The Roommate Arrangement

by Jae

  Her words and the timbre in her voice sent shivers through Rae’s body.

  Then, with a sigh and a rueful smile, Steph added, “But not tonight. I’ll have to get up super early tomorrow, and once we…you know…nothing short of an earthquake will make me leave the bed for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “Twenty-four…” Rae gulped down more soda.

  “Possibly more,” Steph said with a comical leer.

  “Now you’re just showing off,” Rae muttered.

  “Shh!” someone in the row in front of them hissed.

  Steph shot Rae a sultry look and leaned even closer to whisper in her ear, “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Her warm breath made goose bumps trail down Rae’s body. “I will,” she whispered back. “I definitely will.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Rae had asked Carlos to cover the early show on New Year’s Eve so she could stay home with Steph until it was time to leave for the club. She was glad she had asked him for the favor because she had never seen Steph so nervous.

  Steph had been pacing their apartment with her set list in hand for most of the day, running through her material again and again. Rae had left her alone for the most part, only interrupting her to make sure she ate at least a little.

  Now it was finally time to go. She slid the rainbow clip the Renshaws had given her for Christmas onto her work tie and threw one last glance into the mirror to make sure her prosthetic eye looked normal and her hair covered the scar on her head.

  God, you’d think you are the one having to go up on stage! But she couldn’t help it. This was a big day for Steph, so Rae couldn’t pretend it was just another day at work. She hoped everything would go well and the show would be a smashing success, but at the same time, she couldn’t help worrying about what would happen if it was really the start of Steph’s big break. Would Steph leave LA…leave her? If she went on a countrywide tour, would she view their relationship as something that would only hold her back?

  Cross that bridge when you come to it. She stuck her head into Steph’s room. “Ready?”

  Steph looked up from her set list. Instead of the blue jeans she usually wore when she had a gig, she had chosen a pair of black slacks for today, but she had stayed true to her style by combining them with one of her T-shirts with a painted-on pink tie and a blazer.

  Rae smiled at her. “You look cute.”

  “Cute?” Steph gazed down at herself. “I think the words you are looking for are stylish and hot.”

  “That too.” Rae walked up to her, slid her hand onto Steph’s hip beneath the blazer, and drew her close for a quick kiss. Steph’s perfume was fast becoming an aphrodisiac for her, or maybe it was the way Steph always threaded her fingers through Rae’s hair when they kissed. She forced herself to keep the kiss light and short anyway. “Hot as hell. Come on. Let’s walk to the club. It might help you get rid of some of that nervous energy.”

  They left the apartment and set off toward Melrose.

  After a couple of steps, Steph reached over from the right and slid her hand into Rae’s. “Okay?”

  “Of course.” Rae gave her fingers a soft squeeze, and they continued hand in hand. Her colleagues would probably tease her mercilessly if they saw them walk up like this, but Rae didn’t care.

  Soon, the club came into view. The parking lot was packed, making Rae glad they had left the car at home. She hoped the Renshaws had factored in enough time to find a parking spot nearby and wouldn’t be late—if they even came.

  She glanced over at Steph, who was unusually quiet.

  Rae could tell she was running over her material in her head. Had she done the right thing by asking Steph’s family to come, or would their unexpected presence throw Steph off and mess up her focus? Shit. She should have thought of that before. Maybe she should tell her now. But if Steph got her hopes up and then her family didn’t show after all, it would break her heart. Steph might pretend not to care, but Rae knew better.

  At the edge of the parking lot, Steph stopped abruptly, as if she had run into an invisible wall. “Oh my God. Look at that!”

  Rae craned her head to see what she was looking at.

  Stephanie Renshaw shone in bright lights on the marquee outside the club.

  Rae’s throat tightened, and she had to swallow a couple of times before she could say, “You’d better get used to it. After tonight, I have a feeling you’ll see your name up there a lot.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Steph turned away from the marquee to face Rae. “Can I have a kiss for good luck?”

  “Of course. But you won’t need any luck—you’ve got skills.” Rae kissed her gently and then, instead of letting go, pulled her into a tight embrace and held her for a moment. “You’ll be great.”

  Steph rested against her for several seconds, then she squeezed once and stepped back. “See you after the show.”

  “I’ll see you during the show,” Rae said. “Don’t worry about hecklers, okay? The minute someone opens their mouth, they’ll be out on their ass.”

  “Thanks, but I can handle them.” Her usual confidence was back in Steph’s tone.

  “I know. I just…” Rae shrugged, not knowing how to explain that overwhelming need to protect her.

  Steph smiled and brushed her lips against Rae’s a second time. “See you later.” Then she strode toward the club’s entrance and past Carlos, who was covering the door.

  When Rae joined him, he grinned and slapped her on the back. “So you and Steph, hmm? I could see that coming from a mile away!”

  “That makes one of us,” Rae muttered. Not in a million years would she have imagined ending up with this smart-ass, carefree comic. But she had never in her life been so glad to be wrong.

  Steph peeked through the short, hidden hallway leading to the stage. Laughter drifted back to her. The showroom was jammed tonight, and the crowd seemed great. When some of the tables in the back had gotten a bit rowdy earlier, Rae and her team had quickly gotten them to settle down.

  The house lights had been dimmed, but Steph could almost sense that Rae was somewhere down there, waiting to watch over her. Instead of making her feel smothered and patronized, as she had assumed in the past, it gave her a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach, calming her pre-show jitters.

  The door to the greenroom swept open, and Gabe burst in. “Hey, guess who I just ran into in the lobby?”

  “Scarlett Johansson?”

  “Hahaha. Keep your jokes for the stage. No. Your mother.”

  “What?” Steph shook her head. No, that was impossible. Her parents were most likely at some fundraiser or ringing in the new year with friends, most of whom were psychologists too. “You haven’t even met my mother, so how would you know what she looks like?”

  “Oh, come on. She looks exactly like you and Claire.”

  Steph shook her head. “It’s probably just someone looking like her.”

  “Yeah, that must be it. Just some woman looking like your mother, now sitting in the first row, next to Penny, Claire, Lana, and a guy who probably looks a lot like your father.”

  Steph stared at him. “You’re shitting me?”

  He pressed a hand to his chest. “Would I do that?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  “Okay, I would, but I’m not. They are here. I swear.”

  Steph flopped down onto the worn couch along one wall. “Holy… That’s…wow.” It had to have been Lana. She must have talked her parents into coming. Steph made a mental note to give her future sister-in-law the biggest hug when she saw her after the show.

  The door to the greenroom was opened again, and Rae stuck her head around the doorjamb. Her gaze went to Gabe, then to Steph. “You’re up in three.”

  Steph’s mouth went dry. She clenched her hand around the set list in her pocket. “I just found out my f
amily is here.”

  A smile inched across Rae’s face. “That’s great…isn’t it?”

  “It is.” Then it hit her. “Or maybe not. Shit. Half of my material is about them!” Quite vividly, she remembered the heated argument with Rae when she had told a few jokes about her on stage. Her family would probably react the same way. She dug out her workbook and flipped through her jokes in search of something to replace her family-related bits with.

  Gabe snatched it away from her. “What are you doing? Switching up your material at the last moment never ends well; you know that. Besides, you never gave a shit about what your family thought before.”

  He was right, but a lot of things had changed in the last couple of months. Steph’s gaze went to Rae. “What do you think?”

  Rae touched the tiny, round scars on her forehead as she seemed to think about it for a few moments. “It might sound strange coming from me, but I think you should go with the routine you had planned. If you had asked me a couple of months ago, I probably would have had a different response, but now that I know you and the comedy business better, I have a slightly different view. I mean, you keep saying that’s all they’re meant to be—just jokes, right?”

  Steph stared at her. She hadn’t expected Rae to say that. Of course, Rae’s reply probably would have been different if Steph had planned to do any jokes about her. But it still felt good to have her support. “Right.”

  “Besides, no one in your family has supported your career, so they shouldn’t get a say in it now,” Rae added.

  “Hell, yeah,” Gabe said. “They’ll just have to wear their big-girl-and-boy undies and not make such a big deal out of a couple of jokes.”

  Steph exhaled and squared her shoulders. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “Go up and kill ’em. You can do it.” The utter confidence on Rae’s face was like a cloak of calm settling over Steph.

  One last glance back at Rae, then Steph slipped through the hidden hallway and onto the stage, just as the MC announced her name.

  Thunderous applause echoed around her, and as Steph took the mic, the last of her jitters faded away. This was what she had worked toward for the past ten years. She was ready.

  With the biggest smile ever, she stepped up to the edge of the stage.

  Damn, Gabe had been right. Her parents, Claire, Lana, and Penny were right there in the very first row. Even Rae’s friend Kim had come, and they were all looking at her with expectant gazes.

  No pressure or anything.

  She gave a merry wave and waited for the applause to reside. “Hey, everyone…and a special hi to my family, who has come out to see me for the very first time tonight.”

  The audience clapped politely.

  “That’s actually a bit of a surprise. Up until now, we seemed to have an unspoken agreement: they don’t go to my job, and I don’t go to theirs.” She used her foot to push the cord out in front of her so she wouldn’t drag it along as she moved along the stage. “Well, I still won’t show up at their work, because all three of them are,” she lowered her voice to a whisper as if she were speaking about something scandalizing, “psychologists. Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking. But you seem so normal!”

  Laughter rippled through the showroom and echoed back from the brick wall behind her, as Rae had described it last night. Steph didn’t pause to check if her family was glaring at her or laughing along with the rest of the audience. Holding her head up high, she launched into her next joke. “Can you imagine what my childhood was like? It gave new meaning to the phrase, ‘Honey, I shrunk the kids’!”

  Normally, there was no place Steph would rather be than up on stage, but as the show ended right before midnight and the comedians gathered to lead the countdown, all she wanted was to jump down and find Rae so she could spend the first seconds of the new year with her.

  But she was the show’s headliner, so she had to stay where she was. “Ten, nine, eight,” she shouted into the mic.

  Her fellow comics and the audience counted backward with her.

  At “five,” the house lights came back on.

  Steph’s gaze flew over the audience in search of Rae.

  “Four, three, two…”

  She found her just as everyone chanted, “One.” Shouts of “Happy New Year!” rolled over her, and cheers erupted from the crowd. Steph barely heard them.

  Rae had taken up position at the back of the room, where she could see everyone, but her gaze was on Steph alone. She was the only one standing perfectly still in an ocean full of movement, hugs, and kisses. In her black suit and tie, she took Steph’s breath away. Slowly, a smile lit up Rae’s serious features.

  Steph lifted the glass of sparkling wine someone had pressed into her hand and mouthed, “Happy New Year” over the heads of the audience.

  Rae’s smile broadened, and she mouthed back the words.

  A warm feeling spread through Steph’s entire body, even though she hadn’t taken a sip of her sparkling wine yet. God, she wished they were home, where they could welcome the new year with a kiss.

  The DJ Mr. Hicks had hired for the after-party started playing “Auld Lang Syne,” and Steph listened to the lyrics for a second. Rae wasn’t an old acquaintance; they had only known each other for a couple of months, but already she didn’t want to imagine her life without her.

  She groaned at herself. Christ, when had she become such a sap?

  A party horn shrieked next to her, making her jump. “Gabe!” She snatched it away from him and stuffed it into the pocket of her blazer, which she had tossed over her shoulder.

  He pulled her into an exuberant hug, and she got the feeling that he’d emptied a few glasses of the sparkling wine already. “Happy New Year!”

  “Happy New Year.” Steph pulled away from him to rub her ear, which was still ringing.

  “Great show!” He high-fived her. “I loved how you improvised that new opening about your family.”

  “Thanks. Let’s hope they’ll think so too.”

  “You’re about to find out.” He pointed at something behind her. “Your sister is headed in your direction, and she looks like a woman on a mission. I guess I’d better leave you alone.” He patted her back and slipped away, into the crowd.

  “Thanks, traitor.” Steph braced herself and slowly turned around. Time to face the music.

  Claire walked up to her. In a knee-length skirt and a formfitting, pink sweater, she looked stylish but more casual than Steph had expected. Before meeting Lana, she probably would have shown up in one of her work power suits.

  “Hey, you came.” Steph gave her sister a hug that felt a little stiff. “Happy New Year.”

  “Happy New Year. Of course I came. I promised.”

  Claire wore her therapist mask, as she often did in public, so Steph had no idea what was going on inside of her. Was she secretly seething with anger, feeling as if Steph had made her into a laughingstock?

  “Where’s Lana?” Steph asked because she didn’t know what else to say—and because Lana often felt like her only ally in the family.

  “At the bar, getting Mom and Dad a glass of champagne.”

  “Did she enjoy the show?”

  “Oh yeah.” A loving smile broke through Claire’s therapist mask, giving her face a happy glow. “A few times, she was laughing so hard that I could barely hear the end of your punch lines.”

  “That’s great.” Steph stared down at Claire’s pumps as she tried to gather the nerve to ask what Claire and their parents had thought of the show. God, when had she become such a chickenshit?

  A touch to her arm made her look up. That glow was still on Claire’s face. “So did I.”

  “Um, you did what?”

  “I enjoyed the show,” Claire said.

  Steph nearly dropped her flute. “You did?”

  Claire nodded slo
wly. “I enjoyed it a lot, actually.”

  “Even the bits about…well, you?”

  Claire sighed. “I admit that I would have enjoyed them more if they’d been about someone else’s sister. But since Lana came into my life, I’ve learned to relax and not take myself so seriously all the time. So yeah, I might have laughed a time or two…even about your take on the way I put the dishes into the dishwasher.”

  Wow. Her future sister-in-law was a miracle worker. Love was a miracle worker.

  Claire chuckled at Steph’s slack-jawed expression, then sobered. “I know we weren’t always as close as we could have been, but I want you to know that I really admire you for never giving up on your dream, no matter what Mom and Dad or anyone else said. I admit I didn’t fully understand why you clung to that dream, but seeing you up there…” She swept her hand toward the stage. “I think I understand it now. I should have come to see you sooner, and I’m sorry I didn’t. I’m really proud of you.”

  Tears welled up without warning. She clutched her sister to her in a second, tighter embrace, and Claire curled her arms around her just as fiercely. “Thanks,” Steph choked out. “And thank you for talking Mom and Dad into coming too.”

  Claire let go. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Well, then tell Lana—”

  “It wasn’t her either. Apparently, your friend Rae called Mom and asked her to come and bring the rest of the family.”

  “Rae…” Steph searched the back of the room but couldn’t spot her now that she no longer had her vantage point up on stage.

  “Although Mom indicated that she is more than a friend.” Claire studied her closely. “Are you…?”

  “Yes.”

  Claire shook her head. “You didn’t even let me finish my question. I was about to ask if you’re serious about her.”

  Steph swallowed. “Yes,” she said again. “Very.”

  “You are?” Now it was Claire’s turn to stare slack-jawed.

  “I know you didn’t think I had it in me. Hell, I didn’t think I had it in me.”