AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His attitude prickled under my skin. I was a friendly person. Mostly.
I started to defend against my note-leaving habits when the grin that had dropped reappeared. A nice smile. Dazzling white teeth that stood out against the dark hairs of his beard. A smile that should not have an effect on me, yet here I stood with strange damn near swoony thoughts unwantedly rolling through my head.
“Don’t worry, Ma. I’ll turn it down.”
I started to respond when another rumbling voice carried toward us.
“Yo, E. What the fuck you doing, jacking off?”
He turned and called back over his shoulder. “Not likely, Ice Queen felt I was worthy enough to have her complain about the music in person.”
Ice Queen? Ice Queen? I could feel the heat rising up my throat as my blood pressure skyrocketed. And to think I’d been about to thank him for being reasonable.
“For reals?” The speaker stepped into sight and gawked at me like I was some sort of oddity. The look of him with a smug grin on his face made me want to scream.
“In the flesh.”
“Just turn it down.” I moved to stomp off and immediately regretted it. A pebble lodged into my foot and my storm became a hobble with the sound of their laughter playing as a soundtrack behind me.
2
Emilio
I pushed against the knuckles on my right hand until I heard two pops and then repeated the process on the left before shaking both out. I’d told Ms. Johnson last time she’d brought me her son’s laptop she’d needed to invest in a real virus protector, not the basic free thing that came with the machine. But had she listened? That would be a hard nope, and that was why it sat with me now, and why she was about to be out more than the cost of said virus protection.
Movement outside caught my eye. I turned and groaned. Ren, sniffing around once again on my side of the fence. Ma’s ass wanted to get pissed over some music or parking but she let that little beast shit all over the place.
I chuckled quietly thinking about our interaction the other night. No idea what crawled up her ass, but she’d been nothing short of pissy since she’d moved in. In the beginning, I’d attempted to be neighborly. I’d wave or try to be cordial toward her when we happened to be out at the same time, but she was not having it.
Then the notes. A millimeter over the line and she was ranting about being inconsiderate and blocking her in. Shit, if she couldn’t back out, that had more to do with her driving than my client’s car. I leaned back in my chair waiting to see if she’d come to collect the tiny terror. But she didn’t. He sniffed around my grill before he hopped his tiny ass up onto my lawn chair, turned a few times, and started sunning himself like he was king.
I stood to go shoo him away when she stepped into view.
“Yoda, come here.” She scooped him up and met my gaze through the glass.
Her light brown eyes were wide as if she was momentarily shocked or embarrassed to see me. I had to admit, when she wasn’t scowling at me, she was cute. Her mass of brown curls was tamed today, unlike last night. She had them pulled back in a high ponytail with a few loose strands framing either side of her face.
Seeing her up close had revealed a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. The lack of a scowl didn’t last long as the frown that seemed reserved just for me took up place and she whipped around and disappeared around the separator fence.
I shook it off and went back to the task at hand. Music playing, I started digging into the system to clean up the shit-storm that was the infestation of malware. I needed to tell that kid about safer sites if he was going to keep trying to locate free porn online. I threw out that idea. No contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Instead, I’d just install the fucking high-grade virus protection.
My concentration was interrupted by two quick rings of my doorbell. I pushed back from my table and did a stretch as I walked down the hall. Two days in a row I came face to face with the shorty from next door.
“What now? The music ain’t even that loud.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe.
She held the tiny animal in her arms, squared her shoulders, and looked up at me. “I just wanted to...apologize for Yoda invading your space.” She spoke the words as if it almost pained her to get them out. Damn, she had one hell of a talent of making everything she said sound like an insult.
“Since you’re not a dog person and all. Which says a lot about your character. Not liking pets.” She pursed her lips and damn near seemed to turn her nose up. Well, if she could, but considering she had to look up at me, that made it a little hard to attempt a “look down.”
And there was the actual insult. I cocked my head. “I like pets just fine. I don’t like irresponsible pet owners.”
She took in a sharp breath and her eyes were mere slits. I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling. Like when she got annoyed last night, a deep red flush started crawling up her neck from behind the stark white button-down she wore. Probably starched knowing how uptight she appeared. I let my gaze travel the length of her body. Gray slacks clung to curvy hips and she wore the ugliest shoes I’d ever seen. Black and bulky with a thick sole and a wide strap that went across the top of her foot. Neither my Gran nor Abuela would put those things on.
The animal yapped and squirmed in her arms. He wasn’t that bad looking, cute in his own way, and she had him dressed in a shirt sporting his namesake. She shushed him before leveling her attention back at me.
“I am not irresponsible.”
“If you say so. But if you’re finished with your crap-ass apology with a side dose of put down I have work to do.”
