Page 59 of The Roommate Lie

Lydia:Ooh, you make her nervous? That’s a really good sign…

Is it, though? Because the way Alice would rather stare at her cupcake wrapper instead of me feels like the opposite of a good sign.

Lydia:What’s your next move?

Probably apologize and beg for forgiveness. Or curl in a ball on my air mattress and pretend today never happened. But I don’t tell Lydia that—I change the subject.

Charlie:Shouldn’t you be more concerned about the Victorian than me and Alice?

Charlie:She wants revenge for those missing scandal sheets. And she knows it was you. Aren’t you worried?

Lydia sends me a gif of a laughing dachshund. It takes another few seconds for her real response to show up.

Lydia:Sweetie, I’m from Los Angeles. I rode the city bus to a charter school for seven years. Public transit. As a girl.

Lydia:I think I can handle your small-town gossip columnist.

She pairs that with a winky face emoji, and I smile in spite of myself. Then I put my phone away and get to work, determined to help Alice break her vow of silence.

“Didn’t you say earlier we needed to talk?” I remind her as we pass a row of renovated bungalows. “About our fake-dating plan?”

I’ve been dreading this conversation since she told me we needed to have it. She mentioned it during lunch before we left for the museum, and I’ve been dodging this moment ever since,afraid of what she might say. Though anything’s better than three more blocks of silence.

Alice gulps, wide-eyed. Like she doesn’t want to have this conversation either, even though it was her idea. We pass two more houses and a mailbox shaped like a duck before she recovers.

“Yep! We definitely need to talk!”

Uh-oh.

Her voice is bright, but she looks sick to her stomach, and I can tell she’s gone tothat place.The land of hyper optimism where she always hides when she’s nervous. Where her smile is a thousand watts while her voice is a thousand decibels. And nothing that intentionally cheerful has ever been more ominous.

Except clowns.

Alice glances away and clears her throat eighteen times in a row—maybe a hundred. Then she clears it once more for good measure.Are you okay, Carrots?

Those words nearly tumble out of me, but I catch myself in time. I already slipped up once today, while we were hiding in that fake mine. When Alice was shaking and upset and I would’ve done anything to make her feel better. Even accidentally use the nickname I swore I wouldn’t.

But I’m not going to slip up twice. She’s leaving town in five days, and I’m not her type. Giving her a cute nickname isn’t going to help me survive Alice Kilpatrick.

“It’s about our plan,” she says. “I don’t think it’s going to work.”

“Oh yeah?”

That’s all I’ve got, the only response I have the energy for. Her face is a grim mask of determination, and that tells me everything I need to know. Yesterday, Alice talked herself into fake dating me, and today, she’s talked herself out of it.

“Our plan just doesn’t make sense. I kept thinking about it last night. Regular fake dating was never going to fix your reputation.”

Ouch.

Valid, butouch.

She says that as nicely as she can, apologetically, but Alice isn’t wrong. My reputation is too far gone for a quick revamp. Anything we tried was only going to make it worse. People in this town would believe a lot of things about me, but a sweet and wholesome love story will never be one of them.

Besides, Alice can barely stomach spending time with me as it is. She hasn’t made eye contact in over half an hour, and that woman couldn’t lie her way out of a paper bag. Watching her pretend to fall for me was going to be the Hallmark version of the Hindenburg. A slow-motion tragedy of epic proportions.

“So, I was thinking…if we want this to work…”

Wait.

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