Chapter Six
Olivia and Sammy had their first roommate argument less than a week after she moved in.
“I can’t believe you did this.” Sammy’s head pounded with anger as he stared at his kitchen. “What were you thinking?”
Olivia planted her hands on her hips. “I wasthinkingI would do something nice and help you organize your things. This place is—was—a mess.”
The pounding intensified. “It wasmymess. I knew where everything was. I had a system. I use the kitchen all the time. You don’t even cook!”
“I could.”
The snort slipped out before he could stop it. “No, you can’t.”
Wrong thing to say.
Olivia’s cheeks flushed red, and defiance sparked in her eyes. “It’s been eight years. I’ve improved.”
“Hate to break it to you, but there was nowhere to go but up.”
Harsh? Perhaps. True? Absolutely.
Sammy had eaten Olivia’s cooking once, and his stomach still rebelled at the thought.
“It wasn’tthatbad.” Olivia’s chin jutted out even as pink tinted her cheeks.
He stared at her in disbelief. “We got food poisoning!”
“Once! We got food poisoningonce!”
“Once is enough!”
“Stop yelling!” Olivia took a deep breath and pressed two fingers to her temple. “We’re off-topic. The issue is not that onetinymishap years ago—”
“We threw up for three days. My throat was so raw I could barely speak afterward. I had to call in sick to my internship.”
She continued like he hadn’t spoken. “—it’s that you’re throwing a fit over a rearranged spice rack. You had no system. The spices weren’t arranged alphabetically, by height, or by category of flavor. It was chaos, and I brought order. They’re now in alphabetical order because that’s the easiest organizational method. The containers’ different heights are irritating, but that’s nothing a quick trip to The Container Store won’t fix. We can buy a pack of labels and matching spice shakers—”
“We’re not going to The Container Store,” Sammy gritted out. “We’re not buying labels or new spice shakers. You know why? Because there’s nothing wrong with the old ones or the way the spices were organized.”
“They werenotorganized.”
“They were to me. And I’m putting them back.” He didn’t take his eyes off Olivia as he picked up the chili powder—currently nestled between the ground cardamom and cinnamon—and shoved it on the bottom rack, next to the turmeric powder.
Take that, alphabetical order.
Olivia gasped. “You did not just do that.”
“Oh, I’m just getting started.” Sammy opened the fridge—because contrary to what she said, Olivia hadn’t reorganized just the spice rack but the whole damn kitchen—and stuck the milk on a shelf instead of the door storage.
Her eye twitched.
When he retrieved a half-empty box of green tea packets from his new “tea and coffee cabinet” and placed it on the counter next to the hot water dispenser, angling the box so it didn’t line up perfectly with the wall, she stormed over and shoved the tea back in the cabinet.
He took it out.
She put it back in.
There was a dirty joke lurking there somewhere, but Sammy was too riled up to concentrate on anything except not strangling the woman in front of him.