Chapter 3
Lindsey
He was in my apartment.
Where I eat and sleep and poop and walk around naked and talk to myself out loud in terrible accents and do not ever ever ever have boys over.
It's my sanctuary. My safe space. My home.
Boys do not come here. Boys do not cross the threshold.
Shit, no boy even knows my address. Or, didn't. When I lived with Damian, we lived in an apartment we shared, new to both of us.
When we broke up, it just happened to coincide with the end of the lease, so I let him take over the contract and found this place.
Look, it's not a sexy loft in Echo Park or a Brentwood condo with soaring ceilings and acres of natural light. It's a shitty West Hollywood one-bedroom that I can still barely afford on a cocktail waitress's income. But it's mine.
Dane Badd should not be here.
Yet there he was, lying partly over the threshold, staring up at me with those stupid, big, deep, brown eyes in that stupid, angular, rugged, handsome face.
I'm only panicking a little.
Or a lot.
Turning away, I scanned the apartment for anything embarrassing—which was…oh. Oh boy.
Everything.
It's a marker of how fucked up I was that my place was this messy —I'm normally a clean freak.
Yet since coming back less than seventy-some hours ago, I've done precisely dick other than DoorDash myself chimichangas and binge Love Is Blind. Granted, my version of messy is most people’s version of spotless.
But, there were dirty panties on the floor of my bathroom, literally all my bras were hanging off the doorknob of my bedroom, and a Styrofoam clamshell full of day-old tortilla chips was on the kitchen counter.
I think that's all.
Guess we'll find out, because if I know anything about Dane Badd, if there's something embarrassing, he'll find it.
With a grunt, he went from lying down to standing up without using his hands, which is harder than it sounds. He stepped inside and shut the door, and then scanned the place.
Thrift store couch, a tan fake suede thing that sagged in the middle in such a way as to suck you in and never let you go.
Mismatched thrift store recliner and love seat.
A sweet 72" flat screen that was a Christmas gift to me from Mom and Dad Rigby last year.
A truly, shockingly shitty coffee table, a 90s relic of that ugly oak they made literally everything out of—on which was a clutter of clamshells, empty Spindrift cans, and a partially empty box of wine.
Yes, I said box. It's cheap, plentiful, and not half bad. And I'm sad and lonely and desperately fighting off a real, actual emotional, existential crisis.
"Sweet place," he muttered, settling onto the couch. "Whoa. Okay. Guess I'm sitting in the middle." This last was because the couch sucked him down, as it does.
"Sorry about the couch, it has a mind of its own," I said. "And you don't have to pretend. I know it's a shithole."
He picked up a juice glass that had an inch or so of wine in the bottom, sniffed it, sniffed it again, and then shrugged.
"Fuck it." He tossed back the dregs and refilled the glass a little more than halfway, and then sat back, kicked his feet up, and grinned at me. "It's a sweet place. Wasn't lying."
"Okay, buddy," I said in a deep, mocking voice.
He frowned at me. "What? It is. It's yours. It's clean, dry, and seems to be free of mice, rats, and roaches." He gestured at my little cluster of succulents on the windowsill across the room. "You've even got some greenery."
"Oh. Uh. Thanks I guess?"
"I still live with Mommy and Daddy, so." He shrugged.
I stood with my back to the door, wondering if he was really that oblivious to my inner turmoil at having him in my space. My hands were clammy, my chest felt tight, my eyes burned, and I wanted to curl up in a ball at the bottom of my bathtub.
Instead, I just sort of stood there like an awkward ditz, staring at the gorgeous male on my couch, who was currently sipping my cheap box wine and inspecting the contents of a bag of Doritos with his hands.
"Make yourself at home," I muttered. "No problem."
He grinned at me, the cocky dingdong. And yes, despite my tumultuous, trauma-addled state of mind, that grin still moistened my panties. "You know what we're gonna do?"
"I shudder to ask," I said, deadpan.
He grabbed my remote, turned on my TV, pulled up Netflix, and turned on a cheesy, early-aughts rom-com.
He tossed the remote aside, stuffed my bag of Cool Ranch Doritos in the V of his manspreaded thighs, rested my juice glass full of my wine on his big, hard, beefy thigh, and settled in to watch a movie—on my couch, in my apartment.
What the fuck?
"Um, Dane?"
He patted the couch. "You can't watch the movie from over there."
"But I—"
He poured wine into a different, pre-used glass and held it out to me. "C'mon. I don't bite…in this context."
I rolled my eyes at the innuendo but didn’t otherwise acknowledge it—with Dane, it's best not to encourage him. "Sure, Dane, come on in, make yourself at home, help yourself to my wine and chips. Yes, yes, this is what I need. You know me so well." This was all said monotone.
He smirked at me. "You jest, I realize, but sometimes we don't actually know what we really need."
I arched an eyebrow at him. "He says to the woman with a degree in psychology."
"Oh, is this your office where you have your practice?"
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I wanted to be a researcher, not a therapist."
"Wanted, past tense? Not anymore?"
I sighed and sat beside him, finally taking the cup of wine. “You know it's not even noon?"
"Yeah, well, fuck it. YOLO or some shit, I dunno. Who fuckin' cares? Sometimes, we just need to day drink."
I sipped and watched as a hot young girl fresh out of grad school wafted adorably around her million-dollar Manhattan condo that she somehow afforded on a fashion magazine intern's non-salary.
Oh, look at those dorky glasses, she's so ugly, she needs a hot, funny, charming guy to make her see her own self-worth, so she finally gets contacts so she can be attractive to anyone at all, because she's so ugly in those spectacles, you ugly fat loser.
Fuck, I hate rom-coms.
I made it until our plucky heroine bumped her silicone G-cups into the square-jawed hunk's chest, tittering like a demented songbird.
“You actually like this shit?" I asked.
He frowned. "Fuck no. It's lame as hell. I thought you would."
"What, because I'm a chick, I have to watch romantic comedies and pine about the love life I don't have?"
He pulled a face. "Well…yeah?"
"Wow. Nice. Sexist fuck."
He nodded. "Cool, cool. So what do you want to watch?" He widened his eyes. “Please, please don't say reality TV."
I put The Bachelor on, just to fuck with him. "You barged into my place, jackass. You don't get to complain about my choice of entertainment."
He made it through a cocktail party and half a dozen confessionals before groaning. "The rom-com was better. Can we settle on something else? Golf? The Paint Drying channel? Adam Sandler movies? Saw Three?"
I frown at him. "You did not just put Adam Sandler in with that other shit, sir. No, you did not."
"What? He's not that funny."
"SACRILEGE!" I shouted.
"He's not! He's just himself in everything."
"And himself is fucking funny, DANE. It's not his fault you're a lame ass loser with shit taste in movies. You probably don't like Will Ferrell either."
"Anchorman is a classic."
"Fine. You can stay. But don't diss my boy Adam. Have you seen any of his newer, more dramatic stuff? He's a damn good actor."
Dane groaned. "Please god, no."
"Oh yes." I picked a recent Sandler release and started it. "You watch this with me and give it an honest chance, and I’ll let you pick the next one, no questions asked."
"You've got yourself a deal," he said.
Which is how I found myself shoving my hand between his legs for the next four hours. For Cool Ranch Doritos, granted, and not his big fat salami, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.
No, no, no—bad girl, Linz. You do not want Dane's big fat salami. Not now, not ever. Off-limits.
As if on cue, while I was scolding myself, he adjusted his junk, reaching down his pants and shifting said girthy kielbasa off his thigh.
Gah, fuck me. Stop thinking about the penis, woman. It's not that hard.
Not yet, it's not. Let me get my hands on it and—
NO.
Bad.
Bad girl.
Spank me, daddy.
FUCK.
I shot to my feet abruptly, inadvertently knocking Dane's wine all over his faded, perfectly fitted blue jeans that had just the right amount of rips, and which cupped his beefy thighs and rock-hard ass like a second skin.
So now he was on his feet, staring down at the red wine stain on his crotch and thighs.
"I…shit, sorry. My fault." I hurried into the kitchen, snagged half a dozen sheets of paper towel, hurried back, and started patting at his groin.
He grabbed my wrists after a second. "Linz?"
I realized what I was doing—rubbing at his dick with paper towels—and leaped away. "Sorry, sorry. Sorry. I'm a spaz."
He indicated the dark brown leather duffel bag on the floor just inside the doorway. “I’ll just change real quick. Maybe Mom can get the stain out later."
“Really?" I asked. "Mama still does your laundry?"
He stuck his tongue out at me. "No, Lindsey. I do my own laundry. But she's better at stains than I am. She can get just about anything out. So if I have a bad stain, yeah, I let my mother help."
"I suppose that's valid." I gestured at the door to my room. "Bathroom is through there."
He rummaged in his bag and came up with a folded article of clothing, vanishing into my bathroom. A moment later, he emerged wearing a pair of gray sweatpants.
Yes, really.
The cruelty is real, I tell you.
Big fat salami? Outlined. Swaying heavily with every step. Was he even wearing underwear? The way that monster sausage of his pushed against the material, I couldn't believe he was.
Why do you hate me, God?