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ChapterOne
Danny
My safe space has been commandeered by a hungover pirate.
If that sounds overly dramatic, then let me assure you: it’s mostly true.
It’s November first, and my new roommate, Mira, rolled up in her moving truck at around noon, still dressed in her Halloween costume from last night and smelling like the bar she owns. She overslept, and her movers were on a tight schedule, so they couldn’t wait for her to get changed.
I’d told Mira it wasn’t necessary for her to hire movers. I work from home, so I would have helped her. I know my friend Burke offered to help too. He’s marrying Mira’s sister, Delia, which is why she’s joining me in my nepotism apartment. She needed a place to live after breaking up with her ex, and Burke had already decided to move out of the apartment we’d shared for over a decade. He owns it, and he’s been letting me live here rent free for years out of generosity.
Sure, I got groceries and cooked and helped Burke with tech support, but those favors were nothing next to what he was doing for me, and I knew it. So I couldn’t exactly complain when he told me his fiancée’s sister was moving in with me. Instead, I finally put my foot down and insisted that if he wasn’t here to benefit from my cooking and tech expertise, I would be paying him a fair rent or I would be moving out.
He agreed, but he set the rent.
It’s not fair—to him, to be clear. The apartment is a penthouse loft in downtown Asheville, and if he sold it, he’d be able to add more millions to his trust fund.
Then again, I have to live withher.
I haven’t spent much time with Mira, but she’s loud and outspoken and has every mark of someone who’s going to destroy my peace. My life might not be exciting, but it’s comfortable. It follows a familiar rhythm that helps me anticipate what will happen and when. I depend on that, but I sense it is about to be pulled out from under my feet.
That’s why my other friend Leonard, Burke’s business partner, put forth a third offer of moving help—he wanted to see the way my face looked when a hurricane of a woman moved into my space.
But Mira turned down all of our offers and hired a couple of guys to do what we would have done for free. She’s “a woman who takes care of her own business,” she insisted. Being as my little sister Ruthie’s the same way, I knew it would do no good to keep arguing.
So I sat at my desk, feeling like one lazy asshole as I watched the movers lug her stuff upstairs and into Burke’s empty room. There wasn’t much of it, thank God, just some boxes and a few suitcases.
It’s funny how a person’s life can be to condensed to so little.
If I had to move out of this apartment tomorrow, and maybe I will, I wouldn’t even have that much. It’s enough to humble a man.
Now, she’s in her room, presumably unpacking, and I’m sitting at my desk in the corner of the living room. Staring at my computer without actually working on anything, my headphones on.
Footsteps pad down the hall. I don’t have a dog, so there’s only one person it could be. A throat clears. I stare at my computer screen for a second, hoping she just has allergies. But it happens again. Sighing, I turn to look at her.
She changed out of her pirate costume and is wearing animal-print leggings and an oversized shirt a shade of pink that makes my eyes want to close. Her hair is black, her eyes the color of a glass of whiskey, and she wears eye makeup that reminds me of a cat. She’s hot, which doesn’t make her presence more welcome. If anything, the opposite is true.
It’s been long enough since I’ve been with a woman that it doesn’t take much to make me feel sexually frustrated, and the way those leggings curve over her thighs and ass is making me…uncomfortable.
“It’s a little dark out here, don’t you think?” she asks, and her voice has the audacity to be sexy too, a little low and throaty. “Can I put my SAD lamp over there?”
She points to the corner where my favorite armchair sits. It doesn’t know what indignities lie in store for it.
“What’s a SAD lamp?” More importantly, does this mean she plans on claiming the armchair?
“It’s for Seasonal Affective Disorder.” She strolls over to the corner in question and lowers into my armchair with a loud oomph, as if she can’t even sit quietly. I try not to flinch, but I’m filled with the awareness that my chair’s going to smell like her.
“The light’s already starting to change. I can’t take it when it’s only bright for five hours of the day.” She waves at one of the large plate glass windows overlooking Asheville as if it has offended her. “Makes me go nuts.”
“You wake up late,” I tell her, feeling compelled to speak the obvious. “If you want it to stay bright for longer, try getting up in the morning.”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I could tell her it’s plenty fun to bike up to a mountain peak and watch the sun come up in a sea of colors…especially if you can manage it on a day when there isn’t anyone else around. Or to be the first to arrive at a coffee shop and grab a table by the window. But that would lead to a conversation, which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I’ve decided the less we have to do with each other, the better. For my own sanity.
“Yeah, the lamp is fine.” I prefer low lighting at home, but I’ll give her the lamp if it’ll make her happy. Especially if it’ll make her step off.
“Thanks for being so cool about everything, Danny,” she says with a broad, red-lipped smile, which immediately makes me feel guilty. She doesn’t know her presence is making my skin itch. It’s also not her fault. Normal people don’t get agitated by the presence of strangers. Especially strangers who are hot women. I could tell her to call me Daniel, but she knows me through a few of the only people who still call me Danny. It would make me seem rude.
