Page 91 of The Roommate Lie

How late?

That’s what I really want to know. If his new girl caught him texting Alice, was it when we got home from Four Pines Peak, an apology for everything that happened in the gondola? Or was it later than that, more intimate than that? Is this why she was looking at her phone when I spotted her outside in the yard?

“Then I saw her this morning with my own eyes,” Dottie chimes in. “While I was out for a walk with Harold before he left to play golf. She was on the front porch at the bed-and-breakfast—but I couldn’t tell if she was coming or going.”

She was at the bed-and-breakfast?

That hits me harder than it should. Alice is a free agent—she isn’t mine. She can go wherever she wants, but Dottie’s words sink in my stomach anyway, as heavy as a bag of rocks.

I force a smile. Because nothing bothers Charlie Roscoe…not that I’d ever admit, anyway. “It’s fine,” I tell them. “Thanks for letting me know, but it’s no big deal. Everything between us was fake. She was just trying to help me revamp my reputation.”

They smile and nod like they’re my three kindhearted grandmothers. Like they’re always in my corner, and they’ll be here whenever I need them.

But that doesn’t mean they believe me.

I make it through my entire shift in the hot shop like a professional. We got a new setup at the wilderness resort last year, and I do everything I can to make the tourists happy.Leading glassblowing workshops and running demonstrations like the well-adjusted adult that I am.

Then the last tourist leaves, and I collapse on the concrete floor. Not well-adjusted at all.

“What’s with you today?” Raven Lake-Myers nudges me with the toe of her shoe.

This is the first time I’ve seen her since she caught me crouched outside the main lodge in those lilac bushes. When we heard Alice’s boyfriend breaking up with her, and we knew we had to do something to help. Usually, I love working with my honorary spooky older sister, and today is no different. Even if my life is on fire.

Instead of answering her, I moan. Pitifully. Taking full advantage of my role as Everybody’s Little Brother.

One of the other members of our glassblowing collective, Mark, also nudges me with his shoe. Getting me right in the ribs. “You got the flu? Because it looks like you’ve got the flu.”

I do not.

This is worse than the flu. It’s even worse than being nudged in the ribs by my honorary uncle Mark. A man who always play-kicks a little too hard.

I moan again, even more pathetically. Because these are my people, and I don’t have to be perfect for them. They just listen patiently and wait for me to spill my guts.

“Alice has been staying at my house, and she’s amazing. But I think she might still have feelings for her ex. He’s been living at the haunted bed-and-breakfast next door and?—”

I finish explaining the situation, but Raven’s eyes glaze over halfway through. I lost her at “haunted bed-and-breakfast.” I knew I would.

She hesitates, stutters, and glances around. So I let her off the hook. Because she’s my people, and she doesn’t have to be perfect for me.

“We can take a detour. It’s fine. Spooky stuff first, my pathetic meltdown second.”

Raven breathes a sigh of relief and glances at her husband. “A haunted bed-and-breakfast? Why didn’t you tell me this town had ahaunted bed-and-breakfast?”

Dean Myers is sitting on the floor against the wall with his laptop. Getting work done while hanging out with us in the hot shop because he always likes to sneak in extra time with his wife when he can. She loves that about him—it’s one of the perks of marrying your best friend.

He doesn’t have an answer for her at first. Dean looks just as surprised as Raven to hear those magic words. Just as dazzled. Maybe he’s a mountain man without a haunted bone in his body, but he’s married to Raven. He knows how to appreciate the spookier things in life.

“We have a haunted bed-and-breakfast?” he says. “In Ponderosa Falls?”

Raven narrows her eyes at me, adjusting the bat pendant around her neck that Dean got her last Christmas. “Are you making this up? Please tell me you didn’t invent an entire haunted bed-and-breakfast.”

I don’t sit up on the floor, but I clear my throat dramatically. Doing my best impression of a Tour Guide in Repose. “The Harris House is a Victorian mansion built in 1896 using a kit purchased from Sears and Roebuck—whatever that is. For the past forty years, it’s been voted one of the most haunted destinations in America. The attic is especially cursed.”

Raven doesn’t respond. She just sighs dreamily and glances at her husband, speechless and breathless and not sure what to do next. But Dean knows.

He saves the day in five seconds flat. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

“Two words, Halloween Town,” he says, using the nickname he gave her a few years ago. Her favorite nickname. “Date. Night.”

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