Roommates With Benefits

"Seven roommate rules. Ninety days. Zero intention of falling in love."

Zinnia Vale’s life is built on strict structural integrity. Between her color-coded planner, 0.38mm fine-point pens, and a past in foster care that taught her never to get too attached to a bedroom, she thrives on control. But when a plumbing catastrophe detonates her ceiling into a literal waterfall, she’s left stranded in the hallway with two damp duffel bags and an impossible housing market. Enter Loft 4F. Her emergency temporary roommate is Caelan Mercer: an infuriatingly charming, effortlessly messy indie musician who eats cereal out of a ten-quart mixing bowl, litters the floor with audio cables, and lives entirely by instinct. To survive three months without committing domestic homicide, Zinnia institutes seven non-negotiable Roommate Rules, culminating in the most important clause of all: Absolutely don't fall in love. Too bad neither of them read the fine print. What begins as passive-aggressive sticky-note battles and laminated chore charts quickly spirals into stolen midnight French fries, fake-dating to fend off annoying customers, and a five-foot plush octopus that won't stop judging them. As their boundaries crumble like dry plaster, Zinnia discovers the terrifying truth about the grumpy, chaotic artist across the hall: The rule was never to love you. It didn't fall first.