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It wasn’t anything special—a living room, dining area and kitchen, with a bathroom and two bedrooms that had been carved from what had once been the garage housing the fire trucks. It was darker than my place, not having the big second-and third-floor windows, but it did have immense, broad beams in the ceiling, and a nice, open layout.
“What do you think?”
Alex walked around, checking out the wooden floors, the plastered walls. He tested the spring-cushioned love seat left behind by the previous tenants, and peeked into the kitchen while I watched. He looked into one bedroom, then the other, and finally the bath. The whole tour took about seven minutes. He turned to me with a broad grin.
“I’ll take it.”
“Really? That fast, huh?”
“Sure. It beats sleeping on someone’s couch,” he said. “I like it.”
“You don’t even know the price,” I pointed out, though I hadn’t planned on charging much since the place did need some work and something was better than the nothing I’d had from it before.
“Name it.”
I thought. “Four hundred a month?”
“Sold.”
“Should I have asked for more?”
Alex looked around. “Probably. That couch adds a lot of value. The smell, especially.”
“It doesn’t smell!” I cried, horrified. “Does it smell?”
He laughed. “I’m kidding you, Olivia. It’s fine. So…you want first and last month’s rent? A security deposit? Got paperwork to sign?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Umm…”
Alex came forward, hand out. I thought he meant to shake, but when he took mine, he didn’t let go. He pumped my hand slowly, smiling. “Maybe we should just spit on our palms.”
“Wow. No. How about we skip that part. First and last month’s rent is fine, if you have it.”
“I have it.” Alex squeezed my hand and let go, then looked around again. “When can I move in?”
“Whenever you want.”
“Sweet.” He turned to me. “Next week? It’ll take some time for me to get some things shipped here. Buy a bed. That sort of thing.”
“That’s fine. I’ll get you a copy of the keys.”
Alex studied me. “You sure you don’t need references or anything like that?”
“Why? Because you’re trouble?”
Alex laughed. “Right. That’s me.”
“I can handle you,” I said.
“I’m sure you can.” Alex’s stomach rumbled suddenly and loudly. After the pancake orgy earlier I’d have thought I wouldn’t eat until the next day, but of course my own stomach had to answer his. “Let me take you to dinner.”
“It’s only three o’clock.”
“Late lunch, then.” He grinned. “Where do you want to go?”
“Alex…I really need to get some work done.”
“Olivia,” he wheedled, a man totally used to getting his own way. “I heard your stomach rumbling. You can’t deny you’re hungry.”
I’d known him for less than forty-eight hours and already I’d seen how he looked when he came, tasted his cooking, had my ass handed to me playing Dance Dance Revolution, and now I was going to practically be living with him.
I let Alex take me to dinner, too.
It was hard to eat while laughing, and he wasn’t giving me much chance to do anything else. Alex had stories, and if I could tell that many of them were exaggerated for effect, it was also easy to believe them. He’d been all over, done so much, that I felt like a real country mouse beside him.
“What is your story, really?” I said over slices of cheesecake and mugs of espresso. “How’d you make it here from Japan?”
“I came from Holland, actually. Before that I was in Singapore. Went to Scotland, too.”
I made a face. “Smart-ass. You didn’t come to Central PA just to visit Patrick?”
“Well…” Alex shrugged. “He invited me, for one thing, and it was on my way back home. Plus I had a lead on this consulting gig. It all worked out.”
“Where’s home?”
“I’m from Ohio. Sandusky.”
“Cedar Point!” I said. “I’ve been there.”
“Yeah. That’s the place.” Alex drank some espresso and leaned back in the booth. He still wore the long scarf, though his peacoat was scrunched in a pile by his side. “I thought I’d get back there for the holidays, but it looks like I’ll be staying here instead.”
“How come?”
This time Alex did more than glance at me. He gave me the full weight of his gaze. “I haven’t been back in a long time. Sometimes, the longer you stay away from something the harder it is to go back there.”
I knew that already. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. So…you don’t get along with your family?”
A pause, a breath. He raised a brow.
“Too personal?” I asked.
“No. Just not sure how to answer.”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. Have you heard the expression ‘home is the place where they have to take you in’? Or whatever it is?”
“Of course.” I licked the tines of my fork and then dragged it through the chocolate syrup on my plate.
“Well, let’s just say I’m more of a ‘you can never go home again’ type of guy.”
“Wow. That’s too bad.”
“Yeah. I guess so. I used to not get along with my family at all. My dad was…” Alex hesitated again, then kept going before I could tell him once more he didn’t have to speak. “He’s an asshole. I was going to say he was an asshole, but I guess he still is. He doesn’t drink anymore, but he’s kind of an ass, anyway. I think that’s just who he is.”
I sipped at the last of my coffee. “But?”
“But he’s trying. I guess. Not that I think my dad and I are ever going to go on that big father-son fishing trip or anything,” he added.
“You never know.”
“I know,” Alex said pointedly. “But at least he talks to me when I call home. And he cashes the checks I send. Well, hell, he always did that.”
Alex laughed. I laughed a second later, thinking I should feel a little awkward about this sharing but…not.
“People change,” I said.
“Everything changes.” Alex shrugged and looked away. “Shit happens. Anyway, I’d been working overseas for a long time. Sold my company a few years ago and wasn’t doing a whole lot. I went back home for the summer and…fuck.”
A harsh word, a little out of place for the circumstances. It put me on the edge of my seat. It sounded good, coming from him, as if he said it a lot. He must’ve been keeping himself in line until now. I liked thinking he might be letting go.
“Let’s just say I remembered all the reasons I’d left home in the first place.” He flicked his bangs from his face with a practiced jerk. “Anyway, I got some offers to do some consulting, got a start with a new company. Traveled for a while, went back overseas. Worked for a while in Japan. That’s where I met Patrick. But the job ended and I had to go somewhere. Thought I’d travel around my homeland instead of being a stranger in a strange land.”
“I love that book.”
He looked at me. “Me, too.”
“So, what, you’re not working at all? Just going wherever you want, whenever?”
“Sleeping on a series of couches.” Alex paused to bite some cheesecake. “I’m sort of a professional houseguest.”
“That sounds…” I laughed.
He laughed, too. “Shitty?”
“Sort of.”
He shrugged. “I’m good at making a pain of myself by abusing hospitality.”
“I don’t see that about you at all.” I thought of how he’d moved around Patrick’s kitchen, making himself at home, but not overstepping. “Besides, people wouldn’t invite you to stay if they didn’t like you.”
Alex dragged his fork through the cheesecake and kept his gaze there. “Sure. I guess so. But now I don’t have to worry about it anymore, right?”
Warmth eased over my cheeks at that, and I couldn’t keep my smile tucked away. “I guess not. I’ve got your first and last in my pocket, and it’s pretty much already spent.”
“I guess you’re not treating for dinner, then.” He reached to jab his fork through the last bite of my cheesecake, and while I might’ve stabbed out the eyes of anyone else who dared do such a thing, I could only laugh at him.
“No way. You invited me.”
I don’t think it’s possible to know someone in just a couple days, a few hours. I didn’t believe I knew him then, no matter what I’d seen or said. But at that moment, I believed I could know him. More than that, I believed I wanted to.
“That’s right, I did. The person who asks should always pay for the date.”
He looked up at me with those dark eyes, that soft, smirking mouth, and I once again found myself without words and wondering how he managed to strike me so stupid with nothing but a glance.
“C’mon,” Alex said as he got up from the table. “Let’s get out of here.”
And I followed.
The first clue I had that Alex had actually moved in was the different car in my parking lot. It wasn’t a new car, but whoa. Bright yellow Camaro with black accents? Not at all what I’d have picked for my new downstairs neighbor. It looked to be from the mid-to-late eighties, the only reason I could guess that close being that my brother, Bert, was something of a muscle car buff and would often wax poetic about a certain type.
I pulled in beside it and stepped out to look it over. The car itself was in fine but not pristine condition, the interior a little more worn. This wasn’t even a showpiece car. This was a butch, wheels a-rollin’, smoke-out-at-a-traffic-light sort of car.
I liked it.
It had been only a few days since we’d sealed the deal without the spit on our palms, and I’d put the cash Alex had paid me with to good use—toward groceries and some bills, and added a new photo printer I didn’t need but really wanted. I hadn’t seen him since Sunday, though he’d left a message on my voice mail telling me he’d be moving in sometime this week. Judging by the car and the boxes stacked up in the front entry, he’d made a good start.
His door opened as my foot hit the first stair, and I turned, setting the heavy printer box on the railing to rest my arms. “Hi.”
“Olivia.” Warm and gooey caramel, smooth and yummy, that was his voice. “Hey, can I give you a hand?”
I’d have said no but for the fact I’d been stupid and tried to carry not only my three bags of groceries but also the printer, and my arms were already shaking. “Yeah, that would be great. Can you grab—”
He’d already lifted the heavy box from my hands. “I got it. You go on ahead.”
I shifted the plastic bags in my two fists and led the way up the stairs to my own door, unlocked it and pushed it open. “Thanks. You can put the box over there on the dresser at the foot of the steps.”
I pointed to one of the dozen dressers I’d collected from thrift shops and used furniture stores. Patrick called it a fetish. I called it a practical use of space and an appreciation for recycling. The one I meant was long and low, about thigh-height on me. I’d covered it with a collage of articles and photos cut from the stash of photography magazines I no longer subscribed to. It fit just right against the wall under the metal spiral stairs leading up to the loft, and because of this was covered with all the junk I meant to take up there and consistently forgot.
Alex set the box next to a collection of hardback novels I’d picked up at a library sale and hadn’t had time yet to crack open. “Big Jackie Collins fan, huh?”
I laughed. “Hey. Some books are bad because they’re bad. Some books are good because they’re bad.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “People, too.”
Before I could answer that he’d stepped back to look up through the spiral stairs, his hands on his hips. “What’s up there?”
“Just the loft.”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.” I followed him up the winding stairs.
At the top, Alex let out a low, impressed whistle. “Sweet.”
Downstairs, the large open space and elevated ceilings dwarfed my few pieces of furniture. But I’d made this space up here comfy and cozy with a jumble of thrift store and salvage pieces—a curving sectional that had come from a hotel lobby, a low coffee table and dozens of cushions. The floor-to-ceiling windows that let in so much light below were bisected a few inches from the ceiling by the loft’s floor, and I’d hung sheer colored scarves and strings of beads in front of them. A cheap paper lantern from IKEA dangled in a corner.
“I read up here.” It wasn’t really big enough to do much else.
