Page 1 of Roommate Wars
ChapterOne
Elise
I steppedinto the kitchen with my shoulders back and my head held high like I owned the place. Technically, I rented, but I had to show this apartment and itsinhabitantswho was in charge.
The kitchen’s yellowing wallpaper cast a sallow glow, with one pitiful window that looked onto the concrete jungle of San Francisco’s lower Pacific Heights. The neighborhood wasn’t bad, with charming restaurants and architecture here and there, but not this building. This building sucked. But the apartment had been the only thing I could afford when I signed the lease two weeks ago. Now I understood why it was so damn cheap.
There was more than ugly wallpaper and grease-caked appliances to greet me in my new home.
I stormed across the kitchen and flung open the sink cabinet like Rambo preparing for battle. The roach motel sat exactly where I’d placed it last night to seduce my unwanted guests to their demise.
And those menaces were having none of it.
Roughly five black bodies the size of my thumb scurried from the light, avoiding the roach motel as if it were a contamination zone.
My skin crawled and my heart thumped. “Gah!” I flung the cabinet door shut and ran out of the room, hopping as though the ground were lava.
How did they know to avoid the trap?
Bang, bang, bang,came pounding on my living room wall, followed by a shout tokeep it downmixed with an f-bomb.
Some of my new neighbors were nice, working-class folks. Others were scarier than my roaches. The guy next door fell in the second category. I’d only seen him from a distance. He was stocky, with unwashed hair, and wore the same dark-stained hooded sweatshirt and jeans every day, but it was his demeanor that had me hiding in my apartment. He turned his TV to max volume and played it throughout the night, but if I made so much as a peep, he complained through the thin walls.
As I contemplated my roach dilemma and tried to ignore my neighbor, another knock sounded, this one coming from the front door.
Normally my neighbor kept to yelling through walls, and that suited me because I did not want to encounter him face to face. Was he stepping up his game? My head grew woozy, and my hands began to sweat.
I was determined to live alone for the first time in my life, without student loans and without my sister’s help, but it wasn’t easy. Rent in San Francisco was astronomical, and my neighbors were unpredictable. Not to mention, the place I’d found had…issues.
More knocking sounded at the front door, and I rubbed my eyes. I was exhausted after putting in a long day at my new job with the city health department, and no, it hadn’t escaped my notice that I worked in public health and lived in a place that should probably be condemned.
I grabbed my phone and positioned my finger over the 911 emergency button, just in case, before I slowly opened the door with the chain latched.
Only the person on the other side wasn’t my scary neighbor, or any of my neighbors.
“Jack?”
My sister’s old roommate stood with one hand tucked into the front pocket of his jeans, a blue crewneck sweater stretching over an athletic build I’d secretly ogled when I visited my sister at her old place. The outfit was an upgrade from the sweatpants and holey T-shirts I usually saw him in. But his slightly ruffled, goldish-brown hair and piercing forest-green eyes were all Jack, set against an expression of inconvenience.
I hadn’t seen Jack in months, as I was avoiding the man. He was literally the last person I wanted to find me here.
I glanced at the living room behind me. Everything I owned was a hand-me-down and on full display: a pleather recliner that had been hidden for a decade beneath Mom’s clothes and other items back home and a wobbly white side table I’d pulled in off the street. No pictures. No plants. Nothing to make the place homey because I hadn’t gotten around to that part. I also couldn’t afford such luxuries. I would do anything to be independent, even suffer roaches, sketchy neighbors, and hand-me-down furniture. Didn’t mean I wasn’t embarrassed as hell that I couldn’t afford better.
“You planning on letting me in?” He looked me in the eye without a single fidget. I was the only one lacking confidence here.
Somehow Jack had discovered where I lived, and it wasn’t like I was hiding anything; he was several inches taller and could look over my head. I unlatched the chain and opened the door wider.
He stepped inside, and his gaze scanned the living room, then landed on me like a stone. “This is where you chose to move? Your sister is worried, and I can see why.”
From what my sister Sophia had said, Jack was wealthy, but you’d never know it from his living arrangement in a two-bedroom unit inside his best friend’s building. It made sense he’d assume my shithole apartment was a choice. “Was there a point to your visit?” Given the roaches, my neighbor, and now Jack, my irritability was in peak form.
I hadn’t expected my overprotective sister to send Jack to hunt me down. Sophia knew how tense things had been ever since the night I’d stayed over six months ago and sleepwalked into Jack’s bedroom. I might have also accidentally-on-purpose landed on his penis.Oops. That one-night stand resulted in the worst walk of shame, and I was still recovering from both. Sophia must have been desperate to find me if she’d sent him along.
I intentionally hadn’t given Sophia my new address until I could find time to spruce up the place. I couldn’t get away with holding out forever, but I thought I’d make it past the first week.
Jack folded his arms loftily. He could pass for a normal tall guy—until he crossed his arms and the biceps popped out. Underneath those casual clothes were well-defined muscles and a swimmer’s build I was trying to forget. “Sophia’s worried.”
“Nothing to worry about,” I said with fake cheer. Ever since that night, I’d been extremely awkward around Jack, and now was no different. Especially when memories of his naked body flashed before my eyes. My brow wrinkled as I considered something else. “How’d you find me here, anyway?”
