Nick smirks. “Not yet. But I will be.”
“I don’t know …” I pull in a long, slow breath. “What about Murphy?”
“We’ve got a fenced-in yard,” he says, pointing toward the back of the house. “He’ll love it here.”
“What about your roommate? Would he be cool living with a stranger?” I ask.
“Totally.”
“And you’re sure he’s not a serial killer?” I keep my voice low, leaning in.
Nick chokes on his spit. “Uh, yeah, no. He’s not a serial killer. Lady killer? Sure. Serial killer? No way.”
Our eyes hold and I silently straddle the line between staying put and saying yes to this little favor.
My cousin-slash-roommate, Maritza, recently moved out and got a place with her boyfriend, Isaiah, so it’s just Murphy and I in the guesthouse now. It gets quiet sometimes. Lonely too. And Gram’s on this travel-the-world kick lately. One week she’s home, the next week she’s in Bali for twelve days with her best friend Constance or one of the Kennedys.
A change of scenery might be nice …
“I’ll do anything, Mel. Anything.” He clasps his hands together and sticks out his bottom lip, brows raised.
Dork.
“Begging’s not a good look for you. FYI,” I say.
“Okay, then what’s it going to take for you to say yes?” His hands drop to his lap.
I try to speak, but I don’t know what to say.
“See,” Nick says. “You don’t even have a good reason to turn me down.”
He’s right.
I can’t blame it on the location because it isn’t out of the way. I can’t blame it on my dog. I can’t blame it on a lease. I can’t blame it on money because fifteen hundred a month is exactly what Gram charges me for rent, because free rides aren’t a thing in the Claiborne family.
But aside from all of that, I know Nick would do this for me if I ever needed him to.
Shrugging, I look him in the eyes and smile. “Fine.”
A second later, I’m captured in his embrace and he’s squeezing me and bouncing like a hyper child. With one word, I’ve unearthed a side of Nick I never knew existed.
“I freaking love you, Mel,” he says, hugging me tighter. “I love you so much.”
I expected to hear those words today … just didn’t think I’d hear them in this context.
2
Sutter
“You, uh, need some help with that?” I slam the door to my work truck and approach the blonde chick balancing a couple of tote bags on top of two giant Louis Vuitton suitcases as a little pug on a leash circles her feet.
I suppose it’s in poor taste to decide you don’t like someone before you even know them, but in the first five seconds of seeing my new roommate, I’ve already confirmed she’s exactly what I expected—which is … she’s everything that’s wrong with L.A. girls these days and exactly the kind of person I don’t want to be shacking up with for the next six months.
For one, she’s an “aspiring actress” according to Nick. That says it all right there.
For two, she comes from some famous family, and me and the silver-spooned types don’t exactly mix.
And third? Who the hell wears high heels to move?
Melrose tries to maneuver up the cracked walkway to my bungalow, stopping every few steps to rebalance everything.
Her heels click along the pavement, her tits bouncing with each step, damn near spilling out of that fitted white top of hers. On top of that, she’s cradling her cell phone on her shoulder.
“Let me call you back,” she says when she sees me. At least I think she sees me. Can’t tell through those giant Chanel sunglasses hiding her eyes. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”
“Or you could just make two trips,” I say.
She pulls her glasses down the bridge of her perfect nose, studying me.
First impression? Hot AF.
Second impression? High maintenance AF.
Third impression? This is going to be a piece of cake.
When my original roommate, Hector, took a job across the country, he sent some guitar-playing Casanova named Nick Camden to take his place.
All right. Fine. Whatever pays the rent.
But a month later, Nick’s band got signed to some big-time record label and he got word they were going to be touring all over the country for the next half year. Nick, being the cheap ass that he is, wasted no time filling his spot with an old friend of his.
He assured me we’d get along, that she was “cool as fuck” and “laid back,” and he promised me that if it didn’t work out or if she decided to leave, he’d still pay his half of the rent each month.
One look at this piece of work and I can already tell we’re going to lock horns like crazy. We’ll probably spend the next couple of months going back and forth, bickering over who left the toilet seat up (wasn’t me) or whose turn it is to wash the dishes in the sink (hers, naturally). And after a while, she’ll pack up and go move back into her grandmother’s Brentwood guesthouse and curse the day she met me.
I see no harm in helping speed the inevitable up a bit …
I’ve been living with roommates for the better part of the last decade, and I’m fresh off the heels of a long overdue breakup with a girl who put the “cling” in “clingy.”
All I want is some goddamned breathing room and a little time to myself.
“Is Melrose your real name?” I ask, strutting toward her and grabbing one of her bags as I get a closer look. The scent of expensive perfume fills my lungs and I hope to God she’s not as extra as she looks. “Or is it some stage name you made up to make yourself stand out?”
Her head tilts. “Sutter Alcott sounds like the name of an old, rich, white guy.”
Touché.
I fight a grin, twirling my keys on my finger before finding the right one and shoving it in the lock on the front door. She stands behind me, waiting, and I’m sure I smell like ass. I’ve been running wires all day on some new build in Encino and it’s been an unseasonably hot March.
All in a day’s work.
We head in, and I place her bag to the left of the foyer, but this is where my assistance ends because I’ve got three priorities right now and three priorities only: a hot shower, a cold beer, and a juicy ribeye.
“You know where you’re going?” I ask.
“He said it was upstairs. The bedroom on the left.”
I chuckle. “Nick’s a directionally-challenged moron. My room is on the left. His—yours—is on the right.”
It’s odd imagining the two of them as friends, let alone best friends. He’ll wear the same t-shirt three times before washing it and she’s got on a pair of those red-bottomed heels I always see the women on Robertson wearing.
“You always dress up on moving day?” I ask, noting the curls in her shiny blonde hair and the coat of dark pink lipstick on her full mouth. I’m not sure if that’s her God-given pout or if she’s the product of some Kylie Jenner fad because it’s impossible to tell in this town these days, but her lips are a work of art, like two pillows shaped like a heart.
“I’m not dressed up.” She peers down at her pointed heels before meeting my stare. “This isn’t dressed up.”
Maybe where she comes from …
“Ah, I see. So you just wanted to impress me then,” I say.
Melrose’s full, pink mouth shapes into a circle. “For your information, I had an audition today and I spent all day driving all over town. I didn’t have time to change.”
“Nick said you were an actress,” I say. He told me all about her and how he’d known her since they were kids and that her grandma was some award-winning movie star named Gloria Claiborne, which meant fuck-all to me. “But I haven’t seen you in anything.”
I’d remember a face like that.
I’d remember tits like that too.
Her pretty eyes narrow and she squares her shoulders. “Can you please go longer than thirty seconds wit
hout underhandedly insulting me?”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” I wrestle a smirk.
“Nick said you were cool,” she says. “He didn’t tell me you have the personality of an overconfident frat boy.”
I place my palm across my heart, pretending to be offended. “Can you blame the guy for overselling me? He’s cheaper than hell. He’d do anything to save a few bucks. I’m just glad I can finally get that Old Milwaukee piss-water out of my fridge.”
Melrose glances down, like she’s having a hard time comprehending that her lifelong bestie sold her out just to save a few grand. She releases the handle on her suitcase and folds her arms across her chest.
“He wouldn’t put me in this position,” she says. “He wouldn’t ask me to live with someone if he thought we wouldn’t get along.”
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought you did?” I shrug, like it’s not my problem, and it isn’t. “I’ve always gone by the assumption that everybody lies and everybody’s in it for themselves. Life’s much less disappointing that way.”
“I don’t lie.”
“Bullshit,” I cough. “Everybody lies. And if they say they don’t, they’re lying.”
“I disagree, but okay.” She rolls her eyes at me and blows a breath between her lips. My gaze lingers on her distracting bee-stung pout once more. Everything about her exterior is flawless—from her creamy complexion and curled lashes to her shiny blonde waves and tight little ass, and if I’ve learned anything in my ripe old age of twenty-eight, it’s that perfect on the outside almost always equates to ugly, crazy, and dysfunctional on the inside.
I should know.
My last ex was the same way, just took a bit longer to crack through her ironclad veneer to get to the core of who she really was: an insecure, superficial Bel-Air princess parading around like some vegan philanthropist with an organic vagina.
“Do you always have a giant stick up your ass or did I catch you on an off day?” I ask, genuinely curious but fully prepared not to give a damn either way.
“What are you doing?” Her brows meet and her dog paws at her leg. Clearly, he’s over this conversation. “Are you testing me? Trying to feel me out? See how far you can push me before I push back?”
Close … but not quite.
“I think I did the same thing once … when I was a toddler,” she adds.
“Ouch.” I head to the stairs, feigning an emotional wound. “You done now? Can I go take my shower?”
“Just because I’m nice, doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I read people, Sutter. And I can read you. I know exactly what you’re trying to do, and I highly advise you to stop.”
I rub my hand across my chest, chuckling. “Is that supposed to scare me?”
Melrose’s lips form a hard line. “Nope. Just telling you to knock it off.”
“Knock what off? Exactly?”
“Whatever it is you’re trying to do,” she says. “Because I can promise you, it’s not going to work on me. I have thick skin and patience for days.”
I’m beginning to wonder if I underestimated her. All this time, I assumed she’d be some typical Brentwood Basic Bitch with zero personality, sky-high ambition, and dungeon-level self-esteem.
But … now I’m thinking there might be more to her than meets the eye.
“So …” Her manicured brows rise and she steps toward me, levelling her body, her posture mirroring the confidence of a queen. “How about we start over?”
“What?”
Extending her right hand, a slow smile claims her pretty face. “Hi, Sutter. I’m Melrose, your new roommate. It’s so wonderful to meet you.”
I don’t know if she’s trolling me or if she genuinely wants to start over—she could be acting for all I know, but I don’t think that’s how this works.
Regardless, I play along. I refuse to be bested at a game I personally started.
“Melrose, so lovely to meet you. Nicholas thinks the world of you. I’m sure I’ll adore you just the same,” I say in an over-the-top, saccharine-sweet voice as I meet her hand with mine.
Two can play this game.
“Much better.” She exhales as if she’s partially satisfied before reaching toward a luggage handle.
I fully expected to meet a Bel-Air princess today, a junior Paris Hilton with an entitlement complex. What I got was a whip smart beauty who wasted no time putting me in my place.
And that’s … if I’m being completely honest with myself … really fucking hot.
3
Melrose
Nick owes me.
He owes me big.
And next time I see him, I’m going to tell him just that. I’m going to rub it in his face.
He’s lucky I’m a woman of my word or I’d probably be wheeling my bags right on out of here.
Heading to Nick’s room—my room—I unzip my first suitcase and try to locate an empty drawer or a section of closet space to call my own. I didn’t bring much … yet … just the necessities. Clothes. Shoes. Toiletries. Post-Its and gel pens for miscellaneous notes and reminders.
Everything else I own is still at the guesthouse in Brentwood and with Nick’s furniture still being here, it’s not like I needed to bring more than the basics.
Plus, I didn’t want to overdo it on the off chance Nick’s roommate was a total creep. I’ll do anything for Nick—but I won’t spend the next six months with some weirdo just so he can save a few thousand bucks on rent.
If I get so much as an inkling that Sutter’s videotaping me in the shower or stealing my panties, I’m out. There’s a limit to what I’ll tolerate even for the people I love most in this world.
But something tells me Sutter’s not that way.
Obnoxious? Yeah. Totally.
Ted Bundy? Eh. I think not.
Nick’s closet is filled with t-shirts, all sloppily hung on a mix of wire and plastic hangers, no particular order to any of it. Shoving his clothes aside, I clear a few feet of space for myself and begin hanging tops and dresses.
When I’m done, I take a seat on his bed for a second, spotting a framed photo of the two of us on his nightstand. I recognize the picture from our junior year of high school, when the guy I was dating dumped me a week before prom after Skylar Saunders’ prom date fell through and she confessed over school cafeteria pizza that she’d always thought my boyfriend was cute.
Word got out and I was dropped like a tray full of hot garbage, but in my defense, ninety-eight percent of the guys at La Paloma High would’ve done the same thing.
Everyone wanted Skylar, and I drew the short straw because as luck had it, my boyfriend was the only guy she wanted.
Nick wasn’t planning to go to the dance that year—he was never into formals and for a rhythm guitarist, the boy couldn’t dance to save his life—but at the last minute, he managed to scrounge up a tux and show up at my door with a corsage in hand and his dad’s vintage Shelby Cobra idling in the driveway.
But there we are, posing next to his father’s car, trying not to laugh at how awkward it was that his hands were hooked around my waist and my back was flush against him and we looked like an actual couple.
I smile. There isn’t a single childhood or teenage memory of mine that doesn’t include a little bit of Nick in it somewhere.
The whoosh of water flowing through the old pipes of the house bring me back into the moment, into my new reality. Sutter must be taking a shower in the one and only bathroom … a detail Nick neglected to share with me until after I agreed to move in.
As an only child, I’ve never had to share a bathroom with anyone in my life. Even in the guesthouse with Maritza, we each had our own en suite. I’m not saying I’m above it or anything, just saying it’s going to be an adjustment, an entirely new experience for me. Even in college, I lived in apartments and always had my own bathroom.
Poor guy.
He’s totally going to love the fact that belting out show tunes in the shower is the only way I c
an wake myself up in the morning—especially on audition days when it serves dual purposes. I need my voice to be nice and warm, and singing in steamy showers is the quickest way to make that happen.
Heading back down to the entry to grab my second suitcase, I chuckle to myself when I mentally replay our little pissing match from earlier—and that’s exactly what it was.
He was firing one-liners and underhanded compliments at me so fast I hardly had a chance to appreciate how freaking hot this man is, and that’s really saying something because he’s a sight for sore eyes, this one.
Tan skin.
Messy, dark blond hair.
Chiseled features.
Veiny, muscled arms.
Broad shoulders.
Warm, hazel eyes that will straight up melt you if you stare into them too long.
But Sutter was too busy testing boundaries and establishing his dominance, like a feral tomcat marking everything, and in the end, I established my place in this new hierarchy and got him to back down.
The only thing I can’t figure out is … why?
Why does he want to push my buttons and get under my skin?
We’re strangers.
Complete strangers.
Adjusting the handle on my bag, I begin lugging it up the wooden stairs. I’m five steps up when the bathroom door swings open and out walks a very naked Greek Adonis in a cloud of steam, his hand (barely) covering his generous … situation.
Glancing down the stairs, his mouth raises at one corner when he sees me, and then he gives me a wink and a military salute before disappearing into his bedroom.
Ah. So this is how he wants to do this?
All right.
Game on, Sutter.
4
Sutter
Paint the town?
All that jazz?
What fresh hell is this?
It takes me a second, but when I come to, I realize it’s six in the morning and my new roommate is singing show tunes in the shower that separates our rooms.
The Complete P.S. Series Page 24