Page 17 of Never Ever Getting Back Together

We shake our heads, and he leaves us to get set up.

Maya grits her teeth and turns to face me so deliberately I almost call Isaac back, just so I can have a witness nearby when she removes one of those stiletto boots and drives the heel through my heart.

I stand by what I said: you can’t tell who is a serial killer just by glancing at them.

Sometimes, however, you can take an educated guess.

FIVEMaya

“I’ve got to say, I’m surprised. I’ve never heard of a mansion with bunk beds,” Skye says, shattering the silence.

Cool. Cool, cool, I think I might scream the mansion down.

I’d thought Isaac was playing some sort of sick joke when he showed us the shared room. Like, I don’t know, maybe they had hidden cameras ready to catch our reaction or something. The better to make the first episode super hilarious with, ha-fucking-ha. But no, he was deadly serious.

I am going to be in here,with Skye,until one of us leaves the show.

And I’ll tell you something right now. That one of us isnotgoing to be me.

She has the audacity to smile at me. That kind of awkward, brief flash of a smile you might give to someone who reaches for the same item as you in a supermarket. An “oops, well, isn’t this a funny coincidence” sort of vibe.

My face almost betrays me by smiling back on autopilot, but I force my features to freeze. I am impenetrable. Ruthless. I am not going to be won over by a weak display of friendliness, not from Jordy, or Skye, or anyone. I am underno obligation to forgive anyone for anything they did to me, goddamn it. Especially without an apology.

“Which bunk do you want?” I ask, but, no, Skye has no right to pick what bunk she gets. She doesn’t just get to waltz into my orbit and take my boyfriend, and my pride,andthe bottom bunk. There is aline.“Because I want the bottom,” I add the moment she opens her mouth.

Skye gives me a funny look, then tosses her bag onto the top bunk. “Okay then.”

I raise my eyebrows, then start pulling out my clothes to hang them up, my back to her.

Cold. Ruthless.

“It’s weird to not have phones, right?” she asks, apparently not noticing that I have no inclination to talk to her. “I keep going to pull it out and then, duh.”

I purse my lips and hang up a shirt.

The silence thickens the air. Skye, who’s either not the best at reading the room or the irritatingly persistent type, sucks in a loud breath through her nose. “Well, guess we just have to talk to people in real life, instead. What is this, the nineties?”

“If you want to talk to someone, maybe you should go see what the others are up to?” I say through gritted teeth.

If she hadn’t caught on before, she sure as heck has now. While I turn to grab another shirt I catch sight of her, standing by the bed and staring at me with a half-wounded, half-indignant expression. The soft side of me feels a pang of shame, but the louder, angrier part drowns it out.

You don’t get to do something like that to someone then barrel past it like it never happened and expect them to follow suit. Life doesn’t work like that.

“I really hoped you’d let it go,” she says finally. “But sure. Nice to meet you, too.”

I keep my back to her as she leaves the room, so she can’t see the look of shock that crosses my face at the goddamnaudacity.She closes the door behind her—not exactly a slam, but not exactlynotone—and then I finally breathe easily.

The universe has to hate me. Ithasto.

Of all the roommates.

My heart is racing from the outrage, and I give myself a few seconds to collect myself before returning to my task. Pick up. On the hanger. In the wardrobe.Let it go?Let it fuckinggo?

Pick up. On the hanger.

Did she really just say that to me? Did those words come out of her mouth? Can a real person actually be that shitty, that… thatcallous?

Pick up. On the hanger.

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