‘Yeah. My roommate.’
‘And she’s a good roommate? Not, like, some random stranger from Craigslist?’
Lexi laughs, and it resonates through her skull and throbs a little, but it’s worth it. ‘Craigslist? What is this, 2009?’
‘Maybe she’s also a time traveller? You gotta watch out for these random roommates.’
Lexi shakes her head to reassure Sam, which also hurts. She has to learn to stay still. ‘She’s not a random. I actually know her from growing up in London together and we reconnected when I moved to DC. Plus, she has this whole posse of church friends who can be activated at the push of a button.’
Sam stops walking abruptly. ‘The actual push of an actual button?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, good. Because I gotta say, that would seem a little...’
‘Cultish?’
Sam nods.
‘Yeah, no. I think it’s like an internal message board where you sell things and give stuff away and organise meals for families who’ve just welcomed a new baby. Stuff like that.’
‘An internal message board? Like Craigslist?’ He’s messing with her, she is pretty sure.
‘You’re obsessed with Craigslist today.’
‘Apparently yes, today I am.’
‘I suppose there are worse things to be obsessed with.’
‘Like what?’
Lexi can see her house from here. There’s probably not time to go into everything she suddenly wants to talk to Sam about. She’d give anything, though, to know what his obsessions are. Good, bad, indifferent. But especially the bad ones. It would make the plan so much easier to put into action.
‘Money?’ she prods. ‘Sex? Drugs? Success at all costs?’
Sam’s arm around her loosens, like Lexi has hit a nerve. She can’t decide whether it’s a good or a bad thing.
‘When is it actually obsession, though?’ he asks. ‘And when is it just healthy focus?’
‘An excellent question.’
They let that indeed excellent question hang in the air for the next half block.
‘Well,’ Lexi says, somewhat regretfully, wishing there was a way to keep leaning into Sam’s touch, keep walking together like this, skirting dangerous topics forever, or at least for several more hours. ‘This is it.’
‘The yellow house? I love this one.’
Lexi smiles, but her stomach tightens at the thought of having to leave this adorable home when Erin gets married. ‘Thank you. We love it.’
She fumbles for her keys in her faded Sally Rooney tote bag. Not for the first time, she wishes she could be one of those people who always put their keys in the same bit of the bag so that they can always find them at a moment’s notice. Every Black Friday, like clockwork, she buys a new bag with many compartments, precisely so she can trick herself into becoming one of those people. But somehow, she always ends up grabbing one of the tote bags in her tote bag of tote bags and her keys end up at the bottom among a general debris of lipsticks, tissues, review copies of books, crumpled-up receipts, and the hand sanitiser she will probably carry around for the rest of her life.
‘Should we maybe just knock on the door?’ An eminently sensible suggestion from Sam, but Lexi feels oddly affronted.
‘You don’t trust me to find my keys?’
‘I just...’ He seems to be weighing his words carefully. ‘I think it might be easier, that’s all.’ And then he can’t resist it. He has to go there. ‘Someday, we’ll have a conversation about always putting your keys in the same place so that you can easily find them.’
She narrows her eyes and turns her head to do her best approximation of a glare.
