Page 79 of My Roommate from Hell
“Yeah?”
He scoots closer. He pauses, like he’s changing his mind. It makes me so curious to know what he’s thinking about.
“You can ask me anything you’d like,” I say. “Although I’m not giving you my soul, just FYI.”
He smiles, then it fades. “Something bad happened to you last year, didn’t it?”
I flinch. He picked up on that? And he’s choosing now to ask me about it?
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he says. “But if you do, I’m here.”
It’s such an abrupt shift that I feel whiplash. The thing that happened last year was so horrible, and I think about it so often that it feels deeply entwined with who I am. It changed the very way I think about the world. I never used to always expect the worst. I used to be able to expect things to work out.
“Seriously,” he says. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I’ll tell you. What happened is, my parents, um, for pretty much the whole time that I can remember, their dream was to open a coffee shop. They talked about it all the time, and whenever they were struggling at work they’d always be like, one day, you know, we’ll actually do it and not have to deal with our shitty bosses or all the other nonsense anymore.”
Zarmenus is quiet, just listening. A voice in my mind yells at me to stop, to hold back from revealing this because it’s too much. Almost nobody knows about this, other than Ashley and Jackson and I guess a few kids at school who saw the carnage. But now that the door is open, I want Zarmenus to know. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to truly know me without knowing what happened.
“Anyway, like, two years ago, they finally decided to do it. They put everything they had into all the start-up costs. They did everything they ever wanted, made the coffee shop of their dreams. Mom put some of her art up, and Dad bought the best coffee machine money could buy. And it was the best coffee shop our town has ever had. And I’m not biased in saying that—we got that comment all the time.”
“Then something happened?”
“It wasn’t really one thing,” I say. “It was more a lot of little things. Running a business is expensive, and the rent went up every six months. Things broke all the time, and we got some negativereviews from some randoms because their iced coffee had too much ice in it. After the third rent increase Dad told me they needed to turn things around; otherwise they’d have to close. We didn’t make it to the fourth.”
“That’s so rough,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“The worst part is Mom and Dad were heartbroken. Like, it changed them. Dad had to go back to his stupid boss and Mom couldn’t get a job anywhere for ages. And the thing I always think about is they didn’t do anything wrong. People love the whole ‘follow your dreams’ narrative but what happens when you do that and it doesn’t work out? Sorry, this is a really depressing conversation for a date.”
“No,” he says. “I’m glad you told me. And I’m so sorry that happened. It must’ve been really tough.”
“It was. It still is, honestly. But enough about me. How’d your parents mess you up?”
“Countless ways,” he says. “My parents are popular back in Hell. Like, the most popular rulers in centuries. And they expect me to exceed them in every way, which is tricky to do when they’re basically perfect.”
Someone clears their throat.
The older man I noticed before has made his way up to us, and is now standing just outside our booth. His cheeks are a shade of pink, and I don’t think it’s because he’s nervous. If anything, he looks enraged. Something tells me it’s not because he overheard our conversation.
“You’re the demon, aren’t you?” he asks.
He is shaking and a throbbing vein is visible on his neck. Something catches my eye. He’s wearing a necklace with a sun pendant.
Oh crap.
He’s not armed like the last order member we encountered, but he’s both taller and larger than I am. While he might not be able to hurt Zarmenus, he could still hurt me, and given how furious he is, him lashing out seems possible.
Zarmenus stands and steps between us.
“You don’t belong here,” says the man. He lifts a finger and jabs it into Zarmenus’s chest so hard I wince. “You should leave.”
I’m pretty sure his parents’ mission for him is the only thing keeping Zarmenus from kicking this guy’s ass so hard he never recovers. There are visible heat lines radiating off him, and I can feel the dry heat on my face even from here.
“Fine,” says Zarmenus. “We’ll go.”
Actually, no.
Screw that. And screw this guy.
