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Here? She lived in his building. And that meant that last night—
“What about the Uber?”
“Just because I brought up the app doesn’t mean I used it,” she said before sucking up the last of her shake, the sound extra loud in the nearly barren lobby.
He was not going to think about her mouth and what she’d done with it last night. He was not.
He jammed his fingers through his hair, accidentally yanking some of it out.
What. The. Fuck.
Nothing about this was good—especially not now that he knew who she was. “I have to move.”
“That’s probably for the best,” she agreed. “Of course, Andy is the apartment manager thanks to his family owning the building, and you aren’t exactly his favorite person right now after you shoved his head into the bar and all. There’s no way he’ll approve a sublease or let you straight up break your lease.”
Going on offense, he played the puck as best he could in this situation. “Then you leave.”
Her laugh bounced off the stairwell’s concrete walls. “Not gonna happen. Do you know how hard it is to find a reasonably priced apartment in Harbor City where you aren’t rooming with a visible colony of cockroaches?”
His gut twisted as he considered the options. The truth was there weren’t any. He was going to spend the entire season seeing Astrid every time he turned around. Which was fine. Whatever. He was a grown-ass man, and it wouldn’t be any big deal to ignore the whatever the fuck it was that made him lose his mind whenever he was around her.
“Oh, the face you’re making. It’s all snarly and grumpy. You know that’s catnip for some women.” She winked at him. “Don’t worry about me. I’m only here to let you know that it was fun and all, but it’s not happening again. This season is important to my dad, and I’m not going to ruin it because we got too distracted to keep things professional and get the job done.”
He crossed his arms and ignored the regret making his mouth taste sour. “Exactly what I was about to say.”
“Well, then, glad we got that all straightened out.” She stood up and waved her empty shake cup at him. “Good night, Cal.”
He grunted something that maybe sorta sounded like good night and watched her until she disappeared onto the next flight of stairs, unable to shake the feeling that this was not going to go according to plan at all.
Chapter Twelve
Astrid had better things to do than to lay in her bed staring up at the ceiling and wondering if the sounds coming from above were what she thought they were. They probably weren’t. It was just her imagination. And if they were, well, good on Cal. She always slept better after getting off.
But the thing was she wasn’t getting off or sleeping better right now. She was a ball of turned-on, hyped-up frustration, and every squeak and thump coming from the ceiling was winding her up tighter and tighter. Finally, she had enough. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and pulled up the coaching phone list her dad had texted her before she left his apartment. Scrolling, she did her best to ignore all the mental images inspired by the erotic symphony coming from above.
“Ah-ha!” She tapped the number next to Calvin Edmund Matsen and shot off a text.
Astrid: Can you please schedule your rather vigorous self-love sessions for a decent hour? Some of us are trying to sleep.
Grinning, she laid her phone back down on the nightstand and pulled her covers up to her chin, not in the least bit tired anymore. There was another thump-squeaky sound and then nothing. She focused on the weird way the plaster came together in one spot on her ceiling that looked like a dog riding a dolphin, satisfied that she’d scored a winning goal.
Then her phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Cal: Not what I was doing.
She scoffed. Please. She’d stayed in enough hostels to know when someone was jacking it in another bed.
Astrid: Oh, honey. Masturbation is perfectly natural. Nothing to be embarrassed about—although being a little quieter would be appreciated.
There. That should do it.
She closed her eyes, let out a deep breath, and imagined one of those big porch swings going forward and back in time with her breathing. It had taken a couple of years to come up with a sleep routine after the almost wedding, but it was worth it not to wake up in the morning feeling like she’d been hit with a brick. In. Out. In. Out. Her shoulders loosened. Her hands loosened their grip on the covers. Her inhales and exhales came slower and slower.
SQUEAK!
THUMP!
MUFFLED THUMP SQUEAK!
