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“Yeah, you like that, eh? You wanna watch? Good time for you!” He slams the door shut.
Silence ensues and I glance nervously back at Reed, who’s just standing there, staring back at me with a shocked expression on his face.
“That was Ray,” I tell him.
“Okay.”
“The landlord,” I explain further, though why, I’m not entirely sure.
He nods. “I figured as much.”
My cheeks are burning now and I close my eyes briefly to rid myself of the look on his face. He knows I owe Ray money, and my car just got towed. He knows I live in the neighborhood from hell. And he knows I play music on a second-hand guitar as a way of making a living.
My life must look like a total clusterfuck to this guy.
Thankfully he doesn’t probe for more information and I shove the key into the door to my apartment, pushing it open. The one redeeming factor about my apartment is that it’s on the ground floor. It’s not far from the main entrance, which means I don’t have to drag myself up eight flights of stairs just to get home every night.
I’ll take that as a win.
But now it seems I’ve put myself in a very precarious situation, because Reed Devlin is currently standing in my foyer, dripping puddles on the floor, soaked through to the core, and trepidation tightens my muscles. What am I supposed to do with him now? I can’t just leave him out here.
Can I?
He thinks his day sucks. His day has nothing on my day.
“Fine, you can come in. But you haveonehour, do you hear me, just one. No doubt those girls out there will quickly lose interest and we can both get on with our lives.”
“Don’t count on it.”
He smirks at me, and I swear it’s a lazy crooked smile that pulls up higher on one side of his mouth, making an unexpected pang hit me in places I’d rather not mention.
“Thanks, Tink.”
“What’s with calling me, Tink?”
“It’s the bangles. You remind me of Tinker Bell. You’re kind of sparkly and you jingle when you move.”
I groan and shoot him a dirty look.
One hour.
Okay. Let’s just get this over and done with. Pretty sure I can make it through one hour. I mean, honestly, how much trouble can we get into in an hour?
Reed
“I’ll be right back,” Brinley says quickly after closing the apartment door behind us. “Don’t touch anything.”
She disappears down a narrow hallway to what I assume is the bathroom, or maybe a bedroom. I could use the bathroom myself, but I’m not game to move for fear I might bump into the furniture.
Fuck me dead, this place is tiny. I’m too big for this space.
I look around the living room/dining room/kitchen which seem to be three rooms all morphed into one minuscule area and I can’t believe how small her apartment is.
Wow.
As I stare around at what little furniture she has, not to mention the dark stains on the carpet, and the patches of mildew growing on the walls, a twinge of guilt unexpectedly floods through me. I have the hide to bitch to the body corporate that my floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city skyline don’t get cleaned often enough, and here’s Brinley living in the smallest space known to man. But to her credit, it’s neat and clean, colorful and organized.
Her apartment is homey, welcoming, and it’s also… fucking freezing.
