Misadventures with My Roommate Read online

  Misadventures with my Roommate

  Elizabeth Hayley

  This book is an original publication of Waterhouse Press.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2018 Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Design by Waterhouse Press

  Cover photographs: Shutterstock

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  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  To everyone who never got a chance to bang a hot roommate. This one’s for you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Bonus Scene

  Acknowledgments

  Don’t miss any Misadventures!

  Excerpt from Misadventures with a Rookie

  More Misadventures

  About Elizabeth Hayley

  Chapter One

  Blake moved her eyes with the crowd that bustled past The Coffee Bean. She’d been working for about three hours—the first two of which she’d spent listening to some girl whose name she couldn’t remember introduce products and procedures at warp speed. Now she was thankful for the wall of windows that faced the busy street. Her mind wandered with the people outside, making up stories about who they were, where they’d come from, and where they were going.

  A woman in a hot-pink miniskirt hobbled past in chunky black boots that laced up her calves. She’d clearly spent the night being ridden hard by a cowboy who’d come to town with a fictional rodeo. He’d roped her from his horse, stole away with her to his RV, and promised to look her up the next time his caravan rode through town. But he wouldn’t, and she’d be left alone, looking forlornly down random streets as the memories of the fierce fucking he’d given her swamped her mind at the most inopportune times. Blake shook her head. She almost felt bad for Pink Miniskirt. Hers would be a difficult life.

  “Excuse me, Miss. Miss!”

  Blake came back to herself with a start. Blinking rapidly, she focused on the woman in front of her—a lady with a severe black bun and a tweed suit.

  “Sorry,” Blake said. A wide smile overtook her face as she continued. “How may I help you today?”

  Black Bun didn’t return the smile. Instead, she looked harried and irritated.

  Blake instantly grew wary of this woman who looked like the fate of everyone she encountered that day depended on whether or not she got a giant container of coffee—though it made Blake feel a bit like a superhero barista. With this one order, she would be saving this woman’s coworkers from being murdered with office supplies.

  “I need a…”

  And that was where Blake’s understanding of Black Bun’s order ended and her confusion began. The woman rattled off a combination of unfamiliar words with such speed that Blake wondered if the terms even applied to coffee. Surely there was no way all these words could be foreign to her. Though the woman ended her request with “latte,” a word Blake understood, it did nothing to clarify exactly what she was supposed to be making for this person.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  Black Bun repeated her order, but the result was the same. Blake turned and stared at the giant menu posted on the wall behind the counter in hopes that she’d see something that resembled the woman’s order. No luck. Blake turned around slowly and stared at the woman awkwardly, unsure if asking her to repeat it again was worth either of their time.

  “Jesus Christ,” Black Bun muttered. “I just want a grande quad nonfat one-pump no-whip mocha latte.”

  This time, Blake heard all the words, but they meant nothing to her when strung all together like that. Blake put her palms on the counter and leaned on them. “That’s not a thing. I refuse to believe it.”

  The woman gritted her teeth. “Do you have a manager?”

  “Probably,” Blake replied. She figured the guy who had hired her was a manager, but she didn’t remember what he’d said his exact title was.

  Black Bun’s face began turning an unnatural shade of red. “Can you get them?”

  “Sure,” Blake said brightly. That was something she could actually help with. Kind of. She turned to address the three other employees she’d been working with that day. “Do we have a manager, and more importantly, is the manager here?”

  They all stared at her as if she’d asked them to solve Hammurabi’s Code.

  “Yeah, Stu’s in back,” a voice behind her said.

  Blake whirled around to see the cute blond guy who’d been wiping off tables. He twisted a rag in his hands, making his forearms bunch. His was the only name she cared to remember because he was so hot. Gavin.

  “I can get him for you,” Gavin continued.

  “Great. Thanks,” Blake replied as Gavin started to walk off. “He’s going to get him,” Blake said to Black Bun.

  The woman eyed her warily. “Is something wrong with you?”

  Blake had heard this question a lot through the years, and it had stopped offending her a long time ago, especially since, yes, according to multiple medical professionals, there was something most definitely wrong with her. But Blake had also learned that people rarely wanted her to answer honestly, and even though Blake didn’t much care about what made other people comfortable, she needed this job. So she merely shrugged her reply, which she figured was as close to the truth as she could get without alarming a stranger.

  “Is there a problem here?” Stu asked as he appeared at her side.

  Blake gestured to Black Bun, meaning she was the one causing the problem, but the woman clearly took it as Blake leaving it up to her to answer because she started in immediately. “This person you have working here doesn’t know how to do her job.”

  Which was true. Blake couldn’t really argue the point, but she couldn’t help defending herself. “This lady invented a drink and expects us to make it.”

  The woman actually stomped her foot. “That is an outright lie. I get this drink here almost every day.”

  “And what is the drink, ma’am?” Stu asked.

  “A grande quad nonfat one-pump no-whip mocha latte.”

  “Okay, no problem.” He turned to one of the baristas behind them. “Maddie, can you make this woman’s order?”

  “Absolutely,” Maddie said as she sprang into action.

  Blake glared at Maddie, who’d clearly let Blake suffer through dealing with Black Bun when the girl had known the order the entire time. Silently, Blake put a voodoo curse on the pixie-haired traitor.

  Stu told the woman her order would be comped, which caused her to flounce to the waiting area with her chin up. Blake extended the curse to include her too.

  The next person in line w
as a guy with a much simpler order. Thank God. Blake made his coffee and rang him up with no issue. Soon after, Maddie rushed the woman’s order over to her, and Black Bun disappeared into the crowd on the street.

  Stu approached Blake a moment later. “Can I see you in my office?”

  “You have an office?” The words were out of Blake’s mouth before she had a chance to think about them first.

  “Yes,” Stu said slowly, suddenly looking at her as if she were something he needed to handle with extreme caution. “Gavin will take over for you until you come back.”

  Gavin materialized at her side, and Blake signed off the register so he could sign on. Then she followed Stu back to a small alcove he was incorrectly categorizing as an office. “Have a seat,” he said as he pointed to an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair.

  Against her better judgment, Blake sat. It was like sitting on a rock, which made her squirm. She had to make sure she focused on Stu instead of the sensation of sitting in a chair manufactured in hell.

  Stu sat across from her in a rolling chair with a padded seat. Blake wanted to rip it out from beneath him and claim it for herself.

  “So I see we need some more training,” he said as he folded his hands on his desk.

  “Yes. Training would be good,” she replied, happy that it didn’t seem like he was firing her.

  “I’m a little surprised you need it. You said you had experience in coffeehouses before.”

  Blake rubbed her palms over her black yoga pants that had never seen a yoga class. “Yeah, I meant more along the lines of having gone into them rather than having worked in one.”

  Stu steepled his hands and rested the tip of his nose against his fingers. It was one of the grossest poses Blake had ever seen anyone strike. “I see,” he said.

  “I’ve worked on registers before.” Which was true. “And I’m a fast learner.” Which was a lie.

  “Tell you what. I’m going to have you shadow Gavin for the rest of the day so you can get familiar with the orders. Then tomorrow, I’ll have someone show you how to make them.”

  “Great,” she said with a smile that was genuine for the first time that day. “I won’t let you down.” In reality she probably would, but she’d do her best to do a good job.

  “Good to hear. I’ll walk you out and tell Gavin the plan.”

  Blake nodded and hurriedly rose from the abominable chair. Following Stu, she tried to focus on not walking too closely behind. People got agitated when she did that.

  “Gavin,” Stu said when they got back to the counter. “Blake is going to shadow you for the rest of your shift to get more comfortable with our menu. That okay with you?”

  “Sure,” Gavin replied as he handed change back to an elderly man.

  “Great. Good luck, Blake,” Stu said before disappearing into the back.

  Blake leaned against the counter and looked at Gavin since she’d only been able to shoot cursory glances at him before then. He was cute. Tall, blond, and broad. Though Blake was a bad judge of height at only five-two herself. But Gavin seemed really big in every way. And he looked to be in his midtwenties, which would put him somewhere around her age. “You’re hot,” she blurted out.

  Gavin looked over at her. “Thanks,” he said casually. “You are too.”

  Blake looked down at herself. The best descriptor she could come up with was curvy. She was thin, but her boobs had started growing when she was eleven and never seemed to stop, which made her look a little heavier than she was. Not that she cared. It usually led to people being pleasantly surprised when they saw her naked.

  She decided she wouldn’t mind Gavin seeing her naked. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  Gavin rang up another customer and called out the order over his shoulder. “Nope.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Nope.”

  Blake thought absently how she should be paying more attention to what Gavin was doing instead of how he looked, but looking at him was far more fascinating, especially now that he was this close to her.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  She was startled by his question, mostly because she’d started to mentally categorize him as more of a fantasy than an actual human and therefore hadn’t expected him to ask questions. “What about me what?”

  “Boyfriend? Or girlfriend?”

  She hunched forward, dropping her arms onto the counter and resting on them. “Neither.”

  “Do you have a preference between the two?” he asked.

  “Right now, my preference is decidedly male.”

  That earned her a small smile as he worked. Just then, Stu came out of the back and looked over at them. “Maybe you should pay attention to what I’m doing, and we can talk more about your preferences later,” Gavin whispered.

  Blake released a long sigh. “If we must,” she said before she straightened up and tried her best to not press her boobs into Gavin while he worked.

  Chapter Two

  “So he just left it like that? And you didn’t make a concerted effort to strip down naked and demand he bang you like a prized stud horse?”

  Blake moved her cell phone to her other ear as her best friend, Celeste, berated her for the missed opportunity. As if she hadn’t been angry enough at herself. Gavin’s shift had ended before hers, and he’d said a soft “Goodbye” before hurrying out the door. The only consolation she had was that Stu had tasked Gavin with helping her again the next day.

  “As appealing as that image is, my manager was watching me like a hawk, and he’s not my first choice for a threesome.” Blake dumped spaghetti into a pot of water and turned on the burner. “But there’s always tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. You better have a super-hot story to tell me tomorrow.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “At least you still have a job. The manager could’ve fired you, and then you’d have lost the opportunity to have what I’m imagining will be a life-changing orgasm.”

  “Why are you imagining my orgasm?”

  Celeste sighed. “Because I live a very sad life. So what’s he look like? I need more specific details.”

  “My manager?”

  “No. The guy you’re seducing.”

  “I don’t know that it counts as a seduction as much as a proposition.”

  “The end result is the same,” Celeste argued.

  “This is true. And I told you he’s hot. Probably around six feet tall, short blond hair that’s a little longer on top, wide like a football player, symmetrical features, green eyes.”

  “He sounds amazing in bed. Or on a table. Whatever surface is closest.”

  “You’re nuts,” Blake replied as she poured sauce into another pot she had on the stove.

  “I’m aware. You working at the bar tonight?”

  “Nah, I’m off because it was my first day at the coffeehouse, and I figured I’d be tired.” Blake had been working at Reed’s Bar for four years. She’d wandered in there after being fired from a clothing store nearby and had been hired after she’d broken up an almost bar fight by screaming, Can you assholes move so I can get a drink? Apparently being yelled at by a tiny white girl was somehow endearing. It was one of the few places where people seemed to like her as she was, and that made her love the place.

  “Feel like grabbing dinner?” Celeste asked.

  “I already started making something. Maybe another night.”

  “You’re cooking?”

  Blake went over to the refrigerator and took out the ketchup. “Yes, I’m cooking. Why?”

  “You can’t cook.”

  Sighing, Blake replied, “Everyone can cook, Celeste.”

  “What are you making?”

  Blake was confused but thankful Celeste didn’t continue arguing with her. “Spaghetti.”

  “What was that noise?”

  “What noise?”

  “That one. The one that sounds like you’re squeezing a bottle.”

  Blake looked at the ketchup in
her hand. “It’s a bottle.”

  “Of what?” Celeste asked, her voice getting louder.

  “Ketchup.”

  “Oh my God, Blake, are you putting ketchup on spaghetti?”

  Blake scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Whew.”

  “I’m adding it to the sauce.”

  Celeste was silent for a moment, prompting Blake to look down at her phone to see if they’d been disconnected. “Why aren’t you talking?”

  “Because I don’t know what to say.”

  “Okay. Do you want to call me back when you figure it out?” Blake offered.

  “Why are you putting ketchup in your sauce?” Celeste asked, evidently having found her words.

  “Because I didn’t have enough sauce left, so I figured since they’re both made from tomatoes, I could just combine them.”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  “The consistency is weird. I think I need to add some water.” Blake walked over to the sink and filled a cup.

  “Please don’t.”

  Blake poured the cup into the sauce and stirred.

  “You did it, didn’t you?” Celeste asked.

  “Yup. It looks better.”

  “I feel bad for your kitchen.”

  Blake heard her front door unlock before it opened and closed. When she heard feet scuffle into the kitchen, she turned. “Hi, Bethany.”

  “Ugh, that bitch is home?” Celeste groaned through the phone.

  Blake ignored the question and watched as her roommate, Bethany, walked to the refrigerator, flicking her long brown hair over her shoulder as she went.