2. Noah
Noah
M usic blares from the other side of my bedroom wall, jolting me awake.
Fucking Delancy.
I groan and reach for my phone on the bedside table, squinting open an eye to check the time.
Nine a.m. Oh, great. He let me sleep in. Usually, he plays music at seven. Why the hell is he even up this early? I heard him come home at five this morning, stomping around as if that would have stopped me and my one-night stand from keeping quiet.
I glance over at the man next to me. His mouth hangs open, and he’s snoring exceptionally loud. Maybe Del turned up the music to drown out Adam’s chainsaw melodies.
Adam was a decent lover. He’s a big man, plus-size like me. A tall teddy bear who I enjoyed cuddling with more than the actual sex, which is saying something since I hate cuddling.
I only cuddle when I’m drunk. Adam managed to catch me in a rare drunken state. I can hold my liquor, but last night I went overboard after my dad texted me saying he wanted to meet me for lunch this week. My fantastic night turned sour the minute I confirmed I’d be there.
He’d have sent his cronies and dragged me out of this damn apartment, kicking and screaming, if I had said no.
The music next door ends and a door slams shut—great, maybe Del left—and Adam wakes with one final, raucous snore. He sucks in a never-ending breath and stretches, letting out his best porn star moan before he turns his head to look at me.
A sleepy smile spreads across his face.
“Good morning, sexy.”
A wave of cringyness washes over me. I never liked being called sexy. Pet names in general aren’t my thing: baby, honey, sweetheart.
No. Ick.
I’m nobody’s sweetheart.
“Good morning,” I say.
No pet name for him.
Before Adam gets any ideas about kissing me with his morning breath or initiating morning sex, I sit up and get out of bed. I find a pair of shorts and a tank on my clean clothes chair and slip them on.
“I’d offer you coffee, but I ran out yesterday. Out of food too. I really need to go grocery shopping. Plus, I’m a horrible cook. I’d burn the eggs and toast, or you’d end up with food poisoning. So...”
My back is to him, but I can hear him moving around behind me.
“Yeah. No worries. I need to head out anyway. I’m meeting friends for brunch and after last night with all the sweating we did, I could really use a shower.”
Cringe .
“Unless…” Crap. “I shower here, and you join me. Maybe we go for round two?”
Ugh. No. I hate shower sex. Not to mention my apartment’s shower is too small to fit two big bodies inside.
“Tempting, but I also have brunch plans with my bestie in SoHo, so I need to get ready and head out.”
I should feel bad. Aside from the pet name and the mention of sweaty sex, Adam's a sweet guy. Super sexy with potential to be a great fuck if I cared or had the time to instruct him.
But Adam’s not him .
The golden retriever man shrugs and keeps getting dressed while I head to the bathroom to relieve myself.
I brush my teeth and wash my face, removing the make-up I forgot to take off before bed.
Once I pile my purple hair into a heap on the top of my head, I return to the living area of my large studio apartment where Adam stands in front of my bookcase looking at my photos.
“A traveler, huh?” He asks over his shoulder. He’s holding a picture of me standing in front of the Eiffel Tower sparkling at night.
“I travel for work a lot.”
He frowns and sets the frame down. “Aren’t you a bartender?”
“It’s for my other job.”
He turns around to face me, rubbing the back of his neck. “What do you do for your other job?”
“I kill people,” I say with a grin.
Adam barks out a laugh. “That’s funny. Are you a comedian?”
“I get stage fright.” I wink, which makes his puffy cheeks blush.
“So, uh, do you want to do this again sometime?”
“Sure!” I say and head towards the door. “I’ll text you.”
“Let me give you my number.”
“You already did. Last night.”
He didn’t.
I open my door wide, giving Adam space to walk by.
He pauses before passing and leans down for a kiss. I allow a quick peck on the lips and stifle the urge to shove him out of my apartment.
I should really stop bringing one-night stands back to my place.
Of course, before I can close my door, my annoying neighbor emerges from the pits of hell to taunt me.
Damn. I really thought he left.
Delancy leans against the doorframe to his apartment, arms crossed.
He tsks while watching Adam descend the stairs.
I hate it when he does that. His silent, judging stares are so loud.
And he stares a lot. He wasn’t much of a talker when we met, but now he talks too much. .. and I can’t get him to shut up.
Once Adam is out of sight and hearing range, Delancy huffs a laugh.
“You little liar.”
“Stalk much?”
“Why’d you lie? Is it because you faked it, Rainbow Bright?”
“I didn’t fake it!”
He raises a brow at me.
“Fuck off, Del.”
“I’m not a computer, Noe.”
“My name is Noah, not Noe. Stop calling me a word you never hear.”
“No.”
The last thing I see before slamming the door in Del’s face is his narrowed eyes.
I hate him and his stupid nicknames for me.
Noe. Rainbow Bright. Skittles. Crayon. Kevin.
Kevin took me a while to figure out. It wasn’t until I saw a commercial promoting Home Alone airing on one of those channels that show Christmas movies the entire month of December that I realized he nicknamed me after the main character, Kevin McCallister.
He’s an idiot. My last name is spelled differently.
I moved in two months ago, and I’ve hated Del since day one. His snarky comment about my pink hair, which prompted me to dye it purple the next day. His gorgeous face that’s always stuck in a scowl. His dumb black hair that falls in a perfect mess.
I hate how much I love that he’s taller than me because not a lot of dudes are taller than me.
I hate his mesmerizing blue eyes and how fucking hot he looked just now in his gray sweats and no shirt because he’s about to go for run even though it’s forty degrees outside.
His body is packed with muscles, and my eyes greedily devour him every time he returns from his workout, glistening with sweat.
I hate how good he always smells. Like sweat and the sun and expensive cologne; tangerines mixed with nature—the woods after a fresh rain.
And I hate how mysterious he is with all the scars littering his body, including one on his upper left lip and another along his left cheek.
The alphahole personality kills any attraction I have for Delancy “last name unknown” because he refuses to tell me and it’s not on his mailbox—I’ve checked.
I could find out if I cared. I have my resources. But I don’t care. I don’t. Not about Del or his hot body.
Ok fine. That’s a lie. I want to fuck him more than I want the coffee I’m about to brew—sorry, Adam, I lied.
I need the fuel to wake me up because there’s no way I’m going back to sleep now.
Del always knows exactly what to say to piss me off.
Like, how did he know Adam couldn’t make me come?
My fake orgasms are Oscar-worthy. Besides, this time I did come…
but it wasn’t because of Adam. If I told Delancy I was thinking about him while fucking someone else, he’d never let me live it down.
I flip off the door as if Del was still there and head back to my kitchen to start the coffeemaker. While it brews, I climb back into bed, retrieving my bullet vibrator from the bedside table drawer. I need to relieve my built-up tension before I start the day.
“ A bout time, bitch,” my best friend grumbles as I stumble into Boqueria, our favorite restaurant in SoHo. The trendy, modern Spanish restaurant touts the best Barcelona-style tapas in America. I give her a hug, and she pulls back with a wrinkled nose. “Girl, you smell like sex.”
After getting off—and screaming Del’s name into my pillow—I fell asleep in orgasmic bliss and woke up just in time to catch a train here. No shower. So, I don’t doubt how pleasant I smell.
“Jealous?” I tease.
My bestie is stunning. Her long, dirty-blonde hair is French braided with the tail hanging over her shoulder. She’s wearing a purple turtleneck sweater tucked into black jeans, showcasing her plump body.
Sage Manilow, no relation to Barry, is a big girl like me.
We both don’t give a fuck what the world has to say about our bodies.
We dress how we want, fuck who we want, and do whatever we want.
We're happy and that pisses off the miserable fatphobes, which only encourages us to keep living our happy little lives.
Well, happy on the outside, I suppose.
My life has been one clusterfuck of misery.
It began when I was eleven, and I witnessed my mother’s murder.
I was inside my room reading when I heard her scream.
I ran out and hid at the top of the stairs after seeing two large men in the living room.
They had my mom on her knees with her hands tied behind her back. She was crying... sobbing...
Then one of the masked men held a gun to her head.
He pulled the trigger, and I screamed and ran off, locking myself inside my bedroom.
The men banged on the door, kicked it, and splintered the wood.
I thought they were going to get in, but something must have spooked them, because suddenly they were gone.
I was found hiding in my room ten minutes later.
I emerged to strangers downstairs, mostly men in ill-fitted suits and a few police officers, talking to my father.
The moment he saw me, he scooped me up into his arms. He held me for several minutes while I sobbed into his neck.
I refused to let go until he forced me to sit on the couch and left me there to go talk to a new suited stranger who just walked in the door.