Page 66 of The Snowball Effect

She narrowed her eyes. “Why is that so crazy?” She demanded, even though she admittedly had just been reluctant to confess to it. “I love to read, and I have a lot of opinions.”

“Yeah,thatpart isn’t shocking.” Regan laughed. “What’s shocking is that – I follow you on all of your socials. And you hardly ever post on them! It’s hard to believe you care enough about any social media to keep up with it.”

“Well, I wasn’t doing it for a following or whatever,” she muttered, shrugging. “Look, I started it when I was in undergrad when I didn’t have any time to write anything other than essays. Writing out my thoughts on books was just a fun idea.”

Regan was already sliding out her phone. “Emma, you don’t have to convince me you aren’t here for the clout.” She looked at Emma over her phone. “Now, what’s your name? How do I find you?”

Cheeks burning, Emma pointedly turned away from Regan. “Yeah, that isnothappening.”

Mouth falling open in offense, Regan demanded, “Why! You’ll let strangers follow you, but not your literal roommate-slash-friend?!”

“Yes.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Isn’t bonding supposed to be a two-way street?” Emma asked, turning the tables on Regan before they could dig in any deeper.

Honestly, Regan was the only person in her real life who knew about Emma’s book reviewing social media life; Emma felt like that was plenty of sharing on her end.

With obvious reluctance, Regan set down her phone. “Indeed it is. What do you want to know about me?”

Of course, Regan offered herself to Emma without hesitation.

However, instead of finding that annoying, Emma found it… admirable.

Even though Regan was freely inviting Emma to ask anything, Emma found that she didn’t know what exactly to ask. There was so much she didn’t know, and she didn’t know where to even start.

“Tell me something other people don’t know,” she challenged, mostly becauseshe’djust spent the entire dinner so far telling Regan things that she never talked about with anyone else. Leveling the playing field would be nice.

Regan’s lips twisted in thought as she pondered Emma’s comment.

“I like to draw maps.”

The sheer randomness of that statement made Emma choke on her water. Coughing, she blinked at Regan. “What?”

But the grin on Regan’s face wasn’t joking or teasing. If anything, it was a little sheepish. “Maps. I like to draw them.”

Emma frowned. “Like… of New York? The subway? The country?”

“Of made-up countries,” Regan corrected, staring at Emma incredulously. “Thesubway?”

Emma mirrored her expression. “How aremade-up countriesless wild than the subway?”

“Who do you know that draws subway maps?”

“I don’t know anyone that draws maps at all,” Emma countered, then paused as she slid her gaze to Regan. “Well, I didn’tthinkI did, anyway. How did you get into the world of fictional cartography?”

Regan chuckled. “Fictional cartography. I like that. Um, it wasn’tplanned. Much like baking – I started hanging out more with some of the people at the café last fall, and I tagged along with Dustin to one of his D&D games, just to see what it was like.”

Unexpectedly fascinated, Emma nodded along. “And you got into it?”

“No,” Regan’s response was so flat it stole a harsh, ugly laugh from Emma’s throat. “Turns out I’m not super into the gameplay. But Ididlove the world-building stuff! So I spent the couple of hours there drawing up a map for them.” She shrugged, toying with the end of her napkin. “They seemed to really like it, and so did I. So now I draw them maps for every new campaign, and they’ve passed my name along to some of the other people they know. You’d be surprised at the size of the fantasy roleplaying community interested in having a map made for them.”

“I’d love to see these maps.” Really, she was utterly fascinated.

“And I’d love to see your bookstagram,” Regan countered with a devilish grin.

Nearly two hours later, they walked down the hall toward their apartment, and Emma barely even noticed how Regan leaned into her side as she laughed. Cackled was actually more apt, as Regan defensively was telling her about an unfortunate road trip she’d taken with Sutton back in high school.

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