Chapter 4
A week later, movers left me with the chemical scent of new carpet mixed with the mustiness of an old building under new paint and the oppressive beige of my new apartment.
After months of squatting in my nana’s basement, I’d finally saved up enough money for my own place.
I surveyed my domain: a tiny table with four mismatched chairs, a love seat Nana didn’t want anymore, and a coffee table as scarred as my heart.
I walked down the hall to the main bedroom, where the movers had set up the double bed and dresser from my childhood. A glance into the closet, and I realized I’d used only one side of the closet for my clothes, as if waiting for Ken to use the other one.
Well, that simply wouldn’t do.
I moved a few of my blouses and dresses to the other side of the closet. One of the perks of being single had to be taking up as much space as I wanted to.
Yes, I was going to take up space. Literally and figuratively.
Saggy-ass bitch.
The words from the college boy still haunted me from time to time, coming out of nowhere as if my subconscious blamed me for everything that had happened. Havisham said I needed to find a good therapist, but therapy required money, so I’d have to stick to my do-it-yourself mantras for now.
Slow inhale: I am worthy . . .
Slow exhale: of love and happiness.
After a few repetitions, the unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach subsided.
I intentionally bypassed the bathroom so I wouldn’t see myself in the mirror and pick apart every part of my reflection that I didn’t like.
It was a new hobby inspired by Ken’s harsh words, my mother’s well-meaning articles, and my left eyebrow’s sudden and inexplicable decision to go rogue no matter how much eyebrow gel I applied.
Instead, I plopped down on the love seat in the living room and tried to give myself a pep talk about living in Bel Air Apartments, a moniker far fancier than my current digs deserved, with no Fresh Prince anywhere to be seen.
The complex had been built in the sixties and hardly updated since then, but the rent was something I could cobble together from my assorted freelance jobs while I went to school to get my paralegal certificate, which would open me up to more and better-paying freelance jobs.
If you’d finished law school, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Yes, and if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their butts when they jumped—at least, that’s what Nana liked to say.
Sure, I’d dropped out of law school to join Ken in the private investigator business.
Yes, I was still paying off my loans from that year as well as my undergraduate degree.
Absolutely, I should’ve kept up with my payments instead of skipping two months’ worth so I could get out of Nana’s basement and move into my own place.
Silly me to think that making every payment religiously since 2007 would’ve bought me some grace.
Oh no. Now I was two months behind, and I had fees on top of that.
The kicker? The form letter alerting me to the extra money I now owed had arrived that very morning, when it was too late to call off the move.
Theoretically, I could take some extra jobs from Ken, but I’d rather sit in a fire ant hill than ask him for help. I could check around with some of my favorite attorney friends. There always seemed to be more papers to serve, more spouses to surveil, more insurance claims to validate.
Or I could sell feet pictures.
One look at my knobby toes, and I knew that wasn’t an option.
My past decisions had put me in this present predicament, but I refused to beat myself up for believing in love.
I’d been young and stupid, foolish enough to believe that my life story might turn out differently from those of the other women in my family.
Sure, every chapter of our history should’ve convinced me otherwise, but I’d always been one to learn things the hard way.
That trait ran in the family, too.
Suddenly, the oppressiveness of the apartment’s beige silence made sense.
I was living alone for the first time in my life.
I’d gone from my parents’ house to my nana’s, from Nana’s to a dorm with roommates, from the dorm to living with Ken.
Mom once told me that crappy apartments found us all eventually.
I hated to think she was right about anything, but broken clocks managed it twice a day, so it made sense something she’d told me would be accurate.
The urge to leave had me back on my less than photogenic feet. I could go to Finnegan’s to do my homework. Maybe see if Havisham and Salcedo would join me for a housewarming party—that would motivate me to make my new space more of a home.
Or not.
Why have a party in this sad apartment when we could hang out at Finnegan’s, as we usually did?
I marched out the door and straight into a man who smelled of bourbon vanilla and spice.
Large hands landed gently on either upper arm to steady me.
Not soft hands, either. Warm, capable ones.
I meant to say “Sorry about that,” but as I looked up a suited body, past broad shoulders and a bearded jawline, to my reflection in mirrored aviators, what I actually said was, “Are you the ‘Man in Finance’ I ordered? That delivery was fast.”
When he realized I was referring to the song, he laughed out loud. “Not six five.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “You seem pretty tall to me.”
“That’s because you’re fun-size.”
I smiled in spite of myself. I wanted to be offended by his remark, but his inflection of “fun-size” was simply too good-humored. “If you’re sure . . .”
“Afraid I also don’t have blue eyes or work in finance.”
“Damn.”
One corner of his mouth twitched upward. “No trust fund, either.”
“Double damn.”
I should’ve moved, but I didn’t seem able to.
I couldn’t see his eyes, but I liked everything I could see: full lips, closely cropped brown hair, broad shoulders, strong hands.
But mainly it was his intoxicating smell, his willingness to play along with my silliness, his voice, the mischievous upturn to his lips.
And you want to jump out of the fire and into his frying pan because a part of you doesn’t want to live alone.
“I guess I should let you go,” I finally said.
“If you must.”
“I must,” I said with a sigh.
It had to have been my imagination that he wasn’t in any more of a hurry to leave than I was, because he then headed to the parking lot with purpose.
He looked over his shoulder at me once more, still smiling.
Then he paused briefly at the side of a newer-model, silver Lexus to take a phone call. “Malone here. What’s the problem now?”
I stepped behind the stairs that led to the upper floor and studied him through the gap between the concrete steps while pretending to check the mail I most certainly didn’t have yet.
Tall, tailored navy suit, expensive shoes. Those aviators cost as much as what my monthly car payment used to be. If he wasn’t in finance, then he was in something lucrative.
Not that it was any of my business. Or that I was in the market. Or that I even wanted a rich guy. Something about his height and suit had brought that silly song to mind.
“No, no. This is a delicate operation,” he said.
I studied the mailboxes so it wouldn’t look like I was eavesdropping. They were so old they had slots for the name of each person above the apartment. There was Malone. He lived in the apartment across the breezeway from me.
Taking my keys from my pocket, I opened my own mailbox—just in case he looked over to see what I was doing—and took out a collection of flyers for “Current Resident” as well as bills for people who’d lived in the apartment before me.
Pretending to peruse a Lands’ End catalog, I ambled over to my Corolla.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” my handsome neighbor said as he ended his call and slid into the Lexus. “No, I’ll handle it.”
Handle what? Could I volunteer to be handled?
I shook those thoughts away. Sure, his baritone voice exuded calm confidence, but I was on a hiatus from men.
For heaven’s sake, I’d left Ken only six months ago.
Before that I’d been with him for almost twenty years.
And before that it had been my high school boyfriend.
Basically, I’d been involved in a relationship, juvenile or otherwise, since age sixteen.
I owed it to myself to learn who I was and what I wanted from life. I owed it to myself to learn to love my own company.
No more compromises.
No matter how intriguingly handsome my neighbor might be.
A part of me whispered, You’re just scared he sees you the way Soft Hands did, but I told that part of me to shut up and recited a new mantra.
Slow inhale: I may not be able to touch . . .
Slow exhale: but I can most certainly look.
“Oh, Stark,” Salcedo sang as I walked into Finnegan’s. “I have a gift for you.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “My birthday’s next month.”
“Oh, but I wanted to. Don’t worry. It’s neither expensive nor anything you’ll have to dust.” She slid from her barstool and held her phone in front of me before pressing play on a video.
From the angle I saw Ken in his office, which meant Salcedo had been filming from the building across the street.
“How did you—”
“Watch.”
In the video, Ken took a poster tube from the top of his desk, turning it from side to side before inspecting the mailing label. He opened one side, and bam! An explosion of glitter.
I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing.
For a moment I thought the video had stopped. No, he’d only been shocked into momentary stillness before he began frantically brushing at the glitter on his suit. The video shook with what had to have been Salcedo’s laughter.
“You sent him a glitter bomb?” I asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “Guess what else?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“There among the glitter were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of little golden penises. And I added a note: ‘Tools for a tool.’”