SEAN
I didn’t see her again for a few days. Then, one evening, I came down the stairs to find her in the lobby, struggling towards the elevator.
She had two huge white plastic sacks in her arms, gathered to her chest like twin babies, and she was teetering under the weight. Every few steps, the sacks would threaten to slip out of her grasp and she’d have to grab for them again. She was far too preoccupied to notice me.
She just barely managed to make it to the elevator and hit the button. I winced.
“It’s broken,” I muttered.
She snapped her head around, startled, and dropped one of the sacks. It went whump on the floor, narrowly missing her foot. Then, struggling to pick it up, she dropped the other one.
“Let me give you a hand,” I said.
She ignored me, crouched, and tried to pick up the first sack.
That meant that, as I approached, I was looking down on her and fuck me…
she was wearing a scoop-neck top and the view I had of her pale cleavage was amazing.
Smooth white skin and her breasts were the most perfect shape, just waiting for a hard hand to slide down the front of her top and cup them… .
For all my good intentions, I still wanted to bang the hell out of this girl.
She hefted both sacks and stood, her knees trembling a little under the strain. Then she headed towards the stairs.
“Ah, come on,” I said disbelievingly. “It’s ten floors.”
She ignored me and put her foot on the first step. I silently shook my head at her stubbornness...but I had to admire her determination.
She stepped up to the second step. I started up the stairs behind her.
“Please stop following me,” she said tightly.
“I’m just walking up the same stairs. It’s a free country.”
“Weren’t you on your way out?”
“I forgot something.”
I saw her grit her teeth and then she started a steady march up the stairs, with me one step behind her. At the top of the first flight, she stumbled and nearly dropped both sacks, but recovered. She straightened up and tossed her hair back as if to say, see? I’m fine!
She was only a little thing but God, she had spirit.
She marched up the second flight of stairs. Each step was a little slower than the last. By the time she reached the top, she was barely moving.
“I’m going up to nine anyway,” I said. “I might as well take one of them.”
She was panting but trying not to show it. “What are you now, neighbor of the year?”
I just held out my hands for a sack.
She looked up at the stairwell above her...and with a despondent sigh she pushed a sack towards me. I took it, trying not to make it look too easy.
As I’d thought, the label said it was some sort of chemical fertilizer. I really hoped it was for her house plants.
We moved on, making faster progress now that she could heave her sack in both hands.
She managed another four floors before she ran out of steam.
I stopped beside her. She was red-faced, now, and her legs were shaky, but she was still doing her best to hide it.
She gave me a glare, as if daring me to doubt her. But I could tell she was wiped out.
“When we get to your place, you’re going to need your hands to open the door,” I said carefully. I wasn’t used to this diplomatic shit, but I was doing my best. “Why don’t I take the other one?”
She just looked at me with hate-filled eyes.
..but then her exhaustion overcame her anger and her shoulders slumped.
She didn’t offer the sack, but she didn’t resist when I scooped it out of her arms, either.
My forearm accidentally brushed across the soft swell of her breast and I felt my cock go rock hard in my jeans.
Jesus, this girl did it to me every single time.
Just looking at her now, with all that shining red hair cascading down her back and those big, green eyes—I didn’t care if she hated me.
I was imagining pushing her back against the stairwell wall, kissing her hard as I unfastened the belt of her jeans, hooked her panties down, and pressed her thighs apart—
“What?” she asked, bemused.
I realized I was staring at her. I hefted a sack onto each shoulder and set off up the stairs. “Nothing.”
When we reached her apartment, she opened the door and then turned around, blocking the doorway. “Just put them down here,” she said. “Thank you.”
I didn’t put them down. I had to know what was going on—was she growing somewhere? “Let me carry them inside.”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
That’s when I caught a faint scent wafting from her apartment. “Ah, no,” I groaned, my stomach tightening. “You couldn’t be that fuckin’ daft....”
Before she could protest, I pushed past her. Since she was trying to block the doorway, that meant muscling her out of the way. I tried not to think about how good she smelled, or how soft her skin was as it brushed against mine.
Inside, everything was long drapes and too many cushions—you could tell women lived there. And I’ve never seen so many things growing: plants in pots, plants on shelves, even plants on the window ledges. But the normal plants weren’t what were making the smell.
Right in the middle of the room, arranged in neat rows, were about thirty marijuana plants.
“Are you kidding me?” I said to myself. I dumped the fertilizer sacks on the floor and spun to face her. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?! You can’t grow here!”
She quickly shut the door. “I don’t have anywhere else!” She crossed her arms defensively.
“So you do it in your apartment? You’re going to just haul everything up here: fertilizer, lights, the plants...oh, Jesus, you carried those up here! How many people saw you?”
“None! I brought them up one at a time, in boxes.”
“And you’re going to do that for the other—how many do you need, to make half a million?”
She shifted from foot to foot and looked at the floor. “A few hundred.”
I looked around. “There’s no space! And what about the smell?
I could smell these out in the hallway and that’s thirty plants, at the start of the season.
When it’s two hundred, fully grown, you’ll be smelling it a block away!
” She stared at the floor. “And what happens when the super comes around to fix a leak? What happens when your sister comes home?”
She finally snapped her head up and glared at me. “If I don’t do this, she’s not coming home!”
We stood there glaring at each other. Those big green eyes were blazing at me, her chest was heaving and her lower lip was stuck out in an angry, sullen pout.
I’d never wanted to kiss a girl so much.
“You can’t grow here,” I said again. The anger was ebbing away, to be replaced by a sense of impending doom. I wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of this. I could see that now. She was going to grow, no matter what I said. She was going to wind up dead or in jail...unless I helped her.
I let out a long sigh and tapped the nearest pot with my foot. “Can you really grow this shit? Do you know what you’re doing?”
She tilted her chin to look up at me and her eyes narrowed. Hopeful, but cautious: I’d disappointed her once already. “Yeah,” she said at last. “Yeah, I know what I’m doing.”
I looked around at the plants and ran a hand through my hair. Then I let out an enormous sigh.
It was the only way.
“Okay,” I grunted. “I’ll help you.”
She bit her lip and nodded quickly, thanking me. I wasn’t ready for how that made me feel: like a hot bomb going off in my chest.
“But on one condition,” I told her, as gruffly as I could. “We do it my way. You do the growing but when it comes to the other stuff, you do exactly what I tell you.”
She swallowed. “I’ll do exactly what you tell me,” she repeated. In her voice, it sounded like the most erotic thing imaginable.
I had to keep my distance from her. The deeper she got involved with me, the more chance there was I’d destroy her life the way I destroyed everything else. This had to be a temporary alliance, a business relationship. Nothing more.
The next six months were going to be fucking unbearable.
I took a deep breath and sealed my fate. “Alright then,” I said. “Let’s grow some weed.”