Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Bouncer (Wrong Number, Right Grump #11)

Chapter One

Maya

The eviction notice is taped to the door at eye level because whoever left it wanted to make sure I'd see it before I got my key in the lock.

Thirty days to vacate. Two rolling suitcases dig grooves into my palms, and I stand in the hallway of my apartment building reading a legal document that ends my residency in exactly the font size lawyers use when they want you to feel small.

Thirty days. I have thirty days to find a new apartment in a job market that just spent the week telling me it doesn't need me either.

This morning, I was the Senior Marketing Manager for three casino properties across the state. Tonight I'm a woman standing in a hallway with a piece of paper that smells of printer toner and personal failure.

My brain does the thing it always does under pressure.

It builds a list. Step one: read the notice fully.

Step two: locate lease paperwork, confirm payment history, because there is no way I'm behind.

I set autopay for this specific reason. I built a spreadsheet for this specific reason.

Step three: call the property management office first thing tomorrow and calmly, professionally, dismantle whatever clerical error caused this.

The list helps. The list always helps. As long as I'm building it, the floor under me stays solid.

I get the door open and the list falls apart in my hands.

The apartment is half-empty. Not messy-half-empty, not needs-vacuuming-half-empty.

Gone-half-empty. The couch is still there because it's mine, but the armchair Vicky brought from her parents' basement is missing, and so is the TV stand, and so is the TV, and so is every single one of the framed photos that used to line the hallway of Vicky and various boyfriends squinting into sunsets.

"Vicky?"

Nothing answers except the particular silence of an apartment that's already decided it's done with you.

Her bedroom door hangs open. Empty closet, hangers still swinging slightly as if they had just finished being disturbed. A yellow sticky note sits on the bare mattress, and I know before I read it that whatever it says is going to be the least helpful sentence a human being has ever written.

Moved in with Danny early. The landlord has my forwarding address for the deposit split. Sorry, babe, timing just wasn't working out. Xoxo V.

The timing wasn't working out. I read it twice, then a third time, waiting for it to rearrange itself into something less insulting.

It doesn't. Vicky, my roommate of fourteen months, has apparently been quietly moving her life out of this apartment for who knows how long while I was getting laid off in a conference room with motivational posters on the wall, and she left a note with an xoxo on it like we're wrapping up a group project instead of a shared lease.

Both our names are on the lease, which means Vicky would’ve known about this the whole time, would’ve gotten the same notices I did if she hadn't set up her mail forwarding early.

My autopay covers my half, on time, every month, like clockwork.

Hers stopped months ago. And because we're jointly liable, the landlord doesn't care whose name is attached to which missed payment.

He just wants the balance, and until an hour ago I didn't even know there was one.

I don’t build a list for this. There is no list. There is only the specific white-hot fury of a person who has spent eight years managing seven-figure ad budgets down to the dollar, discovering she's been carrying a stranger's debt because that stranger thought "babe" was an acceptable substitute for "I'm about to ruin your life. "

My phone is in my hand before I've decided to pick it up. I dial the number on the notice and hit call with a thumb that's shaking in a way I don't appreciate.

It rings twice.

"State your business."

Flat. Clipped. A voice like a closed door, giving up nothing, not even a hello. I don't stop to register any of it. I have a suitcase in the hallway, a bare mattress down the hall, and thirty days.

"Oh, I'll state my business."

And I'm off.

I tell him what I think of a thirty-day notice delivered with zero warning, and somewhere around the word "unconscionable" I hear a grunt on the other end, which I take as agreement and steamroll straight through.

"I have autopay," I inform him, as if autopay is a personality trait, like it's a character reference.

"I have a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Rent is blue, I never miss blue, I have never once in my life missed blue.

" Another grunt, lower this time, more of a warning grunt than an agreeing one, but I'm too far gone to read the room.

"If this is about Vicky's half, and I assume it is, because math, then you need to go collect from Vicky, who currently lives at Danny's, forwarding address pending, last name unknown to me at this juncture because apparently I didn't need to know it until tonight. "

A third grunt. I plow past it.

"I have never been late. Not once. I once paid rent from an airport in Denver during a layover because I refused to let it hit day one, so if your system is telling you I owe money, your system is wrong, and I would like it corrected before I do something you'll regret, like leaving a review, or several reviews, on multiple platforms, written by a woman with a marketing degree and nothing left to lose. "

Silence. Not even a grunt this time, which should probably worry me more than it does.

"I got laid off today," I add, à propos of nothing he asked, because that's relevant now, because apparently everything is relevant now.

"From a very good job. With a title. So the timing of all this is, frankly, insulting, and I’d like that noted somewhere.

In a file. About me. The file where I am correct. "

Once it's out, I can't stop it from dragging the rest of the week behind it, the conference room, the box of desk plants, the eight years I gave that company that ended in a fifteen-minute meeting and a cardboard box.

He says nothing about any of it. Not one word. Just breathing on the other end of the line, steady and patient in a way that should tip me off, because Gary has never once let me finish a sentence without interrupting to explain why the noise complaint isn't his department.

I don't stop to wonder about it. I'm too busy finishing.

"So you can tell whoever handles these notices," I say, voice cracking on the last word in a way I’ll be furious about later, "that I have thirty days, and I’m going to use every single one of them, and I’d like the exact figure of what's owed by tomorrow morning or I swear to God I’ll find a lawyer who works for free out of spite. "

I hang up before he can respond. I don't even know if there was a response coming.

I just know I'm done, standing in my half-empty living room with my chest heaving like I ran a marathon instead of yelling at a stranger, and it isn't until the silence settles back in that I notice my hands won't stop shaking.

I call Sunny, my best friend, instead of sitting with it.

She picks up on the second ring, her voice warm and a little breathless, with background noise that sounds like a kitchen. "Hey, birthday girl's countdown, three days and count—"

"Vicky's gone." My voice comes out thinner than I want it to. "She moved out. She's been not paying rent, apparently, and now I have an eviction notice and thirty days and I just screamed at my landlord, I lost my job, I don't even know what to do, and I don't have anywhere to—"

"Whoa. Whoa, hey. Breathe." Sunny's voice shifts into the register she uses for actual emergencies, the one under the sunshine. "Okay. First, are you safe right now? Is the apartment safe?"

"It's fine. It's just empty." I sink onto the couch, the only piece of furniture in the room that still belongs to me. "I don't know what I'm doing, Sunny."

"You're doing what you always do, which is panicking efficiently." A pause, warm and certain. "Come stay with us. Beck won't care; there's room. We've got the whole guest situation figured out since the wedding. You don't have to decide anything tonight."

The offer lands somewhere under my ribs and loosens something I didn't know was locked tight. "I could crash with you," I say, testing the shape of it, "just until I figure out the next move."

"Obviously," Sunny says, like it was never a question. "Pack a bag. Bring wine. We'll strategize. It’ll be a slumber party like the good ol’ days. I’ll cook all your favorite foods, and we’ll curse the world."

I look down the hallway at Vicky's empty room, at the sticky note still curling slightly on the bare mattress, and start making a mental list of what belongs to me in this apartment.

It's a short list. But at least it's mine.