Roommate romance books that start under one roof

“There must be somewhere else within budget, Tiff,” Mo says worriedly, bobbing up from where he was examining the boiler cupboard. He looks even more disheveled than usual, helped by the cobweb now hanging from his beard. “This is even worse than the one we viewed last night.”

I look round for the estate agent; he’s thankfully well out of earshot, smoking on the “balcony” (the sagging roof of the neighbor’s garage, definitely not designed for walking on).

“I’m not looking round another one of these hellholes,” Gerty says, glancing at her watch. It’s eight a.m.—she’ll need to be at Southwark Crown Court for nine. “There must be another option.”

“Surely we can fit her in at ours?” Mo suggests, for about the fifth time since Saturday.

“Honestly, would you stop with that?” Gerty snaps. “That is not a long-term solution. And she’d have to sleep standing up to even fit anywhere.” She gives me an exasperated look. “Couldn’t you have been shorter? We could have put you under the dining table if you were less than five nine.”

I make an apologetic face, but really I’d prefer to stay here than on the floor of the tiny, eye-wateringly expensive flat Mo and Gerty jointly invested in last month. They’ve never lived together before, even when we were at university. I’m concerned that it may well be the death of their friendship. Mo is messy, absentminded, and has this uncanny ability to take up an enormous amount of room despite being relatively small. Gerty, on the other hand, has spent the last three years living in a preternaturally clean flat, so perfect that it looks computer-generated. I’m not sure how the two lifestyles will overlay without West London imploding.

The main problem, though, is if I’m crashing on someone’s floor I can just as easily go back to Justin’s place. And, as of eleven p.m. Thursday, I have officially decided that I cannot be allowed that option any longer. I need to move forward, and I need to commit to somewhere so I can’t go back.

Mo rubs his forehead, sinking down into the grimy leather sofa. “Tiff, I could lend you some . . .”

“I don’t want you to lend me any money,” I say, more sharply than I mean to. “Look, I really need to get this sorted this week. It’s this place or the flatshare.”

“The bedshare, you mean,” Gerty says. “Can I ask why it has to be now? Not that I’m not delighted. Just that last I checked you were sitting tight in that flat waiting for the next time he-who-must-not-be-named deigned to drop by.”

I wince, surprised. Not at the sentiment—Mo and Gerty never liked Justin, and I know they hate that I’m still living at his place, even though he’s hardly ever there. It’s just unusual to hear Gerty bring him up directly.

“Eighth Ave, and Forty-Ninth Street,” I add, ignoring the clawing flush of awareness that I am absurd. Instead of taking the cab all the way home, I’m having the driver take me from Park Slope to a subway stop in Hell’s Kitchen, roughly two blocks from my building. It’s not that I’m particularly safety minded and don’t want this cabbie to know where I live. It’s that it’s Monday, approximately eleven thirty, and Jack will be there.

At least, he should be. Since I first saw him busking at the Fiftieth Street station nearly six months ago, he’s been there every Monday night, along with Wednesday and Thursday mornings before work, and Friday at lunchtime. Tuesday he’s gone, and I’ve never seen him there on the weekend.

Mondays are my favorite, though, because there’s an intensity in the way he crouches over his guitar, cradling it, seducing it. Music that seems to have been trapped inside all weekend long is freed, broken only by the occasional metallic tumble of pocket change dropped into the open guitar case at his feet, or the roar of an approaching train.

I don’t know what he does in the hours he’s not there. I’m also fairly certain his name isn’t Jack, but I needed to call him something other than “the busker,” and giving him a name made my obsession seem less pathetic. Sort of.

The cabbie is quiet; he isn’t even listening to talk radio or any of the other cacophonous car-filler every New Yorker gets used to. I blink away from my phone and the Instagram feed full of books and makeup tutorials, to the mess of sleet and slush on the roads. My cocktail buzz doesn’t seem to be evaporating as quickly as I’d hoped, and by the time we pull up to the curb and I pay the fare, I still have its giddy effervescence simmering in my blood.

I’ve never come to see Jack while drunk before, and it’s either a terrible or a fantastic idea. I guess we’re about to find out which.

Hitting the bottom of the stairs, I catch him tuning his guitar and stop a few feet away, studying him. With his head bowed, and in the beam of the streetlight shooting down the stairs, his light brown hair seems almost silver.

He’s suitably scruffy for our generation, but he looks clean, so I like to think he has a nice apartment and a regular, well-paying job, and does this because he loves it. He has the type of hair I can’t resist, neat and trimmed along the sides but wild and untamed on top. It looks soft, too, shiny under the lights and the kind of hair you want to curl a fist around.

A couple of hours ago, what had been my cozy and beautifully well-kept apartment for the last five years had all but crumbled down on me. Literally. And we’re not talking about a crack in the ceiling and some falling dust.

A section of my ceiling gave out and collapsed. Collapsed. Right before my eyes. Almost on top of me. Creating a hole large enough to gift me with a clear view of my upstairs neighbor Mr. Brown’s private bits as he looked down at me. And allowing me to learn something I never needed or wanted to know: my middle-aged neighbor did not wear anything beneath his robe. Not a single thing.

A sight that had been as traumatizing as having a piece of cement nearly knock you down on your way to the couch.

And now this. The break-in. After I pulled myself together enough to gather my stuff—under Mr. Brown’s careful scrutiny and still freely hanging . . . bits—and made it to the only place I could think of, given the circumstances, now someone was trying to force their way in.

What sounded like a curse in a foreign language came through, the noise against the lock resuming.

Oh, crap.

Out of the more than eight million people living in New York City, it had to be me being potentially robbed, hadn’t it?

Turning on the tips of my toes, I stepped away from the door of the studio apartment I had fled to in search of shelter and let my gaze dart around the familiar place, studying my options.

Thanks to the open plan of the apartment, there were no decent hiding spots. The only room with a door, the bathroom, didn’t even have a lock. There were no weaponizable objects, either, except for a crooked clay candleholder born from a lazy DIY Sunday and a flimsy boho standing lamp I wasn’t sure about. Escaping through a window wasn’t an option, either, considering this was a second floor and there was no fire escape.

The frustrated swearing came through more clearly now. The voice was deep, musical, and the words I did not recognize or understand were chased by a very loud huff.

Heart racing, I brought my hands to my temples in an attempt to subdue the growing panic.

This could be worse, I told myself. Whoever is out there is clearly not very good at this. At break-ins. And they don’t know I’m inside. For all they know, the apartment is empty. This gives me—

My phone pinged with a notification, the loud and sharp sound breaking the silence.

And giving my presence away.

Crap.

Wincing, I lunged for the device that rested on the kitchen island. It couldn’t have been more than three or four steps away. But my brain, which was still struggling with basic functions like, let’s say, moving three or four steps forward, miscalculated the distance, and my hip collided with a stool.

“No, no, no,” I heard the words coming out of my mouth in a whimper, one of my hands reaching out. Unsuccessfully. Because—

The stool crashed against the floor.

My eyelids fell shut. As if my brain was trying to at least spare me the sight of the mess I had made.

Silence followed the big bang, filling the room with what I knew was a false sense of calm.

I opened one eye, taking a peek in the direction of the door.

“No. What I mean is I’m sure he has a good excuse, because last night when I called and asked him to help you, he didn’t even hesitate before saying yes. Have you tried calling him this morning?”

“Ha! Have I tried calling him?! Only fifteen times. It went to voicemail all of those times. I’m sorry to inform you, Lucy, but your brother is a class-A jerk, and I was right not to trust him.”

What I don’t admit to Lucy is that this is my own fault for ever letting myself rely on a man who would love nothing more than to ruin my life. I can’t really blame him, though, because the feeling is mutual. Believe me, if there was literally anyone else in the world I could ask to pose as my fake fiancé, I would. I even asked a random guy in the grocery store last night, but oddly enough, he said no. Actually, it wasn’t so much no as it was him speed walking away from me clutching his bottle of mustard.

I was forced to rely on Drew because I was out of time and options, and that’s a terrifying place to be in life.

Last night, my grandaddy (the man who raised me) called to let me know he was surprising me and coming for a weekend visit in the morning (which is now). I would normally be ecstatic about a chance to see my favorite human in the world, but that is not the case when I’m about to be found out as a big fat pregnant liar. Liar, liar, maternity pants on fire!

I didn’t even have a good reason to lie to my grandaddy—he’s never made me feel like I needed to be someone I’m not in order to have his love. But for some reason, when I had to call and tell him I was pregnant, I panicked and said I was also getting married.

Now, in all fairness, I also thought I would be getting married.