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I panic, pushing him away. His arms drop to his sides instantly, his hands diving deep into the pockets of his jeans.
“I have to go,” I say, looking everywhere but at him. “I need to do something ... Um, maybe …” I don’t know how to finish my sentence, so I leave it hanging out there blowing in the breeze, hoping he’ll pick it up and complete it for me. I want him to say something like he’ll see me later. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he turns from me and starts walking away. “Tell Sarah when you see her that I want my vodka.” He sounds angry.
No. Come back. I want to shout at his retreating back, but I don’t, and he walks out the glass doors onto the deck and back toward the beach party. What have I just done? No guy has ever touched me like that. Sure, I’ve been kissed by a boy before, but it was only one time and not all that enjoyable.
Nothing like the intimacy of Logan’s gentle kiss just now. I’m so confused. I’ve never felt this odd fluttery, nervous feeling deep down in the pit of my stomach. Who knew one simple kiss could feel like that?
I shake my head and slowly make my way to the kitchen. I grab three bottles of water from the massive drinks fridge. Katie and Sarah are waiting for me to return and as usual, my sensible self is back in control.
Right now, I can’t chase after Logan. Besides, what could I say to explain my bizarre reaction, without getting Katie into trouble?
I’ll look for him later when Sarah and I have got Katie settled. It’s still early.
Chapter two
Logan
The Present
Bang! The heavy door to my apartment shuts behind me. I don’t mean to slam it so hard. My only excuse is that it’s been a shit day. No, make that a shit week. I fucking hate auditors with their self-righteous attitudes and never-ending demands. Locked in a conference room with them today for twelve hours has made me even grumpier than usual. And I’ve got another week of this to endure.
It’s not like they’re going to find a problem with my accounting. I may be all kinds of a mess in my personal life, but when it comes to my work, I’m meticulous. I have to be, Carlson Publishing is my family legacy, and family is all that matters. Especially when my oldest brother and CEO, Hunter, has been acting an even bigger asshole than me lately, riding me hard to produce even more detailed reports than we already do. If spreadsheets of financial data are what he needs to prove my team has got this, then I’ll flood his inbox with them. That guy has control issues that he needs to work out in the bedroom not in the boardroom.
I toss my keys onto the hall table and turn toward the living room, already imagining how good the burn of my best Macallan whiskey will feel slipping down my throat. But I don’t even go two steps and I’m falling heavily against the wall. I’ve tripped on a hot-pink, spiky-heeled shoe. How did I miss seeing it? I’ve no idea.
More to the point, why the hell did Allie leave it lying in the hall?
“Fuck,” I growl loudly, hoping that wherever she is in my apartment she’ll hear me. Although it would be even better if she wasn’t here at all.
Allie is just another reason for my bad mood this week. She’s my untidy roommate, who I reluctantly agreed to take in for the next three weeks and two days. But hey, who’s counting? Me. Definitely me.
She’s not even been here a week and already she’s wreaking havoc on my carefully ordered life. Constantly leaving her shit around, like the shoe I just tripped over. I like order. Everything has a place and everything in its place.
Yesterday I was taking my clothes out of the drier and caught up in among my freshly laundered white business shirts was a white lacy thong. I do not need to be finding Allie’s barely there panties in my things and most certainly do not need to be imagining how good they would look on her statuesque runway-perfect body. I have enough trouble steering clear of those thoughts when she struts about the apartment in skimpy outfits without any sign of underwear. Obviously not bothered with displaying her assets, like she’s my girlfriend rather than a purely platonic roommate.
I knew this was going to be a living nightmare when Katie, my stepsister, asked if her best friend could temporarily stay. I say her best friend but in reality, I’ve known Allie just as long as Katie has. My three-bedroom apartment is certainly big enough to share, but obviously not when the person I’m sharing with has more stuff than a family of five. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore her presence, and most days it feels like I’ll be bumping into her just as much as if we were sharing a studio apartment, not my luxury condo.
“It will only be for two, maybe three weeks, max,” Katie said to me a few months ago, when she caught me in a weak moment and convinced me to let Allie stay. “Just till my tenants can move out and she can move into my apartment,” she said. It all made sense at the time given Katie’s apartment is across the hall from mine. Honestly, anyone else and I wouldn’t have minded as much. But Allie and I have a rocky history and that is why her very presence has me on edge.
There was a time in high school when we were good friends, but then that time passed and now our only commonality would be our love and loyalty to Katie. It was that loyalty that forced my agreement and now I seriously don’t know how I’ll survive the week with her in my private space, let alone three more.
After graduating high school, Allie moved abroad, and we only saw each other a couple of times a year. It’s easy to avoid someone when you’re at a large family function. But not so easy when they’re living underfoot, or more accurately, in my spare bedroom. I feel like I’m reverting to my grumpy teenage self. I can hear the growl in my voice when I respond to her constant intrusions into my preferred solitude and the bite behind my terse comments or uncalled-for opinions. We fell into this habit years ago and as juvenile as it is, we just don’t seem to be able to stop ourselves from poking and prodding at each other. Maybe it’s too late for us to change or we’re just past caring.
“If I was still in Manhattan instead of London, she would stay with me. Please, bro,” Katie had begged, already knowing I’m unable to deny her anything.
From the moment Katie joined our family when her mom married my dad, we’ve been close. Some of it because we were both the same age and our older brothers, Hunter and Blake, treated us like we were babies. The reality being we were seven and they were only a few years older. But mostly it’s because I’ve always been the quiet one, and Katie was and still is a bundle of excited chatter. She has the knack of being able to fill any awkward silence with exactly the right words. Something, to this day, I’ve never mastered. She is formidable in a debate and when she takes my side against our older brothers, I know I’m on the winning team.
I miss having Katie living across the hall. Now that she’s running the London office of Carlson Publishing, I only get to see her every couple of months. In the past, on a night like tonight, we would have ordered takeout and over a couple of glasses of wine or whiskey, I would have unleashed my frustrations over my day spent with the auditors.
But now here I am, hoping Allie is out so at least I can have the peace and quiet that only my own company can bring. Stepping over the offending shoes, I force myself to ignore them. Instead, I focus my mind back on the bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan whiskey in my liquor cabinet. I think I need it now more than ever.
At the kitchen counter, I shrug off my suit jacket, loosen my tie, and roll up the sleeves on my business shirt before pouring myself a generous measure of whiskey. I then walk over to the large tan leather sofa that is positioned to face the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and drop down onto it.
Tonight, I’m not interested in the view of the city lights glinting against the night sky and stretching their illumination into the room, all I want to do is rest my head back and enjoy the mellow oaky taste of my drink.
I take off my glasses and place them on the cushion beside me, then give my tired eyes a quick rub. On the exhale of a heavy sigh, I drop my shoulders before turning my head, first to the left, then the right, all while it still rests on the cushiony softness. This sofa was the first piece of furniture I bought when I purchased my seventeenth-floor apartment in the building I grew up in. I’m about to turn thirty and still, I can turn the key in the lock of my apartment and be reminded of the first time I did that. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. My own place to escape from the world and do what the hell I want, like stretching out on my sofa with every intention of drinking way too much whiskey.
