Page 14 of The Grumpy Billionaire

He looks at me strangely.

“No! It’s not anything weird or uncouth—”

Greta appears at the doorway. “She doesn’t get a cheeseball!”

The man looks alarmed. He mumbles something and heads off.

“It’s not anything weird!” I call after him.

“It’s wrong!” Greta calls after him. “The way she eats it is immoral.”

“It’s not!”

The man picks up his pace.

I spin around to face her. “I will get my cheeseball elsewhere, and I will enjoy it more than anybody ever enjoyed a cheeseball in the history of time.”

“Seriously doubt that.”

“In the history of time!” I repeat as I spin around and march down the sidewalk, trying not to cry.

ChapterNine

Stella

“I can’t believeshe cheeseball shamed you!” Kelsey’s putting on her shoes. “Greta is a freak. Somebody should’ve warned you about her. Tell me the kind you wanted.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I say.

“Fuck that. My girl wants a cheeseball, my girl gets a cheeseball. An elevator ride and a walk down the block. I think I can manage it.”

I hand her some cash. “The one I want is today’s special cheeseball with dried cranberries and pecans. And thank you!”

She’s out like a tornado of bling.

I stand there in the middle of her living room—now our living room—feeling so grateful.

I’ve spent so much of my life with emotionally unavailable brainiacs who saw any kind of upset as excess drama, I’d forgotten what it was like for somebody to get in there with me. To be an ally.

I head to my room to change out of my uncomfortable work clothes.

I’d given her the headlines—I didn’t have the right skills and felt like an asshole; weird vibes from the family friend who got me the job which also made me feel like an asshole; and the last straw: the cheeseball shaming.

I tidy up the kitchen while I wait for her.

Ten minutes later she bursts into the kitchen and sets two Gourmet Goose boxes on the counter.

“I only needed one,” I say.

“The other one’s for Willow and Lizzie. They’re dropping by later. I hope you don’t mind if I serve it with crackers.”

“Just because I eat them alone doesn’t mean I’ll get ragey if you serve one the normal way. I know it’s weird.”

“It is weird, but it’s kind of cute.”

I plop the thing into a bowl and grab a spoon.

She follows me to the living room, which is full of colorful furniture and art. Front and center is a poster forAnything Goes, the Broadway show she’s in. My roommate, in an actual Broadway show!

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