Page 68 of The Roommate Lie

That last thought sinks heavy in my heart, leaving Ponderosa Falls. But I ignore it.It’s lilac day.

Lydia whips up a picnic breakfast in no time, as if it’s her 1950s superpower. As the four of us head to the small park in the center of the hedgerow with Cookie, the rest of the neighborhood is just as awake and excited as we are. Charlie’s hedgerow neighbors are everywhere, all of them outside and ready to enjoy this rare May treat.

I don’t know how an event like this is possible. Who decided lilac bushes should line every sidewalk in the hedgerow, or how on earth most of them have sprung into bloom at once. But I’m not complaining. I’m too busy enjoying every second.

The park is as full as the sidewalks, everyone determined to enjoy these blooms while they last. We find a nice spot under a sprawling ash tree, and Tyler spreads out a blanket. The park is surrounded by lilac bushes too, and that same heavenly scent wafts around us as Lydia unpacks the picnic basket, pulling out four yogurt parfaits in little mason jars. I’m not sure where she got the strawberry scones. Homemade baked goods just seem to show up when Lydia’s around.

We have the most perfect breakfast together, laughing and talking while Cookie lies curled in a patch of sunlight.Eventually, though, the real day has to begin. Tyler is the first to leave. He gathers our empty parfait jars and loads them into the picnic basket, taking it with him as he heads off to work with Lydia’s dog—I have no clue where he goes, or what he does. That man is a web of secrets.

His sister holds out as long as she can before she leaves for work too. Then it’s just me and Charlie. Alone on a picnic blanket in the middle of a lilac paradise.

I can feel his neighbors watching us. Thanks to the Victorian, everyone’s waiting to see what happens next, and we couldn’t have asked for a better setup, a more ideal crowd to help us kick off our big plan. Anxiety thrums in my chest, and that can only mean one thing…

It’s time to pursue Charlie Roscoe.

My anxiety thrums harder—what was I thinking? This is a horrible plan, and I’m the exact wrong person to pull it off, a “good girl” just like Charlie said. I’ve never pursued anyone before, and the fact that I have feelings for Charlie only makes it worse.

Why did I pitch this new idea at all? I knew as soon as he pulled me into that fake mine hiding place this was never going to work. When Charlie reminded me on our walk home yesterday that I wanted to talk about our plan, I never should’ve admitted I’d come up with a better way to fix his reputation. I should’ve deflected or made something up.

Now I’m stuck.

And things are about to get awkward.

Before I can embarrass myself, an older woman walks by with a corgi, and she gives Charlie one of those same blistering looks I’ve seen around town. A grandmotherly scowl that could make potted plants wither.

“You can ask me about it if you want,” Charlie says.

I look at him, surprised, but I don’t say anything.

“They all have different reasons for not liking me. If you want to know, just ask. I don’t mind.”

This is another bad idea—I don’t really want to know this, do I?—but my curiosity gets the better of me. Or maybe I’m just stalling for time. Anything so I don’t have to pursue my new small-town crush.

I nod to the woman with the corgi. “What about her? Why doesn’t she like you?”

“I pulled up her new rose bushes when I was in middle school and replaced them with garden gnomes I stole from someone else’s yard—on a dare.”

Those are the keywords, on a dare, and he uses them several more times as I ask about other people scowling around us. As he recounts stories of all the houses he egged or sheds he vandalized. The town water tower he climbed and spray-painted multiple times, or the neighbor whose morning paper he used to steal before sunrise, always throwing it on their roof.

“You know you didn’t have to say yes to every dare that showed up, right?”

Charlie gives my leg a playful nudge. “Where were you when I was thirteen? I could’ve used some of your logic and common sense.”

I get the feeling there’s more to his past than he wants to admit, that he accepted all those dares for a reason—because he was hiding from something or trying to fit in—but he doesn’t elaborate. He just shares more stories, and that “on a dare” theme doesn’t change until I spot a man giving Charlie the glare to end all glares.

When I ask him about it, he looks a little sheepish. “Got caught skinny-dipping with his daughter when she was a senior and I was a freshman. Though, technically, that was her idea.”

He stops himself. “But the beers we were drinking were mine. So I get why he was upset.”

“She was a senior?”

I don’t know why that’s the part that sticks out to me, but it does. Charlie shrugs. “I was a real hit with the older girls at school for a while. Nothing serious ever happened, but I was the perfect guy to miss curfew with if you wanted to upset your parents.”

He says that so causally, but the look that lingers in his eyes isn’t casual at all. Charlie almost looks hurt.

“The first couple times, I thought it was more than that,” he admits. “I thought they actually liked me, but I caught on pretty quick.”

None of this is helping me get over my feelings for him. If anything, I’m in worse shape than I was when we started. I’ve barely heard five minutes of his life story, and I’m ready to comfort him and make everything better, swoop in and heal his wounds like a bad cliché.

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