Page 29 of Maid For Each Other

Roommate

Abi

“You’re sure he’s not a serial killer?”

“I mean, who can ever be sure?” I said into the phone as I put the muffins in the fancy commercial-grade oven and closed the door. “But my gut tells me he’s harmless. Rich and arrogant, but unlikely to wield a hatchet.”

“Serial killers don’t wield hatchets,” Lauren said. “That’s the old them. Serial killers are slick and contemporary now, Ab. Now they wield syringes that paralyze you so they can pull out your fingernails while you scream. They wield scalpels that skillfully carve into—”

“Stop it,” I said around a laugh. “I don’t want to hear this.”

My best friend, Lauren, who was a kindergarten teacher, filled her spare time by reading books about murderers. She was a skinny brunette with the patience of a saint when it came to children, yet she was obsessed with true crime and psychologicalthrillers and had consumed every documentary about every terrible human who’d ever walked the planet.

Which was probably why she was equally obsessed with working out. She took boxing classes, martial arts, boot camps; she had something five nights a week, and all of them involved yelling and kicking.

I’d gone with her to boxing once,once, but I had to stop fifteen minutes in because I’d already taken my inhaler five times.

It wasthatintensive.

“Fine,” she said, “but I’m putting a tracker on his car just to be safe.”

“I have a feeling he’s got a whole fleet of vehicles,” I said, going over to the sink and turning on the water to let the mixing bowl soak. “Because he didn’t think twice about giving me his custom ride when I brought it up.”

“No worries,” she said, and I knew by the sound of her voice that she liked the challenge in that. “I’ve got it.”

And it was pointless to try to talk her out of it. My little friend was like a character in a spy movie, somehow able to figure out the what and where of what she considered her “assignment,” and once she did, she just took care of business.

Lauren was one of those people who if I described her hobbies to a stranger, they’d assume she was a nut; I mean, she definitely sounded unhinged. But she was actually the sweetest, kindest person I’d ever met and everyone loved her.

She was just protective to thenth degree.

She had a code of conduct she lived by, like a bizarro set of Lauren rules she’d written for herself that never failed to make me laugh. For example, she wouldneveruse a tracker for herown personal gain; that would be inexcusable. In her opinion, someone tracking their significant other, even if that person was behaving suspiciously, was an egregious invasion of privacy.

When she knew that Ethan, her jerk of an ex-boyfriend, was cheating, she refused to use her skills to catch him in the act because “that would be wrong,” but when my mom’s last boyfriend always carried big wads of cash, she was on the case until she uncovered that he had a side hustle that involved stolen catalytic converters.

I adored my weirdo friend. I met her on the playground in first grade, when we both used to look for cool rocks instead of actually playing with other people, and she’d been my partner ever since.

Although since she’d met Derek (who I loved), I had a lot less time with her, so I cherished our weekly phone calls.

“So you’re not wearing pants right now, are you?” she asked.

I turned off the faucet. “What?”

“Abi, you have a luxurious penthouse all to yourself, for free, so you’re cheating yourself if you’re not running around pantsless, jumping on all the furniture.”

I looked down at the cocktail dress I was still wearing.

Damn it.The designer dress that now appeared to have a little blueberry muffin batter on its skirt.

I wiped it away with my finger and said, “I promise you that as soon as I get off the phone, I’ll do the sans-pants runaround before diving into his room-size bathtub.”

“Ooh, big tub, huh?”

“It’s problematic big, actually, like a threat to the planet,” I said, grabbing my favorite sponge from under his sink and running itunder the water. It was weird, staying in this apartment, because I’d cleaned it so many times that it felt familiar.

Like I was staying at a friend’s house.

“It’s the size of a hotel rooftop hot tub, I swear to God,” I said. “A team of Little League baseball players could fit in there.”

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