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I want to work on festivals, too. I’ll be in charge and deny him entry to everything. That’s if he even listens to music. I’m sure he listens to recordings of his victims screaming right before their deaths. Okay, I know he listens to music because I hear it through the wall often enough.
Bellend.
Up ahead is a man jogging to a car. I don’t recognise him, and my mind instantly believes he’s the robber who’s been breaking into houses in the area recently. I’m about to reach for my phone when someone opens a door and shouts something to him. He raises his hand and hops into his car.
Not the burglar.
The walk home has taken me exactly thirteen soaked minutes. By the time I walk up the path, the cold has seeped into my bones, my trainers squelch, and my hair is plastered to my face.
Casper’s car sits in his drive. The obnoxious penis enlargement. Ihatehim. I don’t allow myself to look up in case I see him watching me from the window.
I let myself in and kick off my drenched shoes.
My roommates Freya and Imani aren’t home as they both have a late study class today. Our schedules are off, but theirs align a bit more. I don’t mind. It’s nice to have the house to myself sometimes.
Shivering, I drop my bag onto the mat and take out my books. The radiator in the hallway is warm, so I set my books underneath it and strip out of my clothes, peeling them off like a second skin. The sensation makes my arms and legs breakout in goosebumps.
After popping my stuff in the washing machine, I dash upstairs, naked, into the bathroom.
I take a quick shower, spend fifteen minutes wrapped in my biggest towel because I can’t be bothered to move, then get into my cosiest sweats. I’m finally warm and dry and can forget about the walk home. It makes my fitness tracker look much better, anyway.
Screw Casper. I’m getting a big glass of my cheap wine to wash away the humiliation of thinking I should and could ask him for a favour. I might even waste the last of my wages from the library on Chinese food. Pay day is in a few days, anyway. I can make it.
As I put my phone on charge in my room, I hear him. Or rather his music—no screeching from murder victims tonight—vibrating against my wall. Don’t get me wrong, I like listening to music with the volume up, too, but that’smymusic.
He’s doing this to piss me off.
Growling, I march over to my speaker to link it to my phone, then I blast out some AC/DC.
Take that, you arsehole.
CHAPTERTWO
I rub my eyes and take a large gulp of coffee. I’m dog tired since Casper and I didn’t stop playing the most childish game of ‘musical fuck you’ until 2:00 a.m., and that was only because the big group chat with my housemates Imani and Lydia, and his housemates Marvin and Reggie, was full of threats to cut the power off.
They’d had enough, and frankly, I was done, too.
Once again, Casper had reduced me to behaving like a five-year-old.
Everything he does is irritating.
I want to mutilate his face so I don’t find him attractive.
Yawning for the third time, I risk a glance at Reggie and see that he’s still glaring at me across my kitchen table. He came over this morning for “a chat”, which I take to mean a talk about the Ainsley/Casper situation.
Every few months, there’s an intervention. One where my friends tell me not to get sucked in and I comply… for a short time. It’s hard to ignore Casper when he’s being so awful. I’m not sitting back while someone insults me.
Reggie slurps something disgusting and green in a bottle. It probably has kale in it. He’s not said a word yet, but his dark eyes dart around my kitchen, working up to it.
It’s making me nervous. Maybe he’s come to tell me the three of them are moving house. I wouldn’t be sad to see Casper go, but I like Reggie and Marvin.
“Oh my God, will you say whatever it is you’re here to say. Let’s just get it over with.”
He scratches the black stubble on his jaw. I’m glad he’s let it grow a bit—it’s ridiculously hot. Tall with dark skin, full lips, a killer smile, and eyes you could drown in, Reggie is gorgeous… and unfortunately gay.
“An opportunity has presented itself. I know we’re both in this for huge corporate events, but we have to start somewhere, right?”
“Right,” I say hesitantly, not really knowing where this is going now. It doesn’t start the way the interventions do.
