Chapter Three
Emma
As I left Stefan’s apartment, I couldn’t help shaking my head, thinking about how absurd the whole situation was. I knew he was familiar, in some way, but I couldn’t figure it out. I had to admit that he was hot but he was also a bit of an arrogant ass.
I nodded to the front desk person as I walked through the lobby, and when I left the building, I could feel the ache and fatigue of ten hours of work in every muscle of my body, maybe even down to my bones. I was only too ready to get home, pour myself a glass of wine, heat up some leftovers from earlier in the week, and maybe, finally, get a nice long bath.
I got lost for a minute or two but managed to find my way home from Stefan’s place and get up the stairs—my building, with only three floors, never thought to install an elevator—and got my door unlocked. Bast, my two-year-old black cat, ran to the door to greet me and scolded me as I tried not to step on her. I took off my shoes, put my purse down on the kitchen counter, and took my bra off from underneath my polo shirt, tossing it onto the tiny little table in the “dining nook” my apartment boasted to retrieve later.
I crouched down, wincing against the sound of my knees popping as I did, and finally gave Bast the attention she knew she deserved: scratching behind her ears and along her spine, stroking her back in long pets, letting her nuzzle and rub against me, meowing and mewing all the time. “How’s my little girl? Were you alone all day?”
She peered up at me with her big, yellow eyes and meowed as if to tell me that she had been, and that it was shameful of me to leave her alone.
I cuddled and petted her for a while until Bast decided that she was satisfied, and then got back up onto my feet and started winding down for the day: I poured myself a glass of wine, and grabbed a Tupperware container with the leftover chicken marsala and mashed potatoes I’d made earlier in the week, and set it to heat up while I dutifully gave Bast her nightly helping of wet cat food.
Then I was on the couch in my living room, the TV on, and my leftovers and wine in front of me. Another night with leftovers and my book.
I grabbed Desiree’s Secret, the trashy romance novel I’d been reading, and stared at it.
“Fuck!” I yelled to myself, scaring Bast into a defensive position.
There it was, the distinctive tattoo on the supposed “hero’s” right shoulder. A phoenix curled around a blood moon
“No fucking way…” My eyes trailed from the shoulder of the hero, down his back to his ass and then back to his shoulder. Stefan was on the cover of my book.
“Ass,” I muttered. I wanted to read it, wanted to submerge myself in the delicious thrill of heroes who were never wrong, who always showed up on time, and who actually cared about screwing things up with the heroine. Unfortunately, after meeting the guy who was definitely who I was supposed to be imagining when I read, it was impossible to consider getting into the story again. I knew that I would be imagining the guy who’d spilled wine on himself trying to drink it and tie a bowtie all at the same time, who had embarrassed me, and who had then gone on to hit on me.
I couldn’t deny that he was hot; even hotter in person than he was on the cover of the book, in fact. His face, with the five o’clock shadow and the piercing blue eyes, was even more alluring than the figure on the front of my book. But even as I opened to the page I’d left off on, I saw that there was dialogue between the hero and the heroine, and I “heard” the hero—named Chase—in Stefan’s voice, instead of the one I’d invented in my head for him. I saw him smirking, and the story itself just wasn’t all that alluring anymore. Meeting Stefan had ruined it.
“At least they’re not expensive books,” I murmured to myself, and began flipping through the channels to figure out what I would actually want to watch, instead of just using the TV as background noise. I ate my leftover chicken marsala and drank about a third of my wine, and then grabbed my phone for some kind of other distraction. I decided to text Becky. If nothing else, she deserved the story about my end-of-day delivery.
Hey, girl! You will not believe what happened to me today, I sent, going back to flipping through the channels while I waited for her to reply.
What’s up? I rolled my eyes, reminding myself that unless Becky herself had some story to tell, she was usually pretty curt in her messages.
I had to make a last-minute delivery, since we missed it out before Sabrina left on the last run. And you will never, in a million years, guess who the delivery went to. I took a picture of my book cover and held it in reserve.
Please tell me it wasn’t Jeremy, she wrote back, and I snorted.
No, it isn’t your asshole ex, I told her. I sent her the picture of the book cover.
You delivered flowers to a book? Becky sent me a selfie of her with a confused face. I snickered to myself.
Nope! I delivered them to the guy who’s on the cover of the book, I told her.
Whoa! How did you know? You can’t see that guy’s face. I found something I wanted to watch—BBC’s Merlin, in a marathon from years ago—and set the remote aside. Bast came to cuddle and curled up in my lap.
I saw the tattoo, that’s how I knew. He spilled half a glass of wine on himself and took his shirt off. I could remember that image as clearly as if it had happened only about a minute before, instead of a good hour before.
Nice! What’s he like? I thought about that for a moment.
He’s an ass, I replied, adding in a few grimacing emojis. Ruined reading the book for me.
Well, that sucks, Becky said. I can’t be on my phone—I’ve got to get back to work.
I know, I know, I wrote her back. I just wanted to share my weird experience with someone. I’ll see you tomorrow.
She sent me back a heart emoji and I set my phone aside again, settling in to watch Merlin. I decided that I’d watch the episode I’d come in on while I finished up my wine, and then finally get into my bath, and go to bed after that. And then I would have an entire day off, and the prospect of a girls’ night with my two best friends, Gretchen and Becky, and I could just ignore the whole business of Valentine’s Day like I always did.