Same Thing (Same #1)

Chapter One

Nory Hunter checked over her shoulder for the third time, hopeful he wouldn’t be there.

Her neighbor, Jackson, always ended up at the mailboxes at the same time as her, no matter when she showed up.

Her apartment complex wasn’t huge, so there weren’t a lot of people checking the mailboxes at the same time. Jackson liked to show up and ask her out. Daily.

This time, she’d gotten away with a peaceful mailbox check, and with a sigh of relief, she turned to leave but froze. Jackson was approaching.

“Shoot,” she huffed under her breath. She’d been trying to cuss less lately on account of her mother assuring her high-quality men didn’t like sailor-mouthed women.

“I thought that was you,” Jackson murmured with a greeting smile.

“Yeah, what a coincidence meeting here. Again.”

“Yeah, it’s fate or something, right?” Jackson asked. He was a nice enough guy, but there was just something about him that had always lifted the hairs on the back of Nory’s neck. Mostly, it bothered her that he didn’t take no for an answer.

Jackson was blocking the narrow exit to the outdoor mailboxes, which were set in a rectangle shape. She tried to get around him with an, “I’ll see you later,” but he stepped in front of her and rested his forearm on the side of the first mailbox.

Drats. Blocked.

He started telling her about something that happened at his work with some guy named Don, and Nory stood on her tiptoes looking past him. To her eternal relief, Layla, the apartment manager, was doing a tour with a new tenant. Geez, the potential tenant was a giant. And a gym rat. Wow.

She waved. “Hi, Layla! Excuse me,” she interrupted Jackson. “I need to talk to her about something.”

“Oh, she’s on a tour. She’s busy. You can talk to her when she’s done,” Jackson said.

Nory flinched back, and assured him, “No, I can talk to her whenever I want.” She didn’t like him telling her what she could and couldn’t do.

She didn’t like it at all. It was the boldest thing she’d ever said to anyone.

She was always polite, and truth-be-told, was cripplingly shy, so sticking up for herself felt impossible most days.

Jackson frowned, and she felt immediate guilt for being rude.

“Anyways, I got two tickets for the game this week, and I was thinking—”

“Hey,” a gravelly voice said from behind him.

Jackson turned around, and Nory froze. It was the tall guy who was touring the complex with Layla. He wore sunglasses, but that didn’t cover up the deep frown on his face.

“Move aside,” he gritted out.

“What did you say to me?” Jackson asked, standing to his full height.

“I didn’t stutter.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Jackson asked.

The tall man cocked his head and seemed to study Jackson. “I’ll be your neighbor, looks like.”

“Yeah, well dibs on this one. We’ve been talking for a while.”

“Excuse me. I really want to go home,” she murmured, and sidled around Jackson.

The new guy didn’t even grace her with a look as she passed, but he did say, “Have a good day.”

“Okay,” she whispered, her skin crawling with what had just happened with Jackson.

He was getting more forceful. Dibs? They were talking? She’d told him no to dates at least a dozen times by now.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven,” Jackson called from behind her, and she hunched her shoulders up to her ears and kept walking.

Layla was standing on the sidewalk that led to her building, arms crossed over her chest, standing in a power-stance in her fitted pink blazer and dress pants. “You know what you asked me the other week?” Layla asked.

“Yeah?” Nory murmured, coming to a stop beside her.

“The boss declined it, but I’ll ask again.”

“Okay, thank you,” she said softly, then made her way to the stairs that would lead up to her third story apartment. “Oh,” she said, hesitating. “Tell that new guy thanks, will you?”

Layla nodded. “You’ve got it.”

Nory looked behind her, and at the same moment, that tall man cast a glance at her over his shoulder. It looked like he was the one trapping Jackson in the mailbox area now. He looked uncomfortable and tried to get around the giant man but couldn’t. Ha. How did that feel?

She took the stairs two-at-a-time and closed the door to her apartment as fast as she could when she reached the third floor.

Jackson’s apartment was on the first floor, directly beneath her and her downstairs neighbor.

Only one apartment separated them. Two weeks ago, Nory had asked if she could either move apartments to the opposite side of the complex away from Jackson or break her lease early without the financial repercussions that came along with that.

She couldn’t afford the twelve hundred dollars just to break her lease three months early and had been hoping the complex would have mercy on her and have it waived.

The second she got into her apartment, her phone buzzed with a text message. It was from her best friend in the world, Alese.

Shipwrecks. Tonight. Wear something slutty.

Nory’s mood lifted in an instant. Yes! Shipwrecks was a bar in walking distance that had awesome drink specials on Thursdays.

The ‘wear something slutty’ comment was a joke.

Nory never dressed like that and Alese knew it.

She was an introvert. Dressing immodestly would drag attention to her that she had zero interest in.

She did enjoy being out with Alese though and cutting loose.

Fridays and Saturdays were her days off from work, so she always felt like getting out on Thursdays.

It would be an excellent way to get rid of this unsettled feeling she always had after talking to Jackson.

Time? Nory typed out. Send.

I’ll be at your place at 8. It’s been a week. We can walk over together. Miss you, ho.

She giggled and texted back, Miss you too. Can’t wait to hear about your week. Send.

Party foul. We are not talking about work tonight. Tonight…we escape.

And that sounded perfect to Nory.

See you at 8. I’ll double-layer a turtleneck. Send.

Perfect. Pair them with booty shorts.

Nory rolled her eyes and tossed her phone onto her couch, shaking her head.

Booty shorts were not her style. She would feel exposed all night, and already, she had issues with feeling vulnerable.

She always felt like people were looking at her, and the shyness made it difficult to just ‘act normal.’

But…Alese was a phenomenal buffer and always absorbed all the attention in a room, and Nory just got to be around good vibes and good times.

Nory lifted one of her blinds to look outside and at first, she didn’t know why she’d done it. But as she scanned the parking lot, she realized exactly who she was looking for.

The giant gym rat in the sunglasses was carrying a box from the back of a big, jacked up pickup truck. Nory lifted the blinds higher and craned her neck as she tried to see where he was carrying it.

He was headed toward the next building over from hers, and that one was made of one-bedroom apartments. He probably had a lady who was moving in with him too. That would not shock her at all, that man was so hot.

At least, from what she could tell behind his sunglasses and low riding baseball cap, he was hot.

He wore a navy-blue t-shirt that hugged his bicep and shoulder muscles, and his jeans fit him like one of those famous movie stars on television.

She’d never seen anyone physically put together better than that man.

He disappeared around the corner of the apartment building, and from here, she couldn’t tell if he was on the first floor, or if he went up the stairs.

His truck was really nice, and looked newly washed, and possibly brand new. It had big tires on it and nearly took up two parking spaces. The man returned just a few moments later to the truck and pulled out another box, but right before he shut the tailgate, he looked up, directly at her.

With a gasp, Nory let the blind fall back into place, and she backed up a few paces quickly.

She was so busted.

Barely resisting the urge to go back and watch him unpack the rest, she forced herself to check the beef stew she had simmering in the slow cooker.

Her thoughts swirled around him as she mixed up the batter for cornbread. He had made Jackson leave her alone, and she really appreciated that.

Be bold.

Her mother’s words often played in her mind when it came to situations that made her nervous. They echoed through her mind now because she had just had an insane thought.

For one psychotic moment, she’d imagined herself bringing him a container of soup and cornbread as a thank you for giving her an out on the Jackson conversation, and as a little welcome to the complex present.

Now, she, Nory Hunter, had never in her life even considered doing something so daring, and so she didn’t know what had possessed her to even think of doing something like that now.

Maybe it was her genuine gratefulness for him prying her out of that uncomfortable moment with Jackson downstairs, or perhaps it was her excitement about going to Shipwrecks with Alese tonight, or maybe it was that school-is-out sensation swirling inside of her chest because she had two days off of work, but the thought had come, the thought had shocked her, and she’d put the thought in its place.

Heck no, she couldn’t do that. She would’ve chickened out before she even made it down the stairs with the stew.

Plus, she argued with herself, she didn’t even know which apartment was his.

There were four doors per flight of stairs, and three flights of stairs, so twelve apartments in his building, and she was not the type to go knocking on random doors trying to find some hot guy that was nice to her for a second.

Although…she did know three of the people in the building and where they lived, so really, it was only nine apartments left. Or she could go ask Layla. Or she could walk outside nonchalantly like she was going to go to the community room near the office, and try to see where he was unloading boxes…

“Stop,” she murmured to herself, appalled at her train of thought.

This was not her. She did not do things like this. Thinking about it was a waste of her time, and frankly embarrassing.

That man was ten levels outside of her league, and clearly a dominant personality, which she was not.

It would’ve been so fun to tell Alese about it at Shipwrecks tonight though. She and Nory’s mother were constantly telling Nory to put herself out there more.

It was easy for extrovert personalities to say though, and very difficult for introverted personalities to actually do.

Nory would never in a million years build her courage up to bring a stranger she thought was handsome food.

She simply wasn’t built like that.