Chapter 4: Agree to Not Agree

Ivy POV

"Why the hell did I agree to this again?" I muttered to myself, stopping in front of a student house just outside campus. It was fairly quiet out here, but I could hear movement inside and voices, the clatter of something metal, and someone laughing too loud. My nerves did a little dance in my stomach, like they knew something I didn't.

The door opened before I even found the courage to knock.

"Ah, good, you're here," Alex said, stepping back to let me in. "I was wondering if you'd be on time."

"I'm never late," I said, probably too defensively for eight in the morning. My words snapped out, sharper than necessary, and I knew it, but whatever… mornings weren’t my specialty, and neither was being questioned.

He just stared at me blankly for a beat, like he wasn't sure whether to argue. "Right," he said finally, opening the door wider. "Come on in. Milo was just about to start on the smoothies."

I rolled my eyes at him. If my job now entailed making smoothies for triple the wage I was making at the bar, who was I to complain? The thought alone made me want to laugh, or maybe scream, but I settled for clamping my jaw shut and following him inside.

The inside of the house was nothing like I expected. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was out of place. Not a stray shoe, not a jacket slung over a chair, not so much as a dish in the sink. Every surface gleamed like they kept an invisible housekeeper on retainer. The air itself even smelled faintly of lemon, like someone had gone a little too hard with the cleaning spray. I almost checked my shoes for dirt, just in case I was about to ruin the illusion.

That made me nervous. Was I walking into the world's tidiest lion's den? Was this guy a neat freak? A murderer? In my experience, murderers were disturbingly clean people. I'd seen the documentaries. I could practically hear that one true crime podcast narrator in my head: "She never suspected a thing, not until it was too late."

Yeah, well. I was suspecting everything.

"How many of you live here?" I asked, trying to sound casual and definitely not like I was mentally mapping exits. Eyes drifting to the narrow hallway, the shiny stairs, the closed doors. Easy enough to bolt if things got weird.

"Eight others. Excluding Milo and me."

Ten guys. Living together. Not a single crumb on the counter. Either they were some kind of cult, or I'd stumbled into an alternate universe where twenty-year-old guys actually knew what a vacuum was for. In all my years bouncing through foster placements and shared houses, I'd never once met guys this age capable of this level of cleanliness. It defied the laws of nature. I could almost hear my foster mom cackling in disbelief.

Alex steered me toward the kitchen, where Milo already had an arsenal of protein powders lined up on the counter like he was prepping for battle. Seriously, there were more tubs and scoops than at the supplement aisle at the gym.

"Ah, just on time." Milo grinned at me, entirely too pleased with himself for someone about to explain a job he'd invented on the spot less than twelve hours ago. "Smoothie duty. This is where the magic happens."

"The magic," I repeated flatly. My voice could have curdled milk.

"Big magic." He held up a scoop of something chalky and beige. "Alex needs six hundred grams of protein a day, minimum. It's a whole process."

"Six hundred grams," he said, and I looked between the two of them. "Are you training for the Olympics or recovering from surgery?" Sarcasm was my superpower, and right now I needed it.

"Hockey," Alex said, like that explained everything.

"Right, hockey." I picked up one of the containers and read the label with deep suspicion, mostly to have something to do with my hands that wasn't gesturing wildly at how insane this entire morning felt. "And you couldn't make this yourself because...?"

"Time management," Alex said smoothly.

"He's terrible at delegating regular tasks to himself," Milo added, earning a sharp look from Alex that he completely ignored. "It's a whole thing. Anyway… banana, protein, almond milk, ice. Blend. Repeat approximately four times a day. You'll get the hang of it."

"Four times a—" I stopped myself, pinching the bridge of my nose. "You know what, fine. Whatever. It's still better money than dodging drunks at the bar."

"See?" Alex said, far too satisfied with himself. "Win-win." Like this was some big victory, like employing me as his personal smoothie minion made him a genius.

I shot him a look that I hoped conveyed exactly how unconvinced I still was by this entire arrangement, then turned my attention to the blender like it might explain itself to me. The blender, for the record, looked like it cost more than my last three grocery runs combined.

I'd barely gotten the lid off the protein powder when the kitchen door swung open and two more guys wandered in, shirtless, mid-conversation about something that sounded suspiciously like last night's game. Both of them stopped dead the second they saw me, eyes flicking to Alex with an expression I couldn't quite place: surprise, maybe? Or something closer to disbelief?

"Uh," one of them said. "Alex. You brought a girl. Into the kitchen. Before noon."

"She's my assistant," Alex said, in a tone that dared either of them to comment further.

The two of them exchanged a look loaded with more meaning than I could translate, then both burst out laughing like he'd just told the funniest joke either of them had heard all year.

"Assistant," the second one repeated, wiping an actual tear from his eye. "Right. Sure. That's what we're calling it."

I glanced at Alex, who looked like he was seriously reconsidering every decision that had led him to this exact moment, jaw tight, ignoring both of them with the practiced patience of a man who'd clearly dealt with this exact brand of nonsense before. I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

"Ignore them," he said to me. "They're idiots."

"We're hilarious," the first one corrected, still grinning as he grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter and sauntered back out, his friend trailing after him, still laughing.

I stood there, blender in hand, protein powder dust settling over the counter, and had exactly zero clue what I'd just walked into, only that whatever this "assistant" job actually was, it clearly meant something very different to everyone in this house than it did to me. If this was the start of some new chapter in my life, it was one hell of a weird opening paragraph. But, hell, at least it wasn’t boring.