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“Leave her alone, Axel,” Lily says weakly, her voice just about audible.
“Jane,” Axel yells, banging on the door again. “You in there?”
“Youknowshe’s in there. She’s working.”
“Working,” he laughs meanly. “I wouldn’t call listening to music and staring at a computer screenwork.”
“It is to her.”
Another knock and something’s rattling inside of me. It’s like my resolve is shaking toward an explosion.
On the wall, Luke Hart stares at me from the cover ofForbes. He’s a billionaire who founded the most successful antivirus software in the world. Tall and muscled, he stares from the cover as if telling me everything will be okay. He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, arms folded in a conquer-the-world pose, his forearms showing his muscles.
His hair is dark with some silver dust, shaved short on the sides and longer on top. It makes him look younger than his thirty-nine years, but not by much, and I actuallylikethat. Or maybelikeis an understatement. He’s so mature and experienced.
I bet he’s nothing like Axel. Axel is a complete pig. I’ve never seen him behave kindly unless he’s on the phone with his little sister.Thenhe looks human. Otherwise, yep, total pig.
“Axel, stop!”
He pushes the door open, striding into my bedroom. Axel is tall and wide-shouldered, with a jock look and a brown buzz cut. He wears a wife beater that shows sleeves of mismatched tattoos of tribal and colorful figures clashing. Behind him, Lily lurks, anxiously chewing her fingernails.
“Didn’t you hear me knocking?” Axel says, walking right up to me.
He reeks of whiskey. He looks like a bully, every inch of him drenched in the need to assert himself and show his inner weakness. I refuse to let my fear show, though it keeps rattling in my chest, my heartbeat crashing as I take a small step back. Posture straight, head held high, I hope he can’t tell how badly I want to run.
“You eavesdropping on us?”
“I’d hardly call it eavesdropping,” I snap. “The whole building can hear you.”
He grins, but it’s more like he’s baring his teeth, a predator making a threat.
“You’ve got a bad habit of talking back, fatty.”
Lily gasps.“Axel!”
“I’m not ashamed of my body,” I tell him, though my feelings are honestly conflicted. There’s nothing wrong with being on the curvier side. There’s nothing wrong with not neatly fitting into the traditional notion of beauty. I just wish the rest of the world agreed with me. Then I wouldn’t have to get so much crap about how I look.
“You should be.” He looks around the room, his gaze settling on my laptop. “What are you working on? Always in here, typing away. A man can’t even watch a goddamn movie without being made to feel guilty about it.”
“I’ve never made you feel guilty.”
“So, you’re telling me how I feel now, eh?”
He wanders over to my laptop and trails his finger along the keys. With eachclick, I flinch, watching my programming window fill with random letters. I can delete them, but what if he takes it further? I saved for six months to afford that cruddy laptop.
Luke stares from the wall, and I imagine a world where he charges in here, all six and a half feet of him, turning Axel from a terrifying bully to a nobody, an insignificance I never have to worry about.
“You’re a cleaner,” he says in disgust. “That’s all you’ll ever be.”
When he picks up my laptop, I scream and dart forward. He pushes his hand out, blocking me, chuckling as I try to snatch my laptop back. Holding it out of my reach, he says, “How much do you think we could get for this, Lily?”
“Leave her alone,” Lily says from the doorway so weakly.
We’ve never been friends. In the beginning, before Axel moved in, there was a spark that could’ve become a friendship. Sure, I’ve got problems with being too distant sometimes. Sooner or later, people leave. They walk out and leave you there to wait, wonder, and eventually fold into disappointment, but now there’s no chance.
“That’s my property,” I say. “You’ve got no right to touch it.”
“That’s my property,”he mimics.
