9. Piper
CHAPTER 9
Piper
I finish the last sentence in my latest paragraph just as Pink winds down and I glance up at the document word counter just as the song starts again. I got seven-hundred and eighty words in less than ten minutes.
Not bad at all for someone who’s been an owl writer for months on end now!
I’m definitely getting my morning creative groove back!
My fingers barely touch the rainbow-lit keys in front of me when I hear someone pounding on my door hard enough to both overshadow the rock music and make me jump in my chair. What the hell is this?
I ask Alexa to lower the volume, and Steven Tyler’s powerful graffiato goes down to a whisper.
The pounding doesn’t stop, and that’s when I hear a man’s voice sounding pissed off, and screaming about my fucking music being on at fucking seven-thirty in the fucking morning!
Oh crap!
How is this possible?
All the windows are closed tightly, so no one should have been able to hear a peep coming out of here.
Unless…
Shit!
Unless those noises I heard weren’t made by a working crew.
This means someone must have moved into the apartment next door in the last few days without me noticing it.
And I’ve been blaring Aerosmith like there’s no tomorrow for the last ten minutes!
How mortifying!
The hammering doesn’t stop, even though the music is barely audible now. I realize that this guy, whoever he is, isn’t about to slink off without having some kind of confrontation with me first. Not that I mind going out to apologize, but I was just getting into a good part of my story!
The furious knocks on my door continue.
I step away from my laptop.
“I’m sorry! I’m coming! I’m coming!” I yell to be heard from beyond the door as I walk toward it.
The pounding, rather than stopping, becomes even more insistent.
“Open this door and face me like a man, you jerk!” I hear my next-door neighbor boom in a deep, angry baritone.
My steps falter, and I frown.
I mean, I know I’m in the wrong for putting loud music on this early in the day, but who does he think he is to call me a jerk?
And why hasn’t he stopped battering my poor door even after I told him I was on my way to get it?
What an asshole!
I square my shoulders and fling the door open, not even bothering to glance through the peephole.
“Hey! I heard you the first hundred times you pounded on the door. You… didn’t… need… to… go… on,” my voice loses most of its spunk as I take him in because that’s when my eyes catch up with my mouth, and I realize that, after all, maybe I’m more familiar with my pissed-off neighbor than I originally thought because the very menacing-looking, glowering rude asshole who’s been banging the door with a fist the size of a fruit bowl is none other than Mr. Hot Stuff.
I gulp down air as I take in his thundering expression hardening the handsome features that I’ve been spying on from above almost daily.
Suddenly, his mien morphs into something on the opposite scale of pissed off and then turns surprised.
That’s when I realize that he hasn’t said a single word since I shoved the door open, and he’s been staring at me with something akin to shock on his striking face.
My mind scrambles as I try to make sense of this quick change in him.
Why isn’t he scolding me anymore?
Is it because he thought I was a dude, and now that he’s realized I’m a chick instead the wind is off his sails somehow?
I look him up and down slowly as he pretty much does the same thing to me.
I take into his dark eyes, as arresting on close inspection as they looked from afar, the sweats hanging low on his sculpted hips, the white tee clinging to his wet chest, hair plastered with water, droplets running on his forehead and soaked beard as if… as if he just stepped out of his shower and threw some clothes on just to come yell at me.
My face goes up in flames as I also come to the realization that in my haste to give him a piece of my mind for the way he kept on trying to break down my door, I got out in my sleeping clothes, which happen to be a pair of neon pink shorts that barely cover my essential bits and a tiny pale pink tank that stretches indecently over my considerable girls.
I feel my hands shake under his scrutiny, and a pulse down low starts to thrum in tandem with my heart.
Oh, my word, I’m so in trouble right now!
And, well… I guess I’m gonna have to rechristen him now, Mr. Hot Stuff... Next Door .