Page 1 of Group Hug

One

Weston

Today isthe day I’m going to do it. No more procrastination. I need a roommate, or I’ll lose this house. And if I lose the house, I’m completely screwed. I’ve had months to myself to reorganize and heal my crushed heart.

My granddad willed the house to me free and clear, but I was forced to take out a mortgage on it. There are also the HOA dues, utilities, typical repairs, and taxes to pay. I could sell the place and make a killing, but I don’t know where I’d go because everything is so damned expensive now. A house like this requires plenty of upkeep, and I sure can’t manage it comfortably on my income alone right now. A roommate would be a big help.

“Man up,” I mutter to myself as I hit “enter,” posting my ad to the roommate finder app. The ad sounded good to my ears—like I’m fun but serious, clean but not obsessive…Wait!This isn’t a dating app. What have I done? I should have talked more about square footage, bathrooms, a garage—that kind of thing.Instead, I added, “Must like dogs.” Who does that? I want to grab the ad back and delete it. I want to restart.

…Actually, I just want to be happy again.

I push that thought to the back of my mind. I can’t let myself go down that road again. It’s time to shape up and move on.

Within minutes of my dithering about redoing the ad, my phone rings, and I have an appointment with some dude who wants to come to look at the place today. Honestly, he sounds pretty cool, but who knows? Then a minute later, a woman calls, so she’s coming over too. I really just need to share the space with one other person, but maybe two would make it even better. I could save some money and not constantly feel like I’m just breaking even. Anyway, I schedule them for half an hour apart, so I’ll see what I see. If anyone else contacts me, I’ll have some decisions to make. No one else calls right away. Is that good? I dunno. Did I screw up the ad? What’s normal? Two calls? Five? I know there are a lot of apartments around here that are for rent, but possibly not so many houses.

Fifteen minutes after the guy is supposed to be here, he knocks on the door. Okay, so punctuality isn’t his strong suit. Maybe he needed to get gas on the way, or his grandmother called him, and he didn’t want to cut her off. I’ll keep an open mind.

“Hey,” he says as I open the door. “Callum O’Malley.” He extends a large hand that I grasp firmly, noting his excellent handshaking skills. My granddad always said you could tell a lot about a man who shakes hands well.

“Nice to meet you, Callum. I’m West… ah… Weston Alister.” I try to keep my handshake firm without squeezing the daylights out of the guy, but I suddenly have the weirdest feeling of… good grief! I’m attracted to him! Where didthatcome from? And I don’t even want to let go of his hand. Okay, so there were those couple of times I experimented with messing around in college,but I was a little high, and I thought I’d outgrown that phase. So I try to ignore his sexy blond scruff and thick head of hair. He’s wearing a worn leather jacket over a goofy “Kiss the Cook” t-shirt that makes him positively adorable. Did I just think the word “adorable?”

He has a trim, muscular build, and he’s a little taller than me. His eyes are soulful hazel and seem to be penetrating right through me. I clear my throat and ask, “Did you ah… have any trouble finding the place? I thought you might since you’re a little late…”

He blinks at me like I have an extra head. “Um, no. I wasn’t aware that there was a tight schedule for ‘dropping by’ to look at the house. Sorry. Must be my misunderstanding.”

“Oh… ah, no. It’s just that you’re not the only candidate.”

But just then, before I can ask him in, I hear a car door slam and quick little footsteps coming up the front walkway. We both turn to see a petite woman marching with efficient strides up the bricks to the front door. Good lord. The woman is the most exquisite little creature I’ve ever seen. Boner alert! What the heck is going on today?

Callum steps closer to me and loudly announces the obvious, “I was here first!”

Geez, buddy. Desperate much?

The woman turns her enormous brown eyes in my direction and flips a lock of wavy auburn hair over her shoulder as she declares, “But I’mdesperatefor a place to live.”

I guess there’s a lot of that going around today.

“And,” she continues, “I love dogs!”

With raised eyebrows, I regard Callum, and he immediately claims, “So do I!”

Shaking my head with a chuckle, I tell them, “Come on in, I’ll give you the grand tour, and we can all get acquainted. Callum, Iassume this is Petra Feeney. Petra, I’m Weston, and Callum here also needs a place to live.”

“I can move right in!” she nearly shouts.

At the same time, he claims, “I’m a really good cook!”

This perks up my interest, so I ask, “How did you learn to cook?”

“My great-grandmother got me interested originally, but then I went to Vincennes University to study culinary arts.”

Ah. I thought he might be a guy who’d be close with his granny, butculinary school? This could be amazing. “Really?” My interest piques even more as I think about having someone around who likes to cook delicious meals. Or any meals at all if I’m being honest. I’m so hopeless in the kitchen, I’ve been known to screw up PB and J sandwiches. Friendly warning… They don’t taste too good when made with rye bread, and lettuce doesn’t “fancy” them up. I’ve been sticking to nuking hot dogs and canned soup a lot lately. My dwindling funds haven’t encouraged a lot of take-out. Did I mention that Ireallyneed a roommate?

Bringing me out of my gastronomic reverie, Callum replies, “She did. I just had to be careful with some of the ingredients she tried to use. Nana was known for keeping things around past the expiration date. Part of why I asked her to show me how to cook was so I could investigate her fridge regularly. I’m sure I pissed her off a few times when I threw stuff away.” He chuckles fondly. “But we all worried about her when she was left to her own devices too often. She would be proud to have inspired me to study culinary arts, I think. I’d hoped, even though I was just a kid, I could teach her a few things about food safety, but she was pretty set in her ways. Anyway, she’s been gone now for several years.”

Nodding sympathetically, I usher them in and indicate the living room, dining room, and kitchen on the ground floor. It’san open plan with a spacious hearth room connected to the kitchen. The half bath and laundry room are also off the kitchen. Then I lead them up the stairs. “The basement is finished. There’s a large screen TV down there as well as a ping pong table and some other stuff,” I tell them. “I’ll show you that later.”

It’s a fairly typical four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath with a large sloping backyard that backs up to a shared greenspace and a picturesque pond. The patio is a covered brick space off the lower level with a hot tub and an outdoor barbecue setup that I love. Living here in Carmel, Indiana, the climate is great for half the year, but winter can be darn cold. That’s Carmel pronounced CAR-mul like the candy, not Car-MELL like the town in California. Tourists always get it wrong, but that’s Indiana. We have more odd names, like French Lick and Gnaw Bone, and weird pronunciations of towns in this state than you can believe. My favorites are Versailles—which is pronounced Vur-SAILS—and Russiaville which is pronounced ROO-sha-ville. Those crazy Hoosiers. After the French settlers who founded the state all died off, I guess the residents didn’t know how to say the names of the towns and just made up their own goofy shit.

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