Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Parker

Unicorn’s voice was too happy for this early in the morning.

“Good morning, Parker!”

I rolled over and pulled the pillow over my head. “I’m dead—”

“You aren’t dead, sleepyhead. Come on! Morning miracle time!”

“Someone broke in and strangled me to death.”

“Well, the morning miracle is revitalizing. It’ll bring some life back into you.”

“I can’t believe even dying doesn’t get me out of this,” I muttered, dragging myself out of bed and fumbling with my glasses. When I slumped out of the bedroom, though, finding myself face-to-face with Cass in a towel sure as hell worked to wake me up.

Christ, though, her legs. And shoulders. And… well… body. I blinked.

“You certainly aren’t wearing much,” I said.

“I just got out of the shower, scruff-ball. Your turn.”

“Scruff-ball?”

She grinned. “I know scruffy is your aesthetic, and I’m positive you’re proud to own it. Now go get your scruffy self in the shower and put on some workout clothes, because we’re getting physical today.”

I would have loved to get physical with her. God, it should not have been legal for her to tell me to do things in a towel. I couldn’t say no. “I’m passing on the physical activity part.”

“Oh, no you aren’t, Scruffy,” she laughed, heading for her bedroom. “You’ve got fifteen minutes! See you in the living room! I redecorated it for the recording!”

“Son of a…” I muttered to myself as I dragged myself out of the bedroom, sneaking a peek at the living room on my way to the shower. Sure enough, she’d moved nearly all the furniture, arranging a space near the window with her pastel décor along one wall, photography lights set up on the sides, and a camera in front. A driftwood sign read Today’s your day to be who you’re meant to be, which just sounded like if you asked a drunk person to come up with something philosophical in two seconds.

I thought it was bad just seeing what she did to my living room. Things got worse when she sat me down in front of the camera.

“We’re going to start with an introduction,” she said, her back to me as she fiddled with the camera settings. The morning air was cold and unusually crisp, and it smelled like Unicorn’s sweet-apple scented beauty products—she always smelled like a walking apple farm. I tried not to pay attention to the musculature of her shoulder blades under her racerback shirt. “I want you to just be natural, okay? Just be like you’re hanging out with your bestie.”

“I do not hang out with anyone who uses the term bestie.”

She shot me a grin over her shoulder. “You hang out with me. Come on. We’re friends, right?”

“Ugh. Sure,” I sighed. “Only because being enemies sounds like too much work.”

“Attagirl.” She stepped back from the camera, dropping onto her sunshine yellow yoga mat next to the sky blue one she supplied me with, and she put her hands up. “Okay. We’re recording, but I’m cutting the beginning out, so let’s just start when we’re ready.”

“Hi, I’m Parker, I don’t want to be here, let’s start.”

“Not like that.” She turned back to the camera, taking a long breath, before she put on the Insta girl smile. “Hey guys! Thanks so much for checking out my latest video. I’m so excited to share this announcement with you—”

“You’re excited every time you breathe oxygen.”

She laughed, waving me off. “Parker. Don’t interrupt me. So,” she said, turning back to the camera, “as you can see, I’m joined today by the one, the only, my amazing new roommate Parker! Say hi, Parker.”

“No.”

She shrugged. “Parker’s not a morning person yet, but we’ll get her there.”

“You will not.”

“This is going to be her first morning-miracle routine, and she was good enough to share it with all the rest of us. You guys, I love Parker. She’s so funny.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t want compliments, I want coffee. And then compliments.”

“You’ll get coffee. And you’ll be complimenting yourself internally all day after you start a day by embracing the magic there in every morning.”

“I promise you, all I’ll be thinking all morning will still just be about when I get my next meal.”

“Living with Parker has been amazing—”

“For one of us.”

She didn’t look away from the camera. “And I think you guys are going to love her too. All right! Let’s get started. Parker, we’re going to start with my absolute favorite part, because I believe in strong beginnings.”

“Is that why you stammered and restarted a word three times the first time you spoke to me?”

She flipped like a switch, going suddenly red and scrunching up her face. “I—well—that—you remember that?”

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

“It was six months ago!” She clasped a hand over her mouth, giving me a wide-eyed look.

“You assume I forget everything the second after it happens.”

“Well, no, but… here I was hoping that was so embarrassing that the universe would kindly wipe it from everyone’s memories,” she mumbled, looking out the window.

She was too much fun to rile up like this. There was something in the way she looked at me—maybe it was admiration, maybe it was some kind of crush. I didn’t deal well with people having crushes on me, but with Unicorn being a hopeless baby-gay, I could see it just in a way of being enamored with a loud-and-proud lesbian.

There was no doubt she was cute. And attractive. I did not date—not for my life. But there was nothing wrong with a little flirting between lesbian roommates.

“You wanted to erase our first meeting,” I said, turning back to the camera. “Here I thought what we had was special.”

“Oh—I don’t mean it like that, it’s so special, I mean—er—”

“How special?”

She cleared her throat. “We’re cutting this little interlude out, you know that, right?”

“Of course. Keeping our very special relationship behind closed doors.”

“Don’t say things like that, I blush easily and I can’t be doing that on camera.”

“I’ll wait until you’re all hot and sweaty from getting physical before I make comments then.”

She cleared her throat. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you, Scruffy?”

“Not for a million dollars.” I paused. “Actually… I’d do it for a million dollars. I like money.”

“Well, you’re doing this for the exposure, so get with it.”

“Ugh, influencers.”

But I let Cass take the time to lose the red cheeks and restart with her big grin, telling me to start with her favorite exercise, which turned out to be standing in mountain pose with our eyes closed repeating affirmations.

“Repeat after me,” she said. “I am ready to make today incredible.”

“Why is it called mountain pose? I’m standing vertically. Mountains are sloped.”

“That was pretty close, but let’s try again. I am ready to make today incredible.”

“I’m ready to go right back to bed after this.”

“Parker.” I heard the laugh in her voice even with my eyes closed. “I’m ready to make today incredible.”

“I’m ready to make today an incredible day for going back to bed.”

I should have been more difficult and stretched it out for longer, though, because after that found me in warrior pose, which was much more aptly named, because just like a medieval warrior, every part of me hurt and I wasn’t sure if I was dying. I wobbled, falling against Cass three separate times, but every time she was rock-solid and didn’t even budge when I tipped against her, just righting me with her hands on my shoulders.

“You’re doing great,” she said. “See, you guys, we all struggle sometimes!” she called to the camera, and I scowled.

“Oh, that’s why I’m here? To make people feel better about themselves?”

She laughed. “You’re doing a great job of it.”

“That was a very clever insult disguised as a compliment.”

“Thank you. Arms up, Parker!”

“They don’t go up for that long!”

She put her hands on my arms and lifted them up, and I wheezed. How was it that I couldn’t feel my arms, but they still hurt?

“Warrior pose invites alertness into our days,” she said. “This keeps us nimble, and ready to spring at every opportunity.”

“I want to die,” I said.

“Parker’s doing great.” She spoke to the camera. I did too.

“Parker’s dying,” I said.

“How many of you guys thought you were dying the first time you held warrior one for this long? Answer in the comments, we’d love to hear your stories of bumpy first times!”

“Speak for yourself. I’m getting enough story about struggling from myself right now.”

She beamed. “Parker’s having so much more fun than you think. Complaining is her love language.”

“Okay, it is, but it’s also my hate language,” I said, before my thigh gave in and I collapsed on Cassie again. When she righted me back into warrior pose instead of onto a hospital bed where I belonged, I wanted to cry.

After the yoga postures, we collapsed onto the floor, and I dragged myself off the mat.

“Great,” I wheezed. “Great morning miracle. So inspired by the miracle I’m going to go meet the Creator now. Thanks for having me.”

“Parker.” She put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back onto my mat. “We’re not done, scruff-ball. Get back on the mat. We’re doing silent meditation in corpse pose.”

“Oh. Corpse pose. Great. No acting required.”

Turned out corpse pose wasn’t that bad—we just lay on our backs, and I gasped for breath while Cass breathed long and slow next to me. But then she told me to shut my eyes and focus on just the feeling of my own breath in my stomach, and if my understanding of biology wasn’t mistaken—which it usually was, to be fair—I breathed in my lungs. The stomach getting involved in breathing felt like a random stranger wandering into a wedding where nobody knew him and drinking the alcohol, and given the state my breath was in, there wasn’t much alcohol left for the guy to take.

“Do you spend every morning just trying to remember how to breathe?” I said.

She turned her head to look at me. “We’re meditating, Parker.”

“Oh, fuck meditation. Are we supposed to be getting inner peace or something like that?”

“Of course. We dive into sensation and feel the full extent of our thoughts, and we reach deep spiritual peace within the depths of our own minds.”

“Yeah, every word of what you just said was bullshit.”

She nudged my arm with her elbow. “Come on, Parker. Let’s try a mantra. I breathe in peace…”

“I breathe in oxygen, like a normal human being.”

“Oxygen is, like, full of peace.”

“It’s full of nitrogen, strangely. Carbon dioxide…”

“Argon, too.”

I turned my head to her. “Why do you know that?”

“Close your eyes and breathe, scruff-ball.”

Meditation sucked. The first minute or so was relaxing. The next thousand, or so it felt like, were just my thoughts wheeling off like they were falling down a mountain, tumbling and picking up speed and gathering more rocks and debris as they went. And my ass hurt on the mat after a while.

“This is a shitty miracle.”

She laughed. “It’s always hard the first few times, isn’t it, guys?”

“Ugh, I forgot the guys were there.”

“Say hi to everyone, Parker.”

“I refuse.”

After we wrapped up meditation and set an intention for the day—which for me was just I’m going to get back into bed the second this is done—Cass waved bye to the camera before she shut it off and dropped her arms by her sides, looking at me with the happiest expression on her face. I fell onto my back too, giving her my least happy expression.

“That was amazing,” she said.

“I’d rather be buried alive than do that again, but I guess in a literal sense, that is amazing.”

She beamed. “Did you have fun?”

“Do you really need to ask, dude?” I deadpanned.

“You’ll come around on it.”

“I think the only benefit of all this was seeing a girl walk around my apartment half-naked.”

She blinked fast, a flush spreading over her face. “Oh,” she said. “Uh… I’m glad you like it?”

“Yeah, you’d be good at thirst-trapping.”

She cleared her throat. “Well, I’m sure you’d be an expert in that.”

“Finding girls hot? You have no idea, dude.”

“Thanks for joining me. Everyone’s going to love it.”

I sat up, scratching my head. “Now you can tell them in all the future ones that I’m just off the camera doing the morning miracle ritual too, right?”

“You’re not running away from me that easily, scruff-ball,” she laughed. “You’re stuck with me now.”

“Ugh. I should have teamed up with, like… a lingerie model or something instead. At least that’d be better to watch.”

She put a finger to her chin. “I’ve done plenty of modeling. I could give it a try. But you’d have to join me.”

“Ugh. Once again, getting a girl half-naked is great but only makes up for so much.” Although if it was watching Cass make poses in lingerie, it would definitely help. I shook off the image. “I’m going back to bed,” I said, stumbling to my feet.

“I’ve got a shift at Hummingbird starting in an hour, so I guess I’ll see you after?”

I trudged off towards the bedroom. “I’m making rounds at cafés tonight. Just text me once you’re done and I’ll tell you where I’m at, you can join me there.”

Cass was right, unfortunately. People loved watching me suffer.

I only managed another hour and a half of sleep before I woke up with sunshine on my face in vertical stripes through the blinds, faint chatter from the restaurant downstairs. I stumbled into the kitchen, where a tray of focaccia had a little sticky note with Unicorn’s impossibly good handwriting saying to help myself, and I took a plateful before dropping onto the couch to check my phone.

Sure enough, the thing was exploding. I had so many texts coming in on vibrate I could have gotten off on the phone, and I found Unicorn’s Instagram page bursting with comments. It was her most-liked post in months, the introduction and highlights reel where, sure enough, Cass and I sat side-by-side on our yoga mats, with me looking like I was waiting for death.

I LOVE Parker! So funny and SO relatable, one of the comments said. Parker is me every time I’m doing the routine lolol, another one said. Parker is so cute, another one said, with heart-eye emojis. I scowled at that one. When gay girls called me cute, I ate it up. When straight girls called me cute, they meant it like they’d call their handbag-poodle cute.

But most unexpected was seeing my sister Sutton texting me with, OMG are you seriously roommates with Cassie Peterson? i’m so jealous omfg

Seriously? My bratty sister and Unicorn was the crossover I didn’t need. I sank back into the sofa, texting back. First off, it’s nothing to be jealous of. She gets up at five in the morning singing every day. Second off, you’re fourteen, and that f doesn’t belong in your vocabulary. Third off, since when were you a ‘Drean lifestyle stan?

She was typing back immediately. fourteen is old enough to know the fucking f-word, parker. She was typing again right away. i follow lots of influencers. Cassie’s so cool. send me something she’s signed!

I shook my head. No way I’m admitting I’m related to you, dude. I have appearances to maintain, especially around girls. And I’m going to tell Mom you’re saying fuck in your texts.

Her reply came in an instant. parker pleeeaaasseeee my friends will be SO JEALOUS

I sighed. You don’t actually want it, you just want to make your friends jealous.

It didn’t shake her. please please please please please

God, what were sisters good for? I rubbed my forehead. okay okay okay shut the fuck up I’ll send you a piece of trash she’s signed.

how come you can say fuck but I can’t??

I stuffed my mouth full of focaccia. Not bad, actually. Unicorn wasn’t all bad to have around. Hot and good at cooking made for a good combination. because I’m eleven years older than you, dude.

okay whatever jackass. i’ll take literally anything she’s signed, touched, or so much as breathed on. i’ll be able to scalp it.

I sighed. You’re taking after me, and I mean that as the worst possible insult there is.

Was I seriously busting my ass trying to make Express a success so I could take care of that bratty sister?

I shoved more food into my mouth, desperate to distract myself from the flood of notifications coming in.