My Roomate's Toxic Ex

You will find many similarities in this story to The Device which I really enjoyed. It inspired me to make a version of my own. The original version (especially the branch by Sebo) is MUCH better than what I have written. Credit where credit is due!

---

It was DONE.

Finally, completely, gloriously done.

I sat cross-legged on our living room rug on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by the wreckage of eight months of nights and weekends: a soldering iron cooling on a ceramic tile, a nest of stripped copper wire, a row of empty cold brew cans, and a legal pad covered in equations so dense that even I had to squint at some of them. Outside the bay window, the fog was rolling down the street the way it did every afternoon in the Sunset, gray and soft.

In my hands was MUSE.

The Memory and Understanding Synaptic Enhancer. A matte-black wand about the length of a lipstick tube, with a flat contact pad at one end. You pressed the pad to the hollow of your throat and spoke, and MUSE turned your voice into a low-frequency signal that slipped past the brain's critical filters and wrote straight into long-term memory. No studying, no flashcards, no repetition. You said it once, and the listener knew it.

Teach a kid fractions in thirty seconds. Teach a stroke patient to walk again. Teach anyone anything.

I'd tested it on myself the night before, obviously. Responsible science. At three in the morning, very tired and very proud of myself, I'd pressed it to my throat and said, "My left sock is a small, beloved hamster."

Then I spent twenty minutes curled up on this rug, cradling my own foot and crying because Mr. Whiskers looked cold.

When it finally wore off enough for me to notice I was tucking a blanket around a tube sock, I wrote SIGNAL STRENGTH TOO HIGH on the legal pad and went to bed.

So, some calibration issues. But it worked.

"Garlic," I said, holding MUSE up to the window. "We did it."

Garlic was draped over the arm of the couch like a dropped bag of oranges. He opened one eye, considered the announcement, and chirped.

He was eighteen pounds of orange tabby, at least half of it belly, and he was the best thing in our apartment. He slept in the bathroom sink. He chirped instead of meowing, like a smoke detector with a low battery. He sat in a loaf so tight his legs disappeared. Every morning, he brought Olivia a present from his secret hoard (a hair tie, a bottle cap, once an AirPod we'd been hunting for three weeks) and laid it on her pillow with total solemnity, like a knight presenting a dragon's head. He loved everyone. Strangers, delivery guys, the vet who took his temperature. He even liked Derek, which was his only real flaw.

He rolled onto his back and showed me his enormous fluffy stomach. It was a trap. I scratched it anyway. He wrapped all four legs around my arm and bit me, gently.

"Thank you for your support," I told him.

I set MUSE down carefully on the coffee table, well out of paw range. Garlic had a thing for small objects, and I wasn't about to let my career end up behind the fridge next to Olivia's AirPod.

Then I stretched, arms over my head, and my spine popped in four places.

All-nighters over a circuit board did that to you. It was worse when you were five-two and built the way I was. My sports bra straps had been digging into my shoulders since breakfast, and my lower back had been aching since college. My mom had the same figure and the same back, and she used to poke me between the shoulder blades and tell me to stand up straight, like it was a moral issue. It wasn't. It was physics. A lot of weight hanging off the front of a small frame.

I tugged my hoodie down over my knees. It was my oldest Caltech one, a men's large, faded from orange to a sad salmon color, long enough to cover most of my bike shorts. I wore it almost everywhere. At the lab, it meant that when I presented my research, the men in the room listened to what I was saying instead of staring at my chest while I said it. Mostly.

My parents had the same hoodie framed on the wall of their dry cleaners in Irvine, next to my diploma and a blown-up photo of me in my graduation gown. They'd come over from Seoul with two suitcases and a cousin's phone number and opened that shop when I was three. I grew up doing homework behind the counter, breathing in steam and starch, and spending Saturday mornings at Korean school, where I was the worst in my class at spelling and the best at arguing. Now every customer who came in with a shirt got the same speech from my dad: Our daughter. Caltech. Neuroscience. She's going to cure Alzheimer's.

On Monday, I was presenting MUSE to Dr. Hammond and the rest of the lab. In my first week, he'd called my proposal "ambitious, the way toddlers are ambitious." I'd been looking forward to his face for six months.

"Raaach!"

Olivia's voice drifted down the hall, pitched high with the particular panic of someone who'd just noticed what time it was.

"Living room."

"I need you. Fashion emergency."

She appeared in the hallway doorway in a towel.

Just a towel. One of our big white bath sheets, tucked under her arms and slowly losing.

Olivia Grant was a real redhead. Copper curls that fell past her shoulders in a cloud she was always blowing out of her face, pale skin, big green eyes behind round tortoiseshell glasses, and freckles everywhere. Across her nose and cheeks, down her neck, over her shoulders and arms. In a towel, it was obvious they kept going.

The towel was stretched tight across her chest, and every time she breathed, the soft tops of her tits swelled up over the edge of it, freckled and pink from the shower. The terry cloth cinched in at her waist and then had to flare out to make it over her hips, and it ended a couple of inches below the curve of her ass. Water was dripping from her curls down her neck and between her breasts. She had three dresses over one arm and a look of complete despair on her face.

"Audrey's dinner is in an hour," she said, "and I have nothing to wear."

"You have three things right there."

"I have three wrong things." She held them up one by one. "Too church. Too funeral. Too trying."

"Put them on. I'll judge."

She vanished into her room. I heard drawers, the soft wet thump of the towel hitting the floor, and a muffled "where are my glasses, oh, they're on my face." Then she came back out in a black lace bra and matching panties, with the first dress slung over her shoulder, apparently forgotten.

"Okay, first," she said, planting her hands on her hips. "Is this bra too much? Like, can you see it through a dress?"

I looked.

It was sheer, delicate black lace, cupping her small, round tits and lifting them high, her nipples dark pink shadows behind the pattern. A spray of freckles crossed her chest. Her stomach was soft and pale, with a little curve below her belly button that she hated and I'd always thought was sweet. The panties were cut high on her hips and cheeky in the back, a small black triangle that disappeared between the full, freckled curves of her ass when she turned to look over her shoulder into the hallway mirror.

"Since when do you own lace?" I said.

Olivia went pink from her face all the way down to her chest. "Since this week. Audrey made me buy it. She says I need to reclaim my body."

"Audrey's right."

"Audrey's always right. It's her worst quality." She tugged the first dress over her head. Navy, high-necked, long-sleeved. She turned in a circle. "Thoughts?"

"Church."

She groaned and pulled it back off, arms over her head, her tits bouncing as she fought her way out of the sleeves. The second dress was black and floor-length, and we both said "funeral" at the same time. Off it came.

"Fine," she muttered. "The green one."

She shimmied into it, tugging it down over her hips. Emerald, wrap-front, cinched at the waist. The neckline dipped low enough to show the freckled valley between her breasts. The hem stopped high on her thighs, and the fabric pulled snug across her ass every time she moved. It made her hair look like it was on fire and her eyes look about five shades greener.

"Liv," I said. "That's the one."

"Is it too trying?" She pulled the neckline up. It slid right back down.

"You look hot. Leave it."

She stood in front of the hallway mirror for a long moment, turning side to side, chewing her lip.

And I watched something happen on her face that I hadn't seen in a long time. She looked at herself, and she didn't flinch.

Two weeks ago, she couldn't do that.

"Okay," she said softly. "Yeah. Thanks, Rach."

Then she turned around and squinted at me. "Now you."

"No."

"Rachel Kim."

"I'm wearing the hoodie."

"You are not wearing that hoodie to Audrey's."

"I'm not going to Audrey's. I'm finishing the calibration tables."

Olivia dropped onto the couch next to me. The emerald dress rode up her thighs, and she didn't bother fixing it. Garlic poured himself out of his loaf and into her lap.

"You've been finishing calibration tables for eight months," she said, scratching under his chin. He purred so loudly the cushion vibrated. "You have the best boobs in our entire friend group, and you dress like a substitute teacher who's given up."

"They're a structural liability."

"They're a national treasure." She grabbed the hem of my hoodie with both hands. "Let me see."

"Olivia—"

She yanked it up to my collarbones.

My tits came with it, bouncing loose in my plain gray sports bra, heavy and full and very much not contained. Olivia gasped. I squeaked, slapped her hands away, and dragged the hoodie back down, my whole face burning.

"Oh my God," Olivia said, delighted. "I forgot. Rach, you're like a pocket pinup. Why do you hide all that?"

"Because I don't want men at work talking to my chest while I'm explaining my thesis."

"Okay, fair," she said. "But you're not at work."

"I'm always at work."

"That's the problem." She sighed, and then her eyes slid past me to the coffee table and went wide. "Wait. Is that... is it done?"

I couldn't stop the grin. "It's done."

"Shut up." She leaned forward, careful not to touch it. Last year she'd picked up one of my prototypes and nearly fried the board with a static shock, and she hadn't forgotten. "Does it work?"

"It works really well."

"How well?"

I told her about Mr. Whiskers.

She laughed so hard she had to take off her glasses and wipe her eyes. She slid sideways onto the cushions, still laughing, her dress riding up over her hip so the black lace showed. Garlic gave her a look of deep betrayal and moved to the windowsill.

"You were crying over your foot," she wheezed.

"He looked cold."

That set her off again. I sat there and watched my best friend laugh, really laugh, the kind that came from her stomach and turned her face pink and made her snort. Something warm and relieved settled in my chest.

Two weeks ago, she couldn't do that either.

---

Olivia and I had been best friends since second grade in San Diego. She was the quiet redhead who read Harry Potter on the bench at recess, and I was the loud kid who wanted to know how the swing set worked. I sat down next to her and asked if she knew how many bones were in the human hand. She didn't, but she had a theory involving elves, and that was that. Twenty years of sleepovers, braces, bad haircuts, and Mario Kart tournaments that ended in tears.

College split us up. I went to Caltech for neuroscience, then grad school, then a research job at a neurotech lab in Mission Bay. Olivia went to UC Santa Cruz for library science and spent four years happily buried in archives and Final Fantasy. When I got the job offer, she'd already been in San Francisco for a year, working at a branch library and living in a rent-controlled two-bedroom in the Sunset. She texted me ROOMMATES??? about four seconds after I told her.

So I moved up the coast expecting to find my best friend exactly how I'd left her.

Instead, I found her with Derek.

Derek Hale was six-foot-two and wore sunglasses indoors. He had a Dogecoin tattoo on his forearm and still hadn't sold. He listened to a podcast called Alpha Grindset while he slept, "for subconscious gains." The first time we met, he asked what I did, and when I said neuroscience, he asked if that was "like a nurse thing."

I might have found him funny if he hadn't been dating my best friend.

Olivia, who'd read every Game of Thrones book three times, who'd cried at the Red Wedding three times, the last time while just reading the wiki, who could beat anyone at Smash and had the dirtiest sense of humor of anyone I knew once she got comfortable, had been shrinking.

She stopped gaming because Derek said it was for virgins. She packed her books into boxes because he said the shelves made the apartment look like a nerd lived there. She stopped coming to Audrey's game nights. She stopped wearing her hoodies. She started eating lunch alone in her car.

Then there were the texts.

I saw the first one by accident. Her phone lit up on the kitchen counter while she was in the shower, and the preview said: u look like a fat cow in that dress. be grateful anyone wants to fuck u

I stared at it for a long time.

Once I started paying attention, I saw them everywhere. Ur lucky I put up with u. Nobody else wants a fat ginger nerd. If u go to that game night dont bother coming home.

Six months in, she talked him into couples counseling with a therapist in Los Angeles named Lindsey Hart, who did video sessions on Thursday nights. Derek agreed because he assumed the therapist would side with him. For three sessions, Lindsey mostly listened. On the fourth, with Derek sitting right there next to Olivia on the couch, she folded her hands, looked into the camera, and said in a warm, steady voice:

"Olivia, sweetie, I don't think Derek is a good partner for you."

Derek laughed. He thought she was being nice.

The rest of us knew what it meant. A licensed professional had politely called him an asshole on camera.

That was the crack. Audrey and I did the rest. Two weeks ago, we sat Olivia down on this couch with a printed timeline I'd built in a spreadsheet: every text, every lie, every girl he'd been messaging behind her back, every game night he'd made her skip. Audrey held one of her hands and I held the other, and we went through it page by page.

Olivia cried for three hours. Then she blocked him on everything, Audrey ordered two pizzas, and the three of us fell asleep on the living room floor with Garlic sprawled across Olivia's stomach.

Since then, slowly, she'd been coming back. Her books came out of the boxes. Her Switch came back to the coffee table. Her hoodies came out of the back of the closet. Last week she laughed at something I said and snorted, and looked startled, like she'd forgotten she could make that sound.

And tonight she was wearing lace and an emerald dress, and she was going to Audrey's, and she'd looked in the mirror without flinching.

Things were finally looking up.

---

Olivia's phone buzzed on the arm of the couch.

She glanced at it, and the laughter drained out of her face all at once.

"Liv?"

She didn't answer. I leaned over. It was from a number she hadn't saved, but I recognized it from the timeline.

coming tmrw at noon for my shit. be there

Olivia turned the phone face down, slowly, like it might bite.

"I thought you blocked him," I said.

"I did." Her voice was small. "He must have a new number."

"Want me to block this one too?"

"No, he's... he still has stuff here. His hoodies. That stupid controller with ALPHA written on it." She pulled her knees up to her chest. The emerald dress bunched around her thighs. Garlic, sensing a mood, jumped down from the windowsill and pushed his head against her shin. "I said he could get it this weekend. Before. I just..."

She trailed off and started chewing her lip. Her eyes were getting shiny behind her glasses.

I put my arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into me right away, the way she used to when we were kids and there was a thunderstorm.

"You don't have to see him," I said. "I'll hand him the box at the door. Thirty seconds. He doesn't even have to come in."

"I know," she whispered. Then, quieter: "Rach, I'm scared."

"Of him?"

"Of me." She pulled back and looked at me. "If he talks to me, if he says babe, come on, I miss you, I'm sorry, I'll go back. You know I will. I always do. Three times, Rach. I went back three times before you and Audrey..."

"You won't."

"You don't know that." She pushed her glasses up and wiped her eyes. "He has this way of talking. Everything he says sounds true while he's saying it, even when I know it's not. He'd say I ruined it, and I'd believe him. He'd say you're a bad influence, and I'd believe him. He'd say you and Audrey are jealous..."

"Hey." I took her face in both hands. "Look at me. Primary sources. You have the timeline. You have every text. You have a licensed therapist on the record. That's evidence. He can say whatever he wants. Evidence doesn't change because Derek Hale has a deep voice."

She laughed, a little wetly. "You and your primary sources."

"They're the foundation of all knowledge."

"You're such a nerd."

"You cried at the Red Wedding while reading the wiki."

"It was a very well-written wiki."

She laughed again, steadier this time, and took a long breath. "Okay. Here's the plan. I'm going to hide in my room tomorrow. Lock the door, headphones on, game on, music up. I'll pretend I'm not home." She grabbed my wrist, hard. "And you don't let me open that door. No matter what he says. No matter what I say. Even if I come out and tell you I want to talk to him. Promise me."

I looked at her. At the shiny green eyes and the flushed, freckled cheeks, at the emerald dress she'd finally felt beautiful in.

I put my hand over hers.

"Over my dead body," I said, "does that man get through your door. I promise."

She let out a breath and squeezed my hand. "Thank you."

"Now go to Audrey's. You look too good to waste on a night of crying."

"Come with me."

"Calibration tables."

"Rach."

"Fine. One hour."

"And you're changing out of the hoodie."

"Absolutely not."

She was still arguing about it ten minutes later when we left, me in the hoodie and her in the emerald dress, both of us laughing on the front steps while the fog rolled down the street.

Behind us, in the empty living room, MUSE sat on the coffee table where I'd left it.

On the arm of the couch, Garlic watched it, his tail twitching slowly back and forth.