Chapter 2
After an hour of unpacking and taking inventory of the gear in the kitchen, there’s a knock at my door. I’ve only lived here long enough to meet one neighbor, so it’s no big surprise when I find Zach standing outside, holding a six-pack of beer.
“Welcome to the neighborhood.” He’s wearing jeans, flip-flops, and a beat-up T-shirt from my favorite Chapel Hill bar, The Crunkleton. Zach pulls off the effortless beach bum look in a way that I never could.
I eye the beer. “Is this a peace offering?”
“Why? Are we at war?”
I laugh despite myself. “There’s the issue of the house we both want.”
He shrugs like it’s nothing. “You gonna invite me in, or am I drinking these out here alone?”
My first instinct is to say alone works; but something in his expression, or maybe it’s the sliver of history we share, makes me step back. “Fine. But just one,” I say. “I’m exhausted. I need to put up my feet and read a good book.”
He comes in, glancing around. “Hilarious. Your side has the exact same furniture as mine.”
“Sounds like a lack of imagination,” I say dryly, setting the beer on the counter while I consider the two of us living parallel lives—both divorced, away from the same college town, occupying what is apparently a mirror-image duplex, both wanting to flip the same house.
I pop open two cans, then hand him one. For a moment we stand there, the crash of the waves and the breeze filtering in through the window as we each take a sip of beer.
It’s ice cold and goes down way too easy.
I’m tempted to chug it and crack another.
“So… what’s your plan B if you don’t get the house?” Zach asks.
I press my lips together tightly. Launch myself off the pier? Hold my breath and stomp my feet like Veruca Salt in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory? “There is no plan B. I have to get that house.”
He nods slowly. “No wonder you think we’re at war.”
“We don’t have to be. You’ve flipped a zillion houses. Why don’t you just pick a different project?”
“It’s nothing personal. My gut is that it’s a good buy.”
I blow out a breath of frustration through my nose. “They’re auctioning other properties next week. Why don’t you take on something bigger and leave my house to me?”
“My house? If you’re already thinking like that, you’re in big trouble.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s the first rule of flipping. Don’t get attached. You need to be dispassionate. Cold. Calculating.”
“You sound like you’re describing Michael,” I mutter under my breath. “What’s the second rule?”
“Don’t get in over your head.”
So far, I’m not a fan of his rules of flipping. “I’m not.”
“I thought you said flipping was too risky. You didn’t want to go into business with me because of it.” He steps closer.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to go into business with you. It’s that I didn’t want to go into that business.”
“Interesting.” He takes another swig of his beer. “So, what changed?”
“I have a different perspective now. I’m not the same person anymore. I guess divorce changed me.”
“I know how that goes.”
Something tells me that he does know. He’s always had this lone wolf posture that suggested he’d been burned big time by the split from his wife.
I hardly know her, but she moved on lightning-fast, just like Michael, so my conclusions have data.
“Also, I’m not going into flipping as a permanent thing.
I’m doing this one project to prove to myself that I can do it. ”
“All the more reason to go after a different house. From the looks of it, this one might be a headache.”
I don’t give a flip about headaches. A headache I can survive. “Please just let me have this one thing.” I sound pathetic, but I don’t care. I am pathetic.
He knocks back the last of his beer and tosses the can into the recycling bin next to the fridge. “I’m not about to pass up a sweet business deal just because you’re pretty.”
My cheeks flush so quickly it’s like I drank the rest of the six-pack in the last five minutes. “Pfft. Right. Pretty. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Normally, not much. But I’ve always thought you were smoking hot, and your ex-husband is really a dick, so I guess it’s a cumulative thing.
Your effect on me.” He walks up to me and claps me on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let it cloud my judgment.
” He flashes a spellbinding smile—then just as fast, Zach is out the door, closing it behind him.
I lean back against the kitchen counter, my heart promising to pound its way out of my chest. It’s not just the beer. It’s Zach. My effect on him? We might need to have a conversation about the opposite. I’ve been here less than a few hours and it’s already becoming an issue.
“Get it together,” I say to myself. “He only said that stuff because he wants to talk you out of bidding on the house. That’s not going to happen.
” I flip the dead bolt, turn off the lights in the kitchen, and head back to my bedroom.
“Screw the first rule of flipping. I’m getting that house if it kills me. ”