curl formed on Rae’s lips.

  Finally, Rae wrenched her gaze away as if she couldn’t stand the intensity of the moment anymore. “All right, enough of that,” she said gruffly. “Let’s get out of here before everyone really thinks I’m taking you up against the stall door.”

  An image of Rae’s strong body pressing her against the door flashed through Steph’s mind. Heat suffused her from head to toe. She chased the image away with a shake of her head. “I thought we had established that I’d be the one to have my way with you?”

  “You wish.” Her old confidence was back in Rae’s tone. She reached past Steph to unlock the door. In the cramped quarters of the stall, her front pressed against Steph’s body.

&
nbsp; Oh God. That damn image of Rae pressing her against the door returned, and her knees felt suspiciously wobbly. As soon as the door swung open, Steph staggered to the sink and turned on the cold water.

  Rae followed suit and took the sink next to her. She inspected her eye in the mirror and blinked a few times as if testing whether her lid would close all the way. It did.

  “Will you be okay for the rest of your shift?” Steph asked.

  Rae nodded. “As long as I don’t rub the eye the wrong way again, I should be fine. I hope,” she added more quietly. A flicker of vulnerability dashed across her face, then disappeared as she dried her hands, strode toward the door, and held it open for Steph.

  Once they had stepped into the lobby, Rae quickly put some space between them. “See you at home.”

  Steph nodded. “See you.” Instead of hurrying to the showroom, she watched Rae cross the nearly empty lobby. She took in Rae’s powerful stride and the confident set of her broad shoulders. Rae really seemed okay. No one would suspect what had happened. But Steph knew she would never forget the vulnerability on Rae’s face or the way her hands had trembled in the stall.

  Finally, when Rae had disappeared outside, Steph slipped into the showroom, where the comedy show was about to start.

  It took her a moment to make out Gabe in the dim light. Just as she had thought, he had commandeered seats in the back so he could slip out if he got bored.

  She dropped into the seat next to him. “Sorry,” she whispered but didn’t offer more of an explanation.

  “Finally!” He elbowed her. “What took you so long? I was starting to think you had dragged Rae to the restroom to fuck her.”

  A wave of anger tore through her with a force that surprised her. “Just shut up, Gabe.”

  “Whoa!” He held up both hands, palms out, and stared at her.

  She stared back. What the…? She and Gabe had joked about her sex life a million times before, and neither had ever bothered to use PC language, but it rubbed her the wrong way to hear him talk about Rae that way. “Sorry, I…” She pinched the bridge of her nose, where a headache was starting to form. “I think Rae and I…”

  His eyes widened.

  “Not what you’re thinking! We’re starting to become friends. We are friends. And I don’t want you to talk about her that way.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll rein in my dirty mouth in the future.” He nudged her shoe with his. “You know I didn’t mean anything by it, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He leaned closer and squinted. “You okay?”

  “Yep. Just fine.” But deep down, she was starting to wonder whom she was trying to convince, Gabe or herself?

  CHAPTER 18

  Rae called her ocularist’s office as soon as it opened at nine o’clock on Monday morning. She tapped her fingers against her thigh as the phone rang and rang. Damn, she shouldn’t have ignored the problem for so long. Now it was the day before Christmas Eve, and the ocularist might not be able to squeeze her in before the holidays. Was he even open today?

  She couldn’t afford to let something like that happen again, especially if it led to her squeezing into a tiny restroom stall with Steph and having to take out the eye in front of her. That incident had kept her up for most of the past two nights. She didn’t know what to make of the intimacy—not just the physical one of being so close to Steph, but much more so the emotional one. Somehow, even kissing Steph paled in comparison. That one, she could reduce to a spark of attraction, but the episode in the stall had evoked a mix of feelings that was hard to figure out. Or maybe she didn’t want to figure it out.

  She was wrenched from her thoughts when the phone was picked up on the other end.

  “Window to the Soul, this is Ana speaking. How may I help you?”

  Rae cleared her throat. “This is Rae Coleman. I’m having some problems with my prosthesis and was wondering if Mr. Kamali can squeeze me in before the holidays.”

  “Before the holidays?” Ana sounded as if Rae had asked her to turn water into champagne. “I’m afraid that’s completely impossible. We’re— Oh, give me one second.”

  Rae tightly gripped the phone while she waited. Muffled voices drifted through the connection.

  “Rae?” It was Mr. Kamali’s voice. “Ana says you’re having problems with your prosthesis. What’s going on?”

  “The eye has been really irritated for about a week. I took it out and cleaned it several times, but nothing seemed to help. On Saturday night, the eye even slipped to the side.” She didn’t want to imagine that it could have even fallen out completely and dropped right at the feet of a colleague.

  “Hmm. I don’t like the sound of that. We’ll be closed over the holidays, but maybe this is something with a quick fix, like a repolish. Can you come in today at five?”

  Damn. She would have to find someone to cover her shift for her, but that wasn’t the real problem. Rae always made it a point to know the sunrise and sunset times, and right now, the sun set at about four forty-five. Which meant she’d be driving in the dark on her way back, all the way from Tarzana to Beverly Grove. But she had no other choice. “Thanks so much. I’ll be there.”

  She hung up and sank back onto the couch until she was lying stretched out, with her feet dangling off the edge. The throw pillow her head rested on smelled of Steph’s perfume. Sweet and floral, yet with a gingery kick, the scent was as casual and sexy as the woman who wore it. It was strangely comforting to lie here and breathe it in.

  God, maybe you should tell Mr. Kamali to take a look at your head too. She pulled the pillow out from under her head and threw it across the room.

  Her phone rang on her lap, startling her. When she glanced at the screen, the familiar feeling of guilt crept over her. Kim. It had been too long since Rae had called her. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about how her friend was doing. But every time she saw Kim or talked to her, she had to think of Mike…and her role in his death. For a moment, she considered not picking up, but then she dismissed the thought. Maybe Kim needed her.

  She swiped her finger across the screen and lifted the phone to her ear. “Hi, Kim. How are you?”

  “Hey, stranger.” The undertone of admonition was obvious in Kim’s voice. “I’m… Well, I won’t say I’m great, but I’m getting there. I finally went through Mike’s stuff and packed up some clothes that will go to Goodwill.”

  Rae swallowed. Her throat felt raw with a mix of grief and guilt. “I’m sorry, Kim. I should have been there to help you do it.”

  “No,” Kim said. “I know I could have called if I needed you. But I think this was something that I had to do alone to…to let go a little bit.”

  Both were silent for a moment, digesting the words.

  “That’s…that’s good,” Rae finally managed to say. God, her voice sounded as if she had tonsillitis. She forced herself to ask before she could chicken out. “Have you? Let go?”

  For several seconds, only the sound of a long sigh and then Kim’s breathing filtered through the phone. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to completely let go. I don’t think I want to. But I also don’t want to keep existing in the fog of grief and rage and what-ifs that has surrounded me since March. It isolates me from the people in my life. From the good things in life. Mike wouldn’t want that.”

  “No,” Rae said firmly because this one thing she knew for sure. “He wouldn’t.”

  “He wouldn’t want it for you either,” Kim said quietly.

  Rae raised her free hand and pressed her fingers to her temple. Arteries pounded beneath her fingertips. It reminded her of the much-too-fast pounding of Mike’s pulse as she had clamped her hands onto the wound in his neck, trying to hold back the flood of blood that squirted out with each weakening heartbeat. Nausea rose. Quickly, she wrenched her hand away. “I know.”

  “Then please come and hav
e dinner with me and Mike’s parents on Christmas Day.”

  Rae couldn’t help feeling blindsided. She curled her lips into a humorless smile at the irony of her mental choice of words. “Kim, I…”

  “You always celebrated Christmas with us. You know Dot and Gordon consider you part of the family.”

  A bitter taste flooded Rae’s mouth. She wasn’t sure she deserved to be part of the family. If not for her, their son might still be alive and celebrating Christmas with them. “I know, but…”

  “But?” Kim prompted.

  Rae bit her lip—hard. She couldn’t tell Kim that she wasn’t ready to face them, especially not today, when Kim probably felt raw after going through Mike’s stuff.

  “Please, Rae. You already told me no when I invited you to spend Thanksgiving with us. I don’t want you to have to spend Christmas alone too.”

  “I don’t have to be alone. Steph invited me to have Christmas dinner with her and her family,” Rae blurted out before she had thought it through. The burden of guilt on her shoulders got even heavier. Now she was lying to her friend? Well, it wasn’t a complete lie, she tried to tell herself. Steph had invited her to Christmas dinner, even though Rae had no intention of accepting the offer.

  “Wait! You’re going home with Steph for the holidays?”

  “It’s not what you think. It started out as a joke when Steph pointed out I’d fit in with her family much better than she does and vice versa. But then it turned into a serious offer. I don’t even know how it happened.”

  “She’s sneaking up on you, isn’t she?” Kim’s tone revealed that she was smiling. “You like her.”

  Rae’s first impulse was to deny it. But did she really want to add to the lies and the untold truths between her and Kim? “She’s…” How to sum up a person as complex as Steph? “She’s different than I thought. So much more…”

  “More what?” Kim asked when Rae trailed off.