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ONE
Brit
The man who walked out the door of the house next door was beautiful. That was the only word for it.
He was tall and lean, and though he’d grown his dark blond hair long enough to tie it back in a rough man bun and his matching beard was overgrown and scruffy, there was no hiding his high cheekbones or the icy, Nordic blue of his eyes, rimmed with dark lashes. They were the kind of looks that only come with good genetics, as if he’d won the cosmic lottery.
It wasn’t just his looks that were arresting. Though he was dressed casually in dark gray sweatpants and a white tee, his body moved with a dancer’s grace. He was all smooth motion as he closed the door behind him, shrugging on a well-worn jean jacket while moving easily down the front steps of the porch. I glimpsed tattoos on his arms as they disappeared into the jacket, whirls of ink on his perfect, tawny skin.
I hated him on sight. It was a natural instinct. I knew from extensive experience that men who looked that good were never good news, ever. They’d had it too good for too long, and they thought they were God’s gift to the world. They were selfish, narcissistic, and half the time they were borderline sociopaths.
They were nice to look at, sure, but if you spent too much time in their company, drawn in by their pull, you would eventually find yourself forgotten, your feelings—whether romantic or even just kind—stepped on and disregarded. You, a normal person with normal looks and flaws, would let it eat at your self-confidence when he didn’t text you back. When some other person became smitten with him and he soaked up their attention while he forgot your name.
Could you tell I’d lived in Los Angeles for too long?
There was no city on earth that had more gorgeous, self-centered, completely awful people in it, and I’d met a lot of them. Quite a few had been my clients.
So, yeah, I had the neighbor’s number before his sneakered foot hit the bottom of the porch steps. By the time he’d shrugged that jean jacket on, he’d already borrowed money he didn’t pay back, asked me to help him move without any thanks, and called in at least one freebie before forgetting about me. I was done with him.
Still, I watched him walk down his driveway toward his car. His hips moved beautifully in those sweatpants, and he was flipping his keys around his index finger, slapping them into his palm in a perfect, unconscious rhythm. He was poetry in motion, the bastard.
He didn’t see me in the kitchen window of my Aunt Ellen’s house, holding a dish in my hand that I was rinsing before I put it in the dishwasher. Me in a stretched-out tee with an old coffee stain on it, old sleep shorts, and bare feet. Me unshowered for the past three days and barely dressed at noon on a Sunday, because I had a hard time getting out of bed lately. Me with no makeup, no pedicure, and—story of my life—too much weight on me.
I’d look so much prettier if I lost some weight. But my face was pretty. I shouldn’t wear horizontal stripes. Had I tried keto?Yeah, I know. I know!
The boy next door—he was in his thirties, but I would bet the shrinking amount in my bank account that psychologically he was a boy—sauntered to his car without a care in the world and clicked it open. It was a rainy day in Portland—surprise—and the cloudy, diffused light made him look photogenic. I should look away, refuse to give him my attention, even though he hadn’t asked for it. Just looking at him like this, unseen, was humiliating. Pretty men were everywhere. There was nothing here to see.
Instead of opening the driver’s side of the car, he opened the passenger door. He wasn’t going anywhere; he was getting something out of his car. Something that was deep in the back seat, because right there, in front of my window, he leaned into the car to rummage for whatever it was, bending all the way over.
Ireallyshould stop looking now. But I was a healthy woman in her thirties with functioning ovaries, and I was presented with an unfiltered view of a man’s perfect ass in sweatpants. There was no point in struggling. I could only give in.
So I stared, hypnotized. It took him a while to find what he wanted, so there was a long moment in time in which he was bent over inside his car and I was frozen in the window. A still life. Someone should paint it and call itSad girl staring at gorgeous ass in sweatpants.A portrayal of frustrated, hopeless longing. Once again, the story of my life.
Eventually, after I’d lived several lifetimes of rejection, the man-boy straightened again. He had a box under his arm, a bag in one hand, and an empty coffee cup in the other. He bumped the car door shut with one of those evil hips and I watched his rolling walk back toward the house.
“That’s my neighbor.”
I jumped. My Aunt Ellen was standing at my shoulder, squinting past me through the window.
Aunt Ellen was my grandmother’s younger sister. She was seventy-one, healthy, and sharp as a whip. She’d worked a long career as a senior manager at an insurance company before retiring single-lady rich. She’d never been married, had no children, and suffered no fools. She also had her own money, with which she’d bought this house decades ago. When I’d needed somewhere to go when my life fell apart, Ellen was the one I’d called, and she’d taken me in.
Now she was wearing capri pants and a Mariners sweatshirt, her thinning white hair tied back in a scrunchie. She had come home from the market half an hour ago, while I was still in bed.
“Your neighbor?” I asked, momentarily stupid. I wondered how much she’d seen, if she’d caught sight of me staring at the nicest ass in the neighborhood.
Ellen nodded. “He moved in a few years ago. The street was in an uproar about it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s some famous musician type. Plays drums in a band called the Road Kings. I listened to them when I heard he was moving in—they’re not bad. But everyone was worried about wild parties, or drugs, or women.” Ellen rolled her eyes. “Bunch of old biddies, I swear.”
I blinked at her. The Road Kings? I’d heard of them. I’d likely heard their music, though it must have been a few years ago. I searched my memory for images of what the band looked like, but found nothing.
“Does he throw parties?” I asked Ellen.
“Nope,” she replied. “Not a one. He’s sweet, actually. The most polite and gentlemanly neighbor on the street. My favorite by far.”
This praise, from Ellen no less, was shocking. It was the opposite of my first impression of the man-boy. It was also nearly impossible to earn this kind of adulation from my no-nonsense aunt, who had spent her life immune to men and their particular charms. What witchery was the next-door neighbor capable of?
