Harper possessed a rare talent - she could blend two worlds that the universe swore could never coexist: her humdrum life as an accountant by day with her steamy famous alter ego crafting erotic tales online by night.
But her double life unravels in...
❝Villainous kitty queen, she's got tricks up her sleeve And I got a few up mine❞
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Dinner parties terrified me. Those two things separately, I could handle, but together? They were a double threat.
I didn't get the idea of dinner parties in the first place. The fancy table settings, the small talk, the anxiety-inducing decision of which fork to use—none of it made any sense to me. And I was fairly certain that if Emily Post, the queen of etiquette, was still around, she'd take one look at how I handled these things and spontaneously combust into a tragic second death.
Explaining that to EJ did me no good. I even went so far as to create a little doodle of Emily Post's reaction to my handling the affair. All it did was incite a giggle from Harper who immediately erased the grin off her face when I shot her a murderous glare.
Why I needed to tag along for a party at her former boss's place, I did not know, but EJ made it sound like the world would disintegrate without my presence.
"You need to get out of your little man hole and meet people, A," he'd prattled on the phone. "Get your head out of the ground, meet your fellow humans, be inspired, and then try painting. I bet you, you could put the Mona Lisa to shame."
That was a stretch but his enthusiasm had convinced me. Well, that and the small smiles that Harper had started to give me more of these days.
Our routines had become set in stone and in a way that, not only helped avoid incidents of gnashing our teeth at each other, but actually blended together pretty well.
Harper had agreed on a bathroom swap with me. I had my morning showers early in the guest bathroom and she got to soak in her little tub with fancy little bath essentials while I was out on my run. I made breakfast and dinner for the both of us on the days she headed out for interviews and she compensated (poorly, I might add) on the days she didn't.
Our deal to keep the apartment a Taylor-free zone was broken, thanks to her hearing me mumble the tune to Mean while making dinner one night. It was all the cue she needed to blast the entire album and give me an innocent, "But don't you want it, deep deep down?"
I'd let her take the win.
Like that, life continued for a while. Calling it peaceful might be a stretch given the occasional death glares we both shot each other when something death-glare-worthy conspired.
Rather, the apartment was officially no man's land. A temporary calm before whatever storm would happen next.
And it did happen. In the form of a forced upon dinner party.
I stared at myself in the mirror, taking in the reflection of the guy staring back at me like a cornered cat.
My shaggy black hair had been tamed, trimmed, and molded into submission, making me look like a president's well-groomed son—well, except for those unruly curls that still had a mind of their own at the ends.
