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She seems friendly.

Lily looks at her, trying to make small talk. “What do you do?”

“I’m currently unemployed. Oh, actually, I think I do some part-time influencer stuff too,” she mutters slowly, sounding incredibly bored with Lily.

Not so friendly now, is she?

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah, nicer than you could ever be. Now do you, by chance, want to see my illegal moonshine cellar?”

“What?” Lily gasps as if she is a lawful person herself.

“Moonshine, honey, an old-fashioned, self-brewed type of alcohol. Do you, by any chance, know what alcohol is?”

“You don’t have to be mean,” Lily chides her.

“And you don’t have to be dumb.”

“Skank.” Lily hisses.

“Tart,” the trophy wife says back softly, ever demure and elegant.

As they stare at the matte black rock atop the glossy white one, contemplating the pains of life, Alana suddenly speaks. “I hate entertaining my husband’s guests,” she says, “especially the annoying ones.”



“We’re spending the weekend here,” Every explains to Lily once she comes back from a trip to the haunting moonshine cellar. She swears she saw a ghost lurking in there.

Lily Linnea Linearline pouts, undeniably pissed. A weekend with that potentially main-character bitch, the trophy wife Alana. “And have you asked me? What if I wanna go back to my ranch house? To my momma?”

“There ain’t nothing good in that slum of yours, sugartits. And I bet your momma is currently screaming the ranch down now, after the abandonment by her thirty-first boyfriend.”

Lily stares at him, confused, her innocent doe eyes squinted in thought. “How’d you ever know that? You’re a spy, you said, but spies only know important secrets.”

“I’m a stalker too, girly. I’ve got all your information in a file in my iPad Air.”

“As a Words file, I assume?”

“Nah, as a Notes file.”

“Oh, that’s kinda informal.” Lily shakes her head for no absolute reason, making her messy bun even messier.

“You’re my girlfriend. Of course I don’t have to be formal with you.” Every smirks, his bright teeth glimmering in the crystal chandelier light.



“Every,” she starts, waking up on the twin bed parallel to his the next morning. They are in a blue-walled room with a sole playboy poster plastered on the high ceiling and some more glued around the room. Nice. This is Every the Man-Child’s room, and it shows.

“Yes, Lily,” he replies groggily.

“I think I love you now.”

“Wait, what? That’s so fucking random,” he shouts, sitting up, now fully awake. “But as the cold-hearted main character, the black cat female lead, you are supposed to say that only at the third-act breakup, after ninety-five percent of the book, when the golden retriever male lead gets gravely injured in a gunfight with the villain who kidnaps his love interest.”

“Well, I’m not a cold-hearted main character.”

“But you’re the black cat heroine,” he repeats.