Page 90 of Roommate's Guide to Love

When did Stella become Maeve? “It’s nothing.”

God…why can’t I bring myself to tell them? I want to. That’s why I called them down here tonight. It’s on the tip of my tongue. But now that we’re here, I can’t seem to form the words.

“Bullshit,” Maeve says, her mean mom face on. “Tell us why we’re here and what’s really fucking you up right now.”

“It’s…” I try and rack my brain for the words. “I…Well, see, what hap-happened was…I’ve…Back a long time ago, in a galaxy…”

“Oh my gosh! Just say it!” Ainsley yells. “Say that you’ve been hooking up with Porter and now that you moved in with him things are weird. And I’m guessing because now that you’re drunk and have been crying, you realize you love him?”

I’m rarely shocked. Like, it takes a lot for me to be still and speechless.

But if I wasn’t sitting down right now, I would’ve pulled a fainting goat and dropped right down on this floor from Ainsley’s outburst.

“How…what…when…what the fuck, Ains?”

“Actually,” Stella says. “We all know.”

My head snaps to the other side of the booth, where both Stella and Maeve are fully smirking.

“What do you mean you all know? Who’s you all?”

“In our defense,” Stella begins. “We only just figured it out. But when we started piecing together the clues, we realized that if we would’ve talked much earlier, we could’ve solved this puzzle weeks ago.”

I try to open my mouth to say something, but when nothing comes up, Ainsley reaches over and helps snap it shut.

“There we go.”

“Can someone please fill me in, because I was supposed to be dropping the bombs on you guys tonight, not the other way around.”

“Gladly,” Stella says, sitting up a little straighter. “We all first noticed things the night we went to the bar when you first came back. Right after you quit. We thought it was weird that Porter brought over all that food.”

“Which we were thankful for,” Maeve said. “But we’ve been going to The Joint for years, and Porter has never brought over free food like that. Also, there were looks.”

“There were no looks.” I protest.

There were definitely looks.

“And then there was the night when I saw you driving away from mom and dad’s,” Ainsley says. “I might’ve never had a one-night stand, but I know that you only leave a house at two in the morning for one thing.”

“Maybe I needed something from the pharmacy?”

Ainsley quirks a brow. “Did you need something from the pharmacy?”

Stella holds up a finger. “That would be called a dick-scription, I believe. Take once a day for glowing skin and sore legs.”

The three sisters are cracking up at Stella’s joke, which I’d find funny if this didn’t have to do with me.

“Okay, enough!” I yell. “So what, because he brought us food, a few looks, and Ainsley saw me leaving the house for an unknown booty call, all of a sudden y’all knew?”

Maeve shakes her head. “You know, I had a suspicion last year. So after that night, I started a chat to ask them?—”

“Whoa!” I interrupt. “You have a side chat without me?” When the dust settles, that might be the thing I’m most mad about. Now I know how Simon feels.

“It was to confirm suspicions.”

“But still, that’s not confirmation,” I counter.

Stella is then all smiles. “That’s where I come in. Well, and Jenny.”

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