1
NOVA
Ishould’ve been writing. Yet, here I was, performing my secret daily ritual: obsessively searching my ex-best-friend’s username on every social media app.
No results. No results. No results.
Yep, still blocked.
I hissed out a breath through my clenched jaw. I rolled my shoulders, realizing I was hunched over my phone at an alarming angle.
As I shifted back to my computer, the cursor in my blank word document taunted me with its slow, steady blink. Late morning light illuminated the chipped paint on the desk I’d lugged back from a curb in East Village. A sound not unlike a plane taking off coming from my kitchen indicated one of my roommates was making a coffee with our rapidly-declining coffee machine.
“Fuck this,” I muttered at the blinking cursor. A gulp of my coffee, now lukewarm, slid down my throat to fuel my bad decisions.
I opened PicWave and briefly scrolled through the feed of images, videos, and targeted ads on autopilot before Iremembered why I’d opened the app in the first place. My heart picked up.
Yet again, I was losing a game with my childhood best friend I never agreed to play.
I squared my shoulders—and I made a burner account.
By the time I’d set up my burner, my coffee was cold and my heart hammered. I tapped my foot rapidly as my brand-new account loaded, an account that wouldn’t be blocked by Lorelei and would allow me to catch a glimpse of her for the first time in months.
At a sharpbang, I jumped and glanced back at my bedroom door, where a furry white paw expertly curled underneath the closed door to slam it against the frame. I paused my slow typing of Lorelei’s stupid username—@Siren_Baby—and got up to let the cat in.
When I opened the door with narrowed eyes, lips in a flat line, I was greeted by Inara’s squeaky chirp and slow blink. Her tail slowly swished across the floor as she sat there, staring up at me.
Beyond the calico furball and to the right, Hudson halted mid-bite of his avocado and egg toast, leaning over the kitchen counter. Silver, leaf-shaped earrings dangled from his lobes, pairing nicely with his thin black turtleneck. How he could stand to wear long sleeves in the middle of the summer, indoors even, was beyond my comprehension. Window AC units weren’tthatpowerful, especially when we had to keep them at the highest tolerable temperature to avoid a two-hundred-dollar ConEdison electricity bill.
I raised my brows at his choice of lunch. “Looks like someone never wants to be able to afford a home of his own.” I clicked my tongue and shook my head as Inara purred and rubbed against my calf.
“Fuck, you’re right,” he said, matching my feigned seriousness. He stared down at his last bites of food. “If I only changed my ways…cut out four avocados a week, twenty a month…” His dark brows drew close, a line developing in his forehead as he performed quick calculations. “I could save at least $700 a year—which means I would only need nine-hundred-ninety-nine-thousand-three-hundred dollars more to afford a cute little New York home.”
I snorted. “Try a studio condo. Guess you’ll just have to move back to Ohio.”
“Guess you’ll just have to shoot me with a gun.” He pointed his last bite of toast at me. “You should be writing. That’s why you’re riling me up about class warfare at eleven in the morning on a Monday like a fucking psychopath. You’re procrastinating.”
Inara continued rubbing against my legs in a figure-eight holding pattern.
I frowned, my silly disposition shifting first to guilt and then to defensiveness. “Shouldn’t you be doing your job?”
All three of us worked from home. Or rather, Hudson and I worked from home while Delilah, our third roommate, was unemployed from home. As long as her parents kept helping her out with rent while she got back on her feet, there were no complaints from Hudson and me. Delilah saved our asses after Lorelei abruptly cut us off and moved out mid-lease. I never wanted to feel that kind of stress again. We had already been barely scraping by as it was, Hudson working for a non-profit, Lorelei moving from server job to server job, and me desperately trying to make it as an indie author. As much as I would’ve preferred to have the place to myself while I wrote, having a full house was better than havingnohouse.
Hudson scoffed. “I’m on a lunch break. How about you stop asking me to tell you to write whenever I catch you off task? You don’t listen.”
I threw up my hands, the words poised on the tip of my tongue—what’s the point? I’m not getting anywhere with the six books I’ve already written.
But I didn’t want to hear myself whine, so I pivoted. “I made a burner account.”
Hudson pursed his lips. “That’s sad, Nova.” His icy gaze softened when he read the emotion on my face.
A familiar lump was in my throat, a harsh mix of grief and anger.
“She’s dead to us, remember?” he said, softer this time.
My relationship with Lorelei was different than Hudson’s. He met Lorelei five years ago, after she and I had already been living in the city for two years. Lorelei had decided against going to school, but Hudson and I met at NYU, so he became friends with Lorelei through me.
But Lorelei and I… we were like sisters from the very beginning—born just two months apart. We were more than sisters after everything we’d been through. It wasn’t something Hudson would ever understand. It wasn’t somethinganyonecould ever understand. No one butus.
