The Temporary Roomie (It Happened in Nashville 2)

So now, it’s one week and one day until the fundraiser I have to attend with him, and I’m determined to yank the rug out from under whatever this tension is between us. I can’t let any friendly feelings toward Drew get in the way of the revenge I have planned for the night of the event.

Lucy gets in position behind me on the floor, and I lean back against her. She hovers her hands above my head, wiggling her fingers in a musical fashion. She immediately starts giggling.

“Don’t! You can’t laugh, Lucy. You’ll give us away!”

“This is why I didn’t want to do this with you. I can’t lie. I’m going to burst out laughing immediately.”

I look up at her. “Okay, I read an article about improv the other day, and it said if you feel like laughing on stage, think of a solid color and nothing else. Apparently, it helps.”

Lucy nods once. “Got it. Wait, this isn’t working. Yellow is making me want to laugh more.”

“Okay, think of red.”

A weird laugh gurgles in her throat. “So much worse! Gosh, red is a hilarious color.”

She’s right. Red is so freaking funny. Probably because we are draped in the color in the most hilarious fashion possible. We’re going to blow it. I can feel it. I’ve never been good at keeping a straight face, and everyone knows Lucy isn’t good at it either, so we’re doomed. Drew is going to walk in, and I’m going to blurt, THIS IS ALL A JOKE! HA—GOTCHA!

Except we hear the rattle of the door in the kitchen, and suddenly, I don’t feel like laughing. I want to throw up. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’m trying to accomplish with this prank. All the others were to get under his skin, to annoy him. This one feels different. It feels…no, never mind. Not letting myself go there. I’m pranking Drew so when he overreacts and loses it, I will be reminded of why I don’t like him. Yeah, that’s it. I’m doing this to put him back in the obnoxious category of my brain.

We hear the door open. Drew steps inside the kitchen and tosses his keys down. Every sound feels sharp and jarring. I know he hasn’t seen us yet because we are facing the opening that leads from the living room to the kitchen and we haven’t seen Drew’s face. Lucy nudges me in the side and begins making a loud ommmm meditating sound. Showtime.

As expected, Drew’s head pops around the corner, brows quirked up and an incredulous look on his face as he takes in Lucy and me. “What the hell did I just walk in on?” he asks, the sound of his voice nearly startling me after three days of silence. He fully steps in the room, looking much too sexy in his black scrubs and dark two-day-old stubble lining his jaw. Forget about Zac Efron—Drew is the one who looks delicious.

Miraculously, I don’t bust up laughing when I imagine what Lucy and I look like from his point of view. Her fingers are still hovering over my head looking like she’s sprinkling me with pixie dust, and she and I are both dressed in these super creepy, all red cotton gown-drape things I found on Amazon. They completely swallow us whole and make us look like we belong in an even scarier version of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Lucy continues to ommmm like we rehearsed as I deliver my line. “Not that I owe you any explanations, but Lucy got certified earlier this week to be my birth guru. We are centering ourselves in preparation for the birth.”

“Exactly,” Lucy says, using a snooty voice I’ve never heard from her before. “Now scram, Drew. I need Jessie to concentrate. According to my training, it’s important that the spiritual waves we are producing between Jessie and the baby not get interrupted by outside forces.”

Green. Black. Orange. Burgundy—oh gosh, it’s not working I’m thinking of all the colors and it’s taking everything in me not to look in Drew’s horrified eyes and lose it laughing.

“I’m sorry—just one second.” He holds up his finger. “Did you say…birth guru?”

“Mmhmm.” That’s all I can manage. If I open my mouth, an eruption of laughter will spill out.

Luckily, Lucy can sense my distress and takes over in a surprisingly heroic way. “Yes, you heard correctly. Thanks to gurusofbirth.net, I am now certified to perform Jessie’s spiritual birth.”

Drew smells something fishy and crosses his arms, squinting his eyes. “What is it you’re doing there with your hands?”

“Oh, this,” Lucy says in her zen voice as she continues to sprinkle me. “This is goddess birth energy. Only the birth guru can fully harness its powers, but I am choosing to bestow it on Jessie.”

“Uh-huh. And what does it do?”

Lucy lifts her nose higher in the air. “By sprinkling it on the top of Jessie’s head, it flows through her entire being and connects with the unborn child, signaling to it that the end of gestation is near.”

Oh, she’s good. That was all completely ad-libbed. Bravo, Lucy. You missed your calling.

Drew’s lips are parted, but he’s looking like he has no idea where to begin. Finally, he takes his hand and runs it over his face. I can’t tell if he’s believing this performance or not.

“And what’s with the red getups? Why are you both wearing those?”

Feeling like I have a good handle on my amusement, I brave a response, putting on my most annoyed expression. “I knew we should have done this while you were gone! Lucy, I told you your brother would be nothing but judgmental.” I sit up, and Lucy assists me. “These are the ritual garments, Andrew. They are meant to strip away anxiety and clothe me in honesty and trust in my body. They will protect me from feeling any pain during labor.”

You know those cartoon characters that, when angry, their heads pop off and spin in a circle with smoke spewing out of their ears? Yeah, that’s not Drew. He looks more zen than Lucy and I are. In fact, his super-calm is sort of freaking me out.

“Protect you from…” He breaks off, his expression mystified. His eyes move to Lucy. “And you are now a certified…”

“Birth guru,” she finishes for him. “And, yes, I am. I was skeptical when Jessie first told me about it, but after I watched all the YouTube videos, I was sold.”