Page 68 of Vacancy

“Yes, ma’am, your boy triggers towardfightwhen it comes to the fight-or-flight response. So… Word of warning, if you ever want to jump out from a closet and sayboo, his instinct will be to throat punch first and ask questions later.”

“Oh, good.” I brightened, actually relieved to hear that. “I’m definitely the type to flee. It’d be nice to know you were hanging back to fight the monster and distract him while I got away because I have a feeling with all that jogging you do, you could outrun me in no time, which would make me the first to get caught if we were running awaytogether.”

Damien gave me a reluctant grin and lifted an eyebrow. “Glad I’m useful for something.”

“So…no horror,” Alec spoke up, determined to make me choose a movie. He slippedThe Grudgeback onto the shelf. “Which one between these two?”

I bit my lip as I studied them. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “They’re both classics in my opinion. I can appreciate the humor inGhostbusters. But…The Sixth Sense…” I let out a low whistle. “Just blew my mind. I loved it.”

So I pointed at it, making my decision.

“And we have a winner!” Keene cheered, lifting his arms in triumph.

Immediately spinning toward Damien, I demanded, “Which one would you have chosen?”

He shrugged as if also torn before he started to nod, and then admitted, “Same.”

That made my smile burst free. I mean, I’d already seen how compatible we could be. He’d lit meupin that broadcasting room like I couldn’t remember anyone ever doing so thoroughly before. But it was nice to know we could curl up on a couch and enjoy a movie together too.

Trying to hide how much his opinion mattered, I glanced at Keene and Alec. “What about you two?”

“Ghostbusters,” they answered in unison.

Without glancing at each other, they fist-bumped.

“All the way,” Alec added without a beat.

They were just so freaking adorable.

I glanced at Damien to share my feelings, and he rolled his eyes as if to say,yeah, I know. My roommates are loveable goofballs.

I bumped my arm into his lightly, sharing the moment before I spoke up, asking, “Y’all got anything decent to drink around here? Because I am one thirsty girl.”

18

OAKLYNN

In the kitchen, Damien ordered a pizza on his phone while I popped open a canned Malibu cocktail and wandered my way around the tiled floor as I sipped, inspecting the appliances until I came across a strange-looking, gold figurine on the counter.

“This is...interesting,” I said, picking it up.

At first glance, I would’ve taken it for a kindergartener’s art project. I twisted it this way and that. Maybe it was a person with a beak-shaped head and really thin, bubble arms. But there were no hands and no feet, and the arms were longer than the fat, bubble legs.

But the surface was much too smooth to be hand-crafted. It looked as if it’d come from a 3D printer.

“Seriously?” Damien muttered with a disapproving scowl as he glanced up from his phone to see what was in my hand. Arching an eyebrow at Keene, he demanded, “I thought I told you to keep that damn thing in your room.”

Keene smirked proudly and lifted a finger to protest. “No. You told me to get it out of thelivingroom. But I like it here. It makes for a good conversation piece.”

As Alec groaned, “Oh jeez,” and gripped his forehead, I returned my attention to the object in my hand.

“What is it, anyway? A…back scratcher?”

“It’s a model of a clitoris,” Keene announced proudly as he took it from my hand. “This here is the glans,” he explained as he pointed to the part that I had thought was an odd-shaped head. “The only visible part, it’s the little nub above the opening of your vagina?”

I blinked at him once before uttering, “I’m…aware of the area, yes.”

“Yeah, so...the rest of it is hidden internally in the woman. It wraps around the vagina and wasn’t discovered until the 1990s but no one knew the full shape of it until the 2000s.”

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