Page 109 of The Roommate Lie

Now he’s in his yard. Lying with his arms tucked behind his head on the picnic table where we set up our raccoon trap a few days ago. Stargazing like he’s been here all along.

“I thought you’d come home sooner,” he admits. “When I went back to the party, you were already gone.”

Has he been waiting for me?

It’s well past midnight. My sisters are still at the bed-and-breakfast, and I planned on going back there too, after I grabbed a few things from the guest room. But Charlie sits up as I open his front gate, and I move toward him instead.

He looks nervous—he never looks nervous—and it makes me nervous too. Before he can say anything, I jump in and start rambling. He can’t break my heart if I never let him get a word in edgewise.

“Those dimmer switches inside are amazing! Nicki loves them!”

Once I start talking about my sister, I can’t stop. I babble about how much his help has meant to her. How hard it was when her husband left, and how Charlie has probably restored her faith in men. Honestly…it kind of sounds like I’m trying to set him up with her. Like I’m out here playing moonlight matchmaker before I leave town.

Charlie looks confused, as if maybe he thinks I’m trying to set him up with Nicki too. “Alice?—”

Our eyes catch when he says my name. Something in me settles under the weight of his gaze, my panic easing. A deep pang of longing takes its place—the kind of melancholy ache you can only feel late at night—and I think he feels it too.

He doesn’t know the truth about me.

That thought springs out of nowhere, and I can’t shake it. If Charlie knew the truth, that my eyes might change one daytoo, would he still be looking at me like that? With his smile so gentle and his gaze that soft?

“We need to talk. About us.”

He says that, and I wish it was true. We do need to talk, but not about us. First, we have to talk about me.

Charlie is still sitting on the picnic table, and he reaches for my hand, pulling me closer. “It’s been nice having you here. I know you didn’t mean to get stranded, but I’m glad you did.”

I’m glad too, but I can’t figure out how to say it. How to let myself be that vulnerable when he knows so little about me. The real me, the one Jason didn’t want.

Telling him the truth feels impossible, but I know I have to. “Charlie?—”

I’m not sure how to finish, how to take that leap and risk my heart. Behind us, footsteps shuffle cautiously down the sidewalk, and we hold still. Both of us barely breathing in the moonlight.

As those footsteps inch closer, Charlie holds his finger to his lips. “I think this might be your chance,” he whispers. “Do you still want to unmask the Victorian?”

Earlier, I would’ve jumped at the chance, but I haven’t thought about the Victorian in days. Even now, with the answer so close, I don’t really care. Not when I still can’t figure out how to talk to Charlie.

“Not tonight.” I stop him before he gets up. “We can unmask the Victorian later. If I come back.”

When I come back.

That’s what I wanted to say. Maybe it wouldn’t have counted as a direct confession, but it would’ve been close. Exceptifwas all I could manage. As brave as I know how to be, coward that I am.

I scold myself, try to fix it and confess, but those footsteps on the sidewalk finally reach us. And they don’t belong to the Victorian.

“Jason?”

“I got your message. You wanted to talk?”

The email.

I’d forgotten I sent that desperate late-night message begging him for answers. That was days ago; I’m not even sure if I still want answers, but it’s a little late for that now. As soon as I meet him at the front gate, he dives in.

Jason wastes no time breaking my heart. His reason for leaving is exactly what I feared, but he tries to soften the blow. It was hard to call things off—he still misses me—but the vision diagnosis was a lot. My uncertain future was a lot.

“But we had other problems,” he reminds me. “If we’d been a better fit, maybe the other stuff wouldn’t have mattered.”

Maybe.

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