The American Roommate Experiment (Spanish Love Deception #2)(9)

A surge of courage filled my chest.

All of that ended today. No more lying.

I’d give Lina a heads-up about what had gone down yesterday, and I’d go to Philly to see Dad. Maybe Olly could meet us there. If he stopped dodging our calls, that was.

Rearranging myself so my back rested against the headboard, I reached for my phone, clicked on Lina’s name in the messages app, and started typing.


Hey, I hope Peru is treating you two lovebirds well Listen, last night—



My thumbs hovered over the screen, hesitating.


Last night… I almost had your cousin Lucas arrested. Surprise!



No. That was a definite no.

I deleted it and started again.


Last night… my ceiling cracked open, so I used your spare key to let myself into your place (couldn’t reach you but I knew you wouldn’t mind!). Anyway, everything was fine until Lucas showed up and I somehow mistook him for a burglar. Remember Lucas? Your cousin. The one whose Instagram profile you showed me what feels like an eternity ago? Well, I’ve been… checking it out. A few times. More than just a few times. Something like every day? It’s hard to explain but think… Joe Goldberg. Minus the murders.



Yeah, also a no. That was too long for a text.

The word murders was probably a red flag, too.

With a long and noisy sigh, I deleted the text and let the phone drop into my lap.

The truth was that I had kind of stalked Lucas online. In a totally harmless way.

Ever since Lina showed me one of his social posts, I’d been curious. And I hadn’t started checking his profile regularly until Aaron had proposed a year ago and I’d… hoped I’d meet Lucas at the wedding. And just like that, what started as nothing more than curiosity turned into something else.

Every photo he posted, whether he was in it or not, brought butterflies to my stomach. Every short but always funny and honest caption brought me a little closer to him. Every clip he uploaded allowed me to get an insight into his and Taco’s lives. Into the attractive and handsome man he was.

Sure, it hadn’t hurt that as a pro surfer, he’d been shirtless in most of his posts.

Some people had celebrities like Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth or any of the other Chrises, to inject that shot of serotonin before bed. A little daydreaming and a lot of wishful thinking. And I supposed… I supposed I’d had Lucas Martín.

It had been nothing more than a silly, innocent infatuation with someone I didn’t really know. Plus, it had been put to rest the moment he’d mysteriously vanished and stopped updating—weeks before Lina and Aaron’s wedding—and turned out to be a no-show at the ceremony. I had buried all of that nonsense and told myself enough was enough.

My phone rang in my lap, and all of that was immediately forgotten when I caught my little brother’s face flashing on the screen.

“Olly?” I answered, heart dropping to my stomach. “Where the heck have you been? Why haven’t you returned any of my calls? Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

A long sigh came through the line.

“Nothing’s wrong, Rosie.” My brother’s voice was deep, that baritone texture reminding me he wasn’t a kid anymore. Oh no, he was a nineteen-year-old adult that had been letting all my calls go to voicemail for weeks. “And I’m sorry. I’ve been… busy. But I’m calling you back now.”

“Busy with what?” I asked before I could stop myself.

When Dad announced about a year ago that he was leaving Queens, where he had spent most of his life and where Olly and I had been brought up, to move to Philly, Olly had announced he wasn’t leaving. He also informed us that, unlike me, he wouldn’t be taking the college route. And we’d supported him, encouraged him to search for what it was that made him happy. I’d even helped him out with rent and living expenses until recently. But he struggled to find his calling. He struggled to keep a job for more than a few weeks, too.

The line was silent for so long that I feared he’d hung up.

“Olly?”

Another sigh came.

“Listen,” I said, every single emotion brewing inside of me coating that one word. “I’m not attacking you. I love you, okay? You know I do, more than anything. But you’ve ignored me for weeks, only sending me short quick texts so I wouldn’t lose my mind and report you as a missing person.” And I would have. I so would have if it had come to that. “So, don’t tell me you’ve been busy and expect me to take that as an explanation, please. Don’t—”

“I’ve been busy with work, Rosie.”

Hope inflated my chest for a second there, but it was quickly stifled by a hundred dozen new questions.

“That’s great,” I told him, pushing my concern down. “What kind of job is it?”

“It’s… at a club. A nightclub.”

“A nightclub,” I repeated, forcing myself to remain objective. “As a waiter? You tried that and…” Quit about three weeks in. “You tried that, and it didn’t work. At a café, remember?”

“I’m not serving drinks,” he explained. “I’m doing something else. It’s… hard to explain. But I’m making a good living out of it, Rosie.”