Chapter 8
The bangs echoing throughout my empty apartment and heavy head surprisingly weren’t down to my latest hangover.
Slowly blinking as another dull thud rang through my ears, I grabbed my glasses lying beside the empty vodka bottle and peeled myself from the sofa that doubled as my bed.
It’s not like my apartment didn’t have an actual bed; rather, by the time the alcohol and Xanax had combined to work their wonders, I was too zonked to move anywhere.
I hadn’t planned another night of numbing myself to sleep. I told myself the night before was the last time
That was until I came home and found a letter from Adam’s lawyer in my mailbox. The letter contained an invitation to the reading of his last Will and Testament, something I didn’t expect in my wildest dreams to be included in.
Reading the letter brought everything back. His lifeless body in my hands. My failure as not only a doctor but his friend to save him. The promises I made to him that I continued to fail daily. The fact that I had abandoned my life, ran from my shame rather than facing up to my own shit.
It was too much.
So, I fell back into numbing myself.
Another bang ricocheted against my aching head, my gaze following the path of the noise to my front door.
Quickly grabbing a crumpled and, what I prayed was a clean T-shirt, I pulled it over my head and padded barefoot to the noise threatening to burst every blood vessel in my temple.
Opening the door, I half-expected to find my nosy-as-hell yet slightly endearing landlady, Pauline.
I made the mistake once of going into her apartment for a friendly cup of tea.
I felt sorry for the woman, especially because I believed that she was lonely with only her ten cats keeping her company.
But goddamn, never again. I thought she was going to hold me prisoner there and force me to talk to her until the end of time, not to mention one of her cats decided that my leg made the perfect scratching post—a pair of trousers I’d never get back.
However, nothing prepared me for coming face-to-face with Livi.
It took a couple more blinks of tired eyes for my brain to register that she was, in fact, not an illusion.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you looked in a mirror this morning?” She tilted her head and scrunched her freckled nose. “Dios, you smell as good as you look.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again.
Her gaze travelled the length of me, starting at my bare feet and up along my exposed legs until she reached my boxers. She remained silent, a slight twitch in her brow, before she continued until brown hues met mine.
There was no doubt I looked like shit.
I’d come straight home after our encounter yesterday, read the letter, and then drank myself to black out. The sweat-soaked T-shirt barely made it off me, never mind attempting something like a shower.
“Are you going to keep me standing out here or are you going to invite me inside?”
“Right, yeah, sorry,” I fumbled, stepping backward. “Come on in.”
Her arm brushed lightly against my chest as she walked into my apartment. Such a light, insignificant touch shot through me like a bolt of lightning.
Her sweet smell, coconut cream mixed with an underlying hint of eucalyptus, cut through the stench of cheap vodka and a lifetime of regrets.
Unable to stop myself, I inhaled her, letting it linger in my nostrils and work its way right into the center of my chest.
Goddamn, she smelled amazing.
Following her deeper into the living room of my apartment, heat rushed to the surface of my cheeks. Hell, the tips of my ears were on fire as I watched her take in the mess that I now called home.
Half unpacked boxes littered the place. Clothes spewing out and bundled into piles, with the only organization being that my clean scrubs sat somewhere separate from the rest of my clothes.
Books, both medical and fictional, were piled around my makeshift bed.
Pieces of paper lined the coffee table, and my journal lay abandoned on the floor beside the empty vodka bottle.
Fuck, this looks bad.
“Just moved in?” Livi asked, her attention dancing from one disaster to another.
“Seven months ago.”
Her mouth formed into a ‘o’ as my empty stomach churned violently.
“Sorry about the mess,” I muttered. “Like I said before, I spend most of my life at the hospital. I try to sleep there most nights, too. So, I don’t really have a lot of time for housework.”
“Don’t worry, I get it.”
“I’m usually not this messy,” I half-lied. “It’s been a bit chaotic since I moved here.”
I used to be tidy. I used to give a damn. I used to care.
I used to not hate my own existence.
I used to be a better person.
“Want to go and grab some breakfast?” She rocked on her heels. “There’s an amazing bakery down the road from your place that does chocolate-chip pancakes that I swear down are better than sex.”
“You’re joking.”
“When it comes to pancakes, I never make jokes.”
“But no food is better than sex.”
“That’s where you are wrong, my friend.” She beamed. “Because they’re better than any sex I have ever had.”
“Clearly, whoever you’ve been fucking needs lessons.”
Her throat bobbed slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
“If the woman I’d been sleeping with thought some pancakes were better than sex with me, I’d have to up my game and show her exactly how good I really am.”
Deep pink stained her cheeks. Her eyes flicked down the length of my body and stopped exactly where my blood threatened to rush too if she kept staring at me like that.
Her bottom lip disappeared between her teeth before she quickly looked away, and damn it felt good being the cause of such a reaction.
“So, breakfast?” I smirked.
“Only if you shower first, because there is no way in hell I am letting your stench put me off my pancakes,” she said, adjusting the sleeve of her lemon knitted cardigan. “I will meet you at Sweet Cravings in half an hour.”
“I’ll be there.” As she turned to leave, I asked, “Hold on, how did you know where I lived, by the way?”
Confusion etched itself across her face. “You texted it to me last night.”
“I did?”
“After I messaged you agreeing to go along with your insane plan, you texted me your address and said to meet you this morning to go over the fine details. You don’t remember?”
No.
“Oh yes, sorry,” I lied through my teeth. “I remember now. My mind is fried after studying a new medical thesis last night.”
She hummed unconvinced, giving the dankness of the pit I called my apartment one last look before leaving.
Waiting until I was completely alone, I grabbed my phone and sure as the day was fucking long was our messages to each other.
How the hell did I not remember texting her?
How the hell did I manage to hold a conversation with her over texts?
Fuck me, this is a new all-time low even for me.
“And that’s exactly why you don’t mix alcohol with drugs, kids,” I muttered to myself as I tossed my phone to the side and headed straight for a much-needed shower.
“If we are going to do this, there needs to be rules.” Livi popped a piece of pancake dripping with chocolate sauce into her mouth.
“That’s reasonable.” I sipped on my black coffee—the only thing my stomach could handle right now, even the smell of her breakfast made me want to gag. “Any particular rules you have in mind?”
Without hesitation, she dived into her oversized handbag. I knew women carried a lot of stuff in those things, but goddamn, the bag was nearly the size of her entire torso. After a couple of seconds of digging, she pulled out a binder and set it on the table between us.
And I thought her handbag was huge.
I cocked a brow. “Dare I ask what’s that for?”
“I want you to think of this as our dating bible.”
“Is that thing color-coded?”
“Of course it is,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’d have to be an insane person, someone who thrives off chaos and wears socks in bed to not color-code your binders.”
“How silly of me to even question it.”
Pulling a pen from her handbag, she pointed it at me. “These binders are the only thing that keeps my head from imploding. I have a different one for every client that I work with, as well as ones for every aspect of my life.”
“The people over at OfficeMax must love you.”
“The staff and I may or may not be on a first-name basis.” She shrugged with a smile. “Every event I organize, all their plans and ideas go into their designated binders. It’s the only way for me to make sense of it all, plus I sort of have a thing for stationery, so it’s a win-win.”
“Well, consider me honored to have my very own binder.” Swallowing my chuckle with a mouthful of coffee, I leaned back in my chair, watching her open the binder carefully. “Does every color have its own meaning?”
“Duh, of course. Each color helps me understand and organize accordingly.”
“What does blue mean?”
“Complicated. Potentially catastrophic and likely to be a freaking stressful headache.”
“Wait a second. Why does my binder have a lot of blue everywhere?”
“Does it?” she feigned innocence. “Can’t say I noticed.”
Narrowing my eyes, I asked, “Do you use blue a lot in your other binders?”
“On the rare occasion.”
“I feel like I should be offended.”
The corners of her mouth tweaked upward. “I didn’t have a color for ‘this is possibly the worst idea ever’ so it could always have been worse.”
Watching her write a couple of notes in her binder, her pen moving at a pace that was both impressive and a little terrifying, the pounding in my head ebbed into non-existence.
Likely down to the sweet relief of caffeine, or maybe it was because sitting here with Livi gave me a sense of peace that I hadn’t felt in years.
It was indescribable.
I barely knew the woman, and yet something inside me yearned to know everything about her.
I drained my coffee. “So, tell me what’s in your disaster-coded binder?”
“Rules for fake dating.”
“Let me guess, rule number one: don’t fall in love.”
She snorted. “What do I look like to you? A walking romcom cliché? This is real life, Dr. D, not How to Lose a Guy in 10 days.”