A stunned laugh left Kinsley, her eyebrows lifting in acceptance as she stepped back to let me in.
“Also, you don’t know this yet, but you’ll learn it soon enough,” I went on as I handed her one of the bowls. “In this house, we don’t let each other go through shit alone. If someone’s going through something, we’re all going through it with them.”
At that, those turquoise eyes widened with surprise and awe. “That’s . . . that’s really cool that you’re all so close.”
“You’ll get there,” I said as I sank to the floor and rested against her dresser. “You just need to get to know everyone—but Stevie and Hollis work most nights, and Mia is always running in and out of the house, going between her many jobs and auditions.”
Kinsley stilled for a second from where she’d started sitting opposite me to lean against her bed. “Auditions? Like, for acting?” When I dipped my head in a nod, she let out a soft laugh. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah . . . but why don’t we talk about what’s going on?” I suggested, bringing us back to the reason her eyes were all bloodshot and her cheeks were splotchy. “You said earlier your boyfriend was mad that you were moving.”
She rested her spoon in the bowl and leaned her head against the bed as a jagged breath fled from her. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s just . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on with us or what to do with everything. He was going back and forth on what he was saying, but I think it was just to break me down so I’d go home.”
Her head moved in these fast jerks, her eyes rolling when tears filled them again. “Sorry,” she said, a soft laugh leaving her that was only part amusement. “You’ve seen me for all of twenty minutes, and already I’m a wreck.”
I shrugged, a smirk pulling at my lips. “You do remember what kind of work we do, right? I can handle tears.”
Her next laugh was louder, freer, and did crazy things to me.
My pulse jumping and racing as an irrational need to hear it again coursed through my veins.
“But I was hoping for . . . I don’t know,” she whispered. “Not to be locked away, fighting with Caleb, and then crying to one of my roommates on my first day.”
“Well, we’re going to be living and working together,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of good days and others that are worse than this.”
She played with her food before letting out a determined breath and meeting my stare, just about stealing my breath with the intensity of her look. “Okay, so, it’s been nonstop criticism since I got the job here. Everyone thinks I’m making a mistake—everyone told me not to accept the offer. There’s even a pool for when I’ll return home because no one thinks I’ll last down here.”
“Assholes.”
A huff left her. “Yeah,” she murmured. “But I was sure Caleb would be on my side. We didn’t go to college together, but he was my biggest supporter through nursing school. He’d work all day, and then he’d be there, on the phone, helping me study. And it’s never been a secret that I loved it here or that I was applying here.” Her stare fell along with the rest of her—her shoulders, her expression, her spirit. “I just didn’t realize until last month that he thought I’d never get the job.”
A hum of understanding rumbled in my chest. “So, you’ve been separated by distance before.”
“Not like this,” she answered on a breath. “We saw each other nearly every weekend, so it was fine. We can handle distance, obviously, but this is different. We knew that even though neither of us ever actually said it. That’s why I told him to come with me, and he kept begging me to stay. But I think I told you earlier, it goes deeper than that for him—he doesn’t want me here. He thinks it’ll change me.”
“Change how?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He just thinks I won’t be the same person when I go back.”
I stilled from taking another bite. “So, you’re going back to Ferndale?”
Her brows lifted and her stare shifted back to me. “No. No, of course not. I want to be here. This is a dream for me. But that’s what we were doing today, just going back and forth and in circles. He’d ask what’s the point of us staying together if neither of us has any plans of moving, only to say something about how I’m going to be different when I come back like he’s still so sure I will.”
I studied her as she silently agonized over their argument while eating, her brow furrowed with worry.
“And how did you leave it?” When she looked up at me with a question in her eyes, I clarified, “He left . . . so how did the two of you leave it?”
Her shoulders lifted before dropping as if they weighed so much. “Nothing’s changed,” she whispered sadly. “We’ll probably continue having this argument until he realizes I’m staying here.”
My head bobbed slowly. “You think he’ll eventually come down here?”
“No, I know he won’t.”
My eyebrows lifted as I went back to studying the contents of my bowl. “Sounds like there’s a part of you that’s betting against your time in L.A. as well.”
“What?”
I pushed my food around for a second before taking my time gathering a spoonful. “People in long-distance relationships have the expectation they’ll be living in the same place at some point.” I finally met her stare, shrugging as I did. “Think if you were sure of your future here, you would’ve come to L.A. alone.”
Shock stole across her features for long moments before her gaze fell. Looking like she was struggling with this revelation.
And I was just looking at her.
Refusing to acknowledge that flutter in my stomach. Pretending my heart hadn’t been beating a little faster ever since she’d come downstairs again. Reminding myself that she was off-limits in more ways than one.
She’s my roommate.
She has a boyfriend.
She’s very straight.
She’s my roommate . . .
Her eyes shifted to mine as she settled deeper against the bed with a weighted sigh, and my heart went all sorts of wild.
I was so screwed.
“It was an experience.”
“‘Experience,’” Ariana echoed, the word a scoff as she glanced at me from the driver’s seat a handful of days later. Eyes wide with disbelief. “That’s what you’re going with?”
I tried to suppress the smile fighting to break free, my head bobbing. “Well, it’s clearly something that helped get her through it.”
“Kinsley, she pressed a crystal against your forehead to see if you were worthy of being in the delivery room.”
I lifted my hands before letting them fall heavily to my lap, a laugh getting caught in my throat. “It’s what she needed.”
“Her husband tried to cleanse me with sage.”
The laugh finally broke free, sharp and loud, before I managed to clamp my lips tightly shut. Looking over at Ariana, I reasoned, “Okay, but she also breathed her baby out, saying, ‘And there we go,’ as if she were finishing a yoga move and not pushing a human out of her body.”