Not Good Neighbors

Chapter 1

My mom raised me to be super independent, which is why I dutifully fill her in on the details of my Saturday like a field reporter.

“And then I ran out to buy some cheese at this really cute little place that opened up not far from—” I say.

“How close is it to Times Square?” Mom interjects. “I saw on AOL News a hot dog vendor got robbed there!”

A laugh snorts out of me before I can stop it, though my shoulders hitch, bracing for what is sure to be another barrage of well-intentioned safety advice.

I adore my mom, and her concern is born of caring, but no crime statistics will ever shake her certainty that New York is a cesspool her precious daughter is ill-equipped to handle.

“Mom, I promise you, no one who lives in New York City willingly goes to Times Square on a Saturday. And besides, that area is very safe.” I palm my mug of steaming chamomile tea tighter, the heat biting into my palm.

“Scariest thing there is the price tourists will pay for a pic with knock-off Elmo.”

“Stone Harbor is safer, just saying,” she sniffs.

“Didn’t you just tell me Mr. Marino was arrested yesterday?”

“Oh, Penny, you know he likes his whiskey. He was a little rowdy. It happens,” Mom says.

“He stole someone’s dog! And resisted arrest. And then pulled down his—”

“It wasn’t as bad as all that!”

I flick my gaze skyward, asking the divine for patience. It was definitely “as bad as all that” five minutes ago, when Mom shared the latest hot gossip from my sleepy beachside hometown. “Okay. It wasn’t as bad as all that. Make sure you take your pills.”

“I took them already. Are you talking to me on those ear things? I told you to only use speaker phone. The radiation—” Mom starts.

I set my scalding cup down, pull out my earbud, and flick it onto a table with a sigh. “Sorry. You’re on speaker now.”

“Good. Now don’t think I missed that bit before the cheese. Tell me why you were working on a Saturday. We talked about this.”

“I know…” I stand, filled with a sudden rush of restless energy. I fluff the navy blue pillows on my couch and drift to the tall windows that look out on a row of brownstones freckled with air conditioner window units. “Rochelle needed some slides for a conversation with a sales leader.”

In the dying light of another summer day, I peek at my fire escape Eden, which makes up for being totally illegal by adding some much-needed greenery to the otherwise cement-colored landscape.

My botanical babies look ready for a night of beauty sleep.

I lovingly pull closed the glorious, gauzy curtains that set me back a week’s pay.

“So you needed to work on a Saturday”—Mom’s voice fills the room—“because Rochelle’s arms are broken and she can’t do it herself?”

“No, she’s my manager. It’s an assignment,” I say, gaze bouncing around my apartment for more to do.

A moment later, with my telescoping duster in hand, I demolish an errant cobweb dangling from the crown molding overhead.

Can’t blame a spider for having great taste in New York real estate, but these high ceilings are all mine.

“If I’ve said it once, Penelope, I’ve said it a thousand times: they don’t pay you to work on the weekends. Or much at all, for that matter.”

She makes a disappointed noise and my stomach tenses—Pavlov’s daughter, reacting to a familiar bell.

I settle cross-legged in front of the Carrara marble divot in the wall where there was once a working fireplace.

Now the divot floor is covered in pools of hardened wax from the pricey coconut-scented candles I’m addicted to.

I take up the little bowl and scraper tool I left there earlier.

“I mean… I could’ve done it Monday, but I figured I’d knock it out.

” Proving Mom’s point about my salary, I peel chunks of wax off the floor and toss them in the bowl, which I’ll set over a pot of simmering water later.

Why pay for an obscenely expensive candle twice, when you can destroy your manicure rescuing the melted wax and painstakingly repour it into a Mason jar later?

The heavenly smell reminds me why I risk my super’s wrath to light candles in the fireplace at all.

“Milk gallons keep longer than your relationships, Penelope! You need to worry less about your job and more about finding someone. I don’t want you to end up like me, alone and without resources.

Maryellen’s son Brian asked about you the other day, you know?

I ran into him at the grocery store. He’s a realtor now. ”

I wince, reducing the volume on my phone, hoping that last diatribe wasn’t loud enough for my neighbor—my nemesis—to hear. Jack usually announces his arrival by banging on our shared wall or vacuuming nonstop, but hell’s waiting room is quiet for now.

“I have resources. I have a job, remember?”

Mom continues on, ignoring my gainful employment and pivoting hard into advice for finding the right man. “I was with Monica the other day at the garden center. She said her little Sarah ended up with a guy who’s downright homely, but he’s got a great personality and is completely family-minded.”

I pause my increasingly aggressive scraping, realizing I’ve left dark streaks on the marble. “That’s nice,” I say, picturing my mother and my old high school friend’s mom discussing Sarah’s husband. Poor guy.

“Look what happened when your father left us,” Mom says, and my throat tightens.

I don’t need to be reminded of the days we had a negative balance in the checking account, the times before we got back on our feet when we didn’t have enough to even buy bread.

I jerk to a stand, bringing my bowl and scraper back to the kitchen.

“…so I told her,” Mom continues, oblivious to the mental rabbit hole I’m in danger of falling down, “if you ask me, those societies with arranged marriages have the right idea. You need to look at the family. The bank account. The whole package. Leave the emotion out of it. Forget about looks unless he’s got money enough to pay you out when it all ends.

If your father had at least had any money…

No, forget looks. You need to tell your boss you—”

Her advice is interrupted by the roaring drone of Jack’s vacuum, so loud and close it might as well be hoovering my ear canal.

“What is that? Is that your neighbor again?” Mom shouts.

I was tapping out a jittery staccato against the counter, but now I curl my fingers into a little rage ball.

If junk mail wished on a star and became a real boy, I’d know exactly where to find him.

I storm over to bang my fist on the living room wall, which only draws the sound closer.

It becomes louder and more aggressive, as if someone is vacuuming right against the wall on purpose.

Because of course Jack’s vacuuming against the wall on purpose.

The only thing separating me from my neighbor’s enormous head is a few inches of prewar plaster. And maybe some wood? I don’t know, I’m not a contractor. Though I’m sure that not even a twelve-inch-thick steel panel would be enough of a buffer for my peace. Jack vacuums to irritate me.

Because he hates me as much as I hate him.

Which is a lot.

“Yes, he sucks,” I shout over the din. Her response is lost in the drone and thump of a vacuum butting up against a baseboard. “I can’t hear you! I’ve gotta deal with this. And I’ll talk to my boss. Okay? Love you. Call you tomorrow.” I end the call and pound on the wall again.

My phone vibrates, Mom texting:

I love you. You can always move back here, you know. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with that nonsense.

The place just under my ribs tightens. I don’t want to move. I’ve had six years of rental bliss in this apartment—six years of space to be myself and make my own decisions. All that changed ten months ago, when the demon moved in next door.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I announce to no one. I stormily return to my little bowl of wax and set it up on the stove in a water bath. It’s not long before the apartment is enveloped in the soothing scent of coconut.

After pouring the wax into a jar and standing up a wick, I migrate over to my built-in bookcases to dust. They’re overflowing with my favorite romance novels and a never-ending collection of to-be-reads, organized by steaminess rating.

I run the duster over the spines, pausing to glance at the back cover of one I don’t remember reading.

Instantly, I get sucked into the jacket copy.

My jaw relaxes. My hands unclench. I deserve a break.

Start a new release or lean into the tried and true? As if that’s a real question.

Book in hand, I return to my sofa and almost unconsciously bang my fist on the wall again. Jack doesn’t have the square footage to warrant that much fucking vacuuming. I should know, since our apartments are mirror images of each other.

The vacuum falls blessedly silent, leaving only the muffled murmurs of Jack’s TV.

“Dick,” I mutter, eyeing my long-forgotten chamomile tea with regret. Tugging my softest throw blanket over my lap and snuggling into my couch, I can feel tension leaking out of my body like an exorcised spirit when I open Karin Shelby’s The Pirate Duke’s Pleasure.

Bethany advanced on the Pirate Duke, her temper sparking. “I am not interested in softening you,” she gritted out. “I rather like you…hard.”

Her words were a direct hit, landing with a cannon’s force. Ronan pulled in a bracing breath, willing his heart to slow and his manhood’s ache to subside.

The robe slipped off Bethany’s shoulders, and the moonlight through the cabin’s porthole illuminated his Venus. Tantalizing, succulent…and just as out of reach as a goddess of old for such as him.

“The man you knew is dead! Charles Hawthorne, Duke of Merrow, is no more,” he snapped.

Her cobalt eyes flashed like a tempest-tossed sea. Her hand moved down her ribs, grazing lower until it reached the juncture of her thighs.