Page 33 of The Roommate Lie

Charlie:It’s a third Tuesday tradition—I think we have to.

Town hall is packed when we show up, the same way it is every first and third Tuesday of the month. A crowd mills around outside, but Lydia and I both know it’s going to be so much worse once we get through those doors. That’s half the fun.

“Cake walk bingo?”

Alice reads the sign out front before giving me a curious glance. There’s a tiny baby powder thumbprint above her left temple, and I resist the urge to brush it away. Then I give in.

Desperate guys don’t let perfect girls wear baby powder.

Staying away from her is impossible. Not when I can still remember what it felt like to wrap my arms around Alice in that haunted attic. Brushing my fingertips lightly across her temple, I try not to linger.

“Baby powder,” I explain, and she thanks me, her voice soft and sweet under the downtown streetlights.

As soon as I pull my hand away, my fingers itch to touch her again, but I force myself to behave.Already, Lydia is watching us too closely. She’s holding back a smile with everything she’s got, and I clear my throat as I glance at the bingo sign.

“Cake walk bingo is a time-honored Ponderosa Falls tradition—at least for the past five years. We used to play regular bingo, but it didn’t work out.”

I can see the next question waiting in her eyes—how does regular bingo not work out?—but the bouncer at the table by the door doesn’t give her a chance to ask.

Nora Jean Andrews taps her clipboard. “I don’t know if I can let you in, Roscoe. The sign says Pondie Bingo Night”—she gives Lydia and Alice a pointed glance—“but your arm candy doesn’t look like it’s from around here.”

My arm candy?

Lydia almost goes feral. She’s one of the nicest people I know unless you cross her, and fire sparks in her eyes. She’s carrying a coconut cream pie she made a few nights ago, and I can see the exact moment she considers pelting Nora Jean with it.

Carefully, like I’m diffusing a bomb, I lift the pie out of Lydia’s hands. A homemade dessert should never be wasted. Not even to destroy your enemies.

Nora Jean was my middle school P.E. teacher. She loves a good power trip, and keeping people out of bingo is her ultimate thrill. But tonight’s donations benefit our local youth sportsleague, and she loves that cause even more. Which means I need to speak her language, and I need to speak it fast.

Balancing that pie in one hand, I pull out the money I brought for tonight. It’s more than triple the suggested entry fee for the three of us—enough to buy at least fifteen extra bingo cards—and I wave it over the donation jar. Nora Jean’s eyes sparkle.

“I don’t know, Coach Andrews. They might not be from around here, but their foreign money spends just like ours. Imagine that.”

She chuckles and waves us in.It’s bingo time.

Our town hall isn’t giant, but the wall-to-wall crowd inside is still impressive. Almost everyone is from Ponderosa Falls, and a lot of them are grandmothers or retirees—but not everyone. Cake walk bingo became a cult classic with the younger crowd last year. After it made the news for a food fight that broke out over a tie in the last round. Because even after we switched from regular bingo, even when we made sure all the proceeds went to charity and there were no prizes whatsoever, some people around here still can’t control themselves.

And it wasn’t me.

The instigator of that food fight is sitting at my usual table with the rest of the Old Birds, and I duck my head when I greet her. Shielding my face with my hands like she might pelt me with a brownie at any moment. “Hey there, Henrietta. Are you ready to play nice tonight? Or do we need to call the cops in advance?”

You’re one to talk, Roscoe.

That’s what she’s probably thinking. Thanks to that cop comment, I’ve given her all the ammunition she needs to annihilate me in front of Alice. Henrietta glances at me over the top of her gold-rimmed glasses, eyebrows raised, but shedoesn’t deal any low blows. She’s pretty great that way. All the Old Birds are.

Besides, that woman only fights dirty when bingo’s involved.

Instead of making any jabs about me and the cops, Henrietta growls, crouching protectively over her row of bingo cards. But I’m ninety-seven percent sure she’s joking.

“Don’t worry,” another Old Bird, Dottie, assures me. “I patted her down for sharp objects when I picked her up. Then we sedated her with tacos. We should be good to go—unless it’s a full moon.”

Henrietta rolls her eyes. “I threw one brownie at that food fight.One.Don’t hate the bingo player, hate the bingo game.”

She conveniently leaves out the best part: the food fight wasn’t her first offense. Henrietta is the reason we had to switch to cake walk bingo in the first place, and I fill Alice in as Lydia drops her pie off up front. Explaining how competitive Henrietta got when real cash prizes were involved. How many fistfights she tried to start with sweet old ladies in the name of bingo.

“Don’t you people ever let anything go?” Henrietta grumbles, and the other Old Birds squawk with delight. Especially Edna Finch.

Leaning back in her chair, my favorite Old Bird folds her arms over her chest and tells Henrietta the same thing she always tells me. The simple truth that has dogged me since I got sober at fifteen.

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