“Shit,” Bianca echoes him as he tries and fails to blindly reclasp it while she stares at her roommate, just a few feet away dragging a massive suitcase behind her with her guitar case slung over her shoulder.
Julie’s home.
“I amsosorry. Jesus, I didn’t think . . .” Julie says, but then has to step inside because Amelia is racing across the apartment. Shealmostmakes it to the door, but Xavier bends and catches her before she can take a flying leap through Julie’s legs and out into the night.
“No, fuck,” Bianca says, sliding off the counter. Her eyes land on her tank top on the kitchen floor and she pulls it over her still-undone bra. “It’s my fault. I completely forgot you were back in LA today. Wait, are you supposed to be back in LA today?”
“It was supposed to be tomorrow, but I caught an early flight . . .” Her roommate trails off, eyeing them back and forth, Amelia curled comfortably into Xavier’s chest, Bianca still trying to catch her breath. “So the two of you, this is . . . actually a thing?”
“What?” Bianca asks. “Yeah, I mean . . . of course it is . . . why would you . . .”
“Well, it definitely wasn’t before I left,” Julie says, narrowing her eyes, even as they focus on the ring on Bianca’s left hand. “In fact, I hadn’t seen you around in months.”
Xavier’s mouth just drops open and he looks to Bianca, who has no idea what to say, so instead she just . . . comes clean.
“We’re faking it.”
Julie’s suspicious expression morphs into actual shock. “What . . . I was just . . . I was just giving you shit . . . Are you . . . are you fucking serious? Bianca?”
Letting out a heavy sigh, she nods and her roommate finally drops her bags, her mouth hanging open.
“The night we got . . . engaged,” Bianca says, lifting her hand up and motioning at the ring, “it was the night of my party and literally none of my friends showed up. Even Lexi blew it off and my parents didn’t want to make the drive . . .”
“B, you know I would have been there . . .”
“I know,” she reassures Julie. “Youwere the only one with a decent excuse, which, by the way, I need to hear every detail about the tour so far, but . . .”
“Later . . . you gotta give me more than what you just did.”
“I’ll, uh . . . just let you two talk,” Xavier says, taking a step toward the bedroom he was using before Chloe bunked in, but then he must realize that room actually belongs to Julie because he stops and turns back to them.
Bianca rolls her eyes and nods at him, which he takes the way she meant it, that he can chill in her room – their room? – for a while.
Once the door is shut behind him, Julie doesn’t hold back. “What the fuck, Bianca? You’re faking an engagement while . . . actually hooking up? Because that was a very real hookup I just walked in on.”
“I know, I know,” she admits. “Things are . . . I don’t know, out of control. We were faking, nothing happened before we agreed on that, but he’s just been here, and one thing led to another and it keeps happening.”
“Keeps happening? This wasn’t the first time?”
Cringing, she admits it. “Third time.”
“B!”
“I know, I know.”
“I thought you said you weren’t into him. He was always around before and then he just . . . wasn’t and I figured you guys had a fight or maybe one of you made a move, but maybe it didn’t go well and I didn’t want to pry, but . . .”
“But . . .”
“I always thought he was into you.”
“He’s not.”
“Didn’t look that way just now.”
“I mean, not like that. It’s . . . just physical. Things have been really tense and we both just finished our defenses and it’s all just been . . . a lot.”
It feels like bullshit, even to her, and Julie doesn’t seem to buy it either.
