Page 1 of Under My Skin
Chapter One
LUCY
Time is a funny thing.Here I am, scrolling through apartment listings with a bowl of ramen beside me and my cat asleep in my lap. A month ago, I was probably doing this exact same thing—scrolling through listings I can’t afford because I’m too afraid to click on the ones I can—but a month ago feels like another lifetime. Because itwasanother lifetime. It was an end to an era of living with my best friend. Fridays were for pizza, Saturdays were for errands, and Sundays were for brunch and dance parties with cleaning supplies.
Now I only have one month left with my new, terrible roommate—which is great. It feels good to have the countdown hitone.But that means I haveonlyone month to find another place to live, and that feels . . . less good.
To be fair, it’s not my terrible roommate’s fault. Jasmine and I were never destined to live together. I was destined to live with Allison—which is why I did it for two years and ten months. Everything was fine until she had to go and meet the love of her life. She had her heart set on a September wedding, but it meant she’d have to skip out on our lease two months early.
I told her it would be fine. She’d been dreaming of aSeptember wedding since I sat next to her in Freshman Comp. Who am I to deprive my best friend of what she wants?
I’m amazed she stuck it out and stayed here during their short engagement. Allison and Dina have one of those effortless love stories. The two met at a GameStop of all places. Dina was there because she’s actually a gamer, and Allison was there to get a gift for her younger brother. Dina says Allison looked adorably lost, searching through all the different versions ofCall of Duty. So, she helped her pick the right game and took her out to coffee after. The lease to our apartment was the only bump in the road to their happily ever after, so I told them not to worry about it.
“Come on! He was right fucking there!” Jasmine yells through her headset in the other room, and Pudge flinches in my lap.
Giving my cat a reassuring scratch behind the ears, I quietly say, “I know. It’s almost over.” Jasmine has no idea how loud she is with that headset, and with our paper-thin walls, she might as well be screaming at me from the other side of my monitor.
I take a deep breath. This is worth it. Living with Dina’s old roommate for two months is worth it. Allison has her happily ever after, and I will be just as happy when this arrangement ends.
Taking a steadying breath, I get back to scrolling. It costs a good chunk of change to live in Denver without a roommate, and Allison was the only person I knew well enough to live with.
Well, Allison and Jasmine, apparently. But I won’t sign a lease with Jasmine. I can’t. She streams all night, and every morning the apartment looks like it’s been ransacked by a family of raccoons. Most mornings, getting a glass of water from the kitchen feels like completing an obstacle course of trash and gaming equipment, with the prize being a half-eaten midnight snack left rotting on the kitchen table.
All of which is borderline impressive considering she doesn’t game in the living room.
“Cover me, bitch! I need backup!”
Pudge jumps down from my lap with a disgruntled flickof his fluffy tail and hops on the bed to curl up a few feet away. “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think you’ll hear her any less over there.”
He ignores me and closes his eyes.
It probably doesn’t help that my desk shares a wall with her gaming table. We’re practically head-to-head cubicle workers with two vastly different occupations. I’m sure there are some parallels between freelance graphic design and streaming on Twitch, but when I’m scheduling all my calls with clients around Jasmine’s sleep schedule, it hardly feels that way.
My phone rings on the table next to me, and my eyebrows pinch as I register my older brother’s name. Simon and I don’t talk on the phone. We don’t even text. We send each other memes. That’s the language we speak.
“Hello?” I don’t bother hiding the surprise in my voice.
“Hey, you’re coming home this weekend, right?”
I blink, my eyes jumping to the calendar on my wall. No birthdays. No anniversaries. The only holiday is Halloween at the end of the month. “Um, no? Why would I come home this weekend?”
There’s a pause, and for a moment, I think maybe he called the wrong person. It’s just us, though. No other siblings he could have mistaken me for. “Mom didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Did something bad happen? Holy shit, did someonedie?
“Fuck,” Simon curses under his breath. “She told me she already told you.”
I nervously twist a strand of blonde hair that escaped from my ponytail. “Told mewhat?”
There’s a long, drawn-out groan on the other end of the phone. “Look, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this.”
“Simon, spit it?—”
“They’re getting a divorce.”
Jasmine yells, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” and I think maybe I’ve heard him wrong.
“They’re . . . what?”
