Lisa grinned. “Good luck. People like her are rare.”
I don’t remember much after that, just that awful sinking feeling in my stomach. The realization that she never planned to move out. That she saw my kindness as stupidity. That she had always seen me as nothing more than a free ride.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to call her out right then and there, to tell her to pack her things and get out of my house.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I played it cool.
I pretended I hadn’t seen the video. I went about my days as if nothing had changed because if Lisa thought I was too much of a pushover to ever kick her out, she was about to learn just how wrong she was.
For the next few weeks, I played the role of the same old clueless Emily, the one Lisa thought was too naive, too much of a pushover to ever do anything about her freeloading.
I still smiled when I saw her. I still bought groceries. I still let her use my Wi-Fi, my electricity, my house, just like always.
But beneath the surface, I was carefully putting my plan together.
See, Lisa thought I wouldn’t do anything because I never had before. But what she didn’t realize was that I’d spent years putting up with her entitled nonsense, years letting my family guilt-trip me into keeping her around.
And after watching that video, after hearing her laugh about how stupid I was, I wasn’t feeling so kind anymore.
The first step was making sure everything was legally in place.
I own my home outright, which meant there was no lease, no contract, nothing binding Lisa to the house. But I wasn’t about to give her any wiggle room to turn this into some dramatic eviction battle, so I did my research. Looked up tenant laws in my state.
Turns out even freeloaders who don’t pay rent can sometimes claim squatters’ rights if they’ve lived somewhere long enough. I wasn’t about to let that happen, so I called the lawyer just to be safe and drafted a formal written notice that she had 30 days to move out.
Then I started making small changes.
First, the Wi-Fi.
Lisa was glued to her phone more than anything else. She lived online, constantly scrolling through social media, streaming movies, FaceTiming her friends.
So one quiet morning, I changed the Wi-Fi password.
About an hour later, Lisa stomped into the kitchen, phone in hand.
“Hey, is the Wi-Fi down or something?”
I glanced up from my coffee. “Oh, no. I just changed the password.”
She blinked. “Okay. Can you give it to me?”
I smiled. “Sure. The new password is rent money123.”
Lisa frowned. “What?”
“You know,” I said, tilting my head. “Since you don’t pay rent, I figured it’d be a good reminder.”