5

CARLY

 

 

Talk about infuriating! This guy is an absolute asshole. He’s gone back to his room after watching me drop groceries all over the place, his only offer of help pointing out the embarrassing thing that fell on the floor. I didn’t even have anywhere on the countertops to put the groceries; the mess is so bad.

If I’m stuck here the weekend, I can’t look at this mess any longer. I’ve already quickly weighed the idea of going to a hotel instead, and it’s not doable, courtesy of my jackass sister who stole and maxed out my credit card when she lifted it from my bag. I got the useless plastic card back and have a finite amount of cash to my name until I get my pay in two weeks.

I can’t call Mr. Carmichael’s admin because it’s Saturday. So, I’ll just have to put up with this until Monday.

I decide to take my jean jacket off. I put my sunglasses down and decide to start cleaning up Aiden’s the Arrogant Asshole’s mess.

Every dish and every piece of cutlery? Dirty. Not just dirty. Some of it’s crusted with old food. I load the empty dishwasher after I find that there’s a full thing of dishwasher soap under the sink as well as a plethora of cleaning supplies. I drop two tabs in and start it on the heavy-duty cycle. I turn the stereo on loud, blasting the first song to match my mood that I find. It’s an AC/DC song. Thunderstruck.

I start handwashing the overflow of dishes I couldn’t fit in the jam-packed dishwasher.

Once that’s done and the no-longer-dirty dishes are air drying, I find a box of trash bags under the sink and take one out and pick up all the trash that’s strewn about. There are empty and half-full Chinese takeout boxes, several grease-stained bags from burger joints, and two empty pizza boxes that have to go.  There’s also all sorts of empty beverage containers.

I grab a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towel and start spritzing, then wiping down all the surfaces. I find a vacuum cleaner in the otherwise empty coat closet and run the thing.

When I’m done the living room / kitchen combo, noting there’s also a powder room by the balcony doors (the balcony is triple wide, wraps around the corner of the building, is filled with patio furniture, and looks absolutely awesome), I head into the hallway for the bedrooms and vacuum the rug, the bathroom, and my room, which doesn’t seem like it really needs it, but I do it anyway, partly because I know the noise will disturb him.

When I get to his closed door, I spend extra time thoroughly vacuuming, going as far as to bang the vacuum against that closed door angrily a few times, and then I pull the hose extension out and clean all around the perimeter of his door. As loudly as possible.

The door flies open and he’s two inches from my face, glaring down at me, muscles flexing in his arm that’s braced on the doorframe.  I’m tempted to vacuum that angry scowl right off his face. I somehow manage to resist.

His mouth is moving in an angry way that I make out as a possible “what the fuck?” and then other words I can’t make out. I give him a beaming smile and spin around to vacuum in the other direction.

A moment later, I’m back in the living room, and the power to the vacuum halts. I look over my shoulder and he’s got the plug in his hand, a look of murder on his face.

I’m done, anyway. I ignore him and head to the counter and pop my frozen lasagna in the oven that had been preheating, and that’s when I spot that he’s gone to the stereo and turned down Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

He’s glaring at me and he’s about a foot away from me, suddenly. His nostrils are flaring.

“Awe. Did I wake you, Sleeping Slovenly?” I ask, snarkily, a big fake pout on my face.

His eyes narrow at me. “Sleeping…slovenly?”

“Yeah. Like Sleeping Beauty, but you’re slovenly.”

“Slovenly?” he repeats.

“Yeah. This place was trashed.” I throw my arm out animatedly.

“Slovenly refers to a person’s appearance, not their surroundings,” he corrects.

“Ha!” I laugh. “Okay, slothenly then, since only a lazy sloth would live like this. And I have no idea how you keep your appearance, since you’ve been in your Underoos all day long.”

He snickers and folds his arms across his chest. “Yeah, caught you lookin’. Anyone ever teach you it’s rude to stare?”

I roll my eyes like he’s dreaming if he’s thinking I’m staring at him. Though I have been. But, how could I not? If he’s packing what it looks like he’s packing? I give my head a shake, not letting myself go there.

“Anyone ever teach you it’s rude to walk around almost naked in mixed company?” I ask, jerking my chin, my eyes on his package. I realize I’ve just blatantly stared at it and my face burns hot as my eyes fly back up to his face.

He smirks and lazily eyes me from head to toe and then back to head again and he cracks a smile. And then he changes his mind and the smile melts into a scowl. He drops the cord to the vacuum and points at me. “I have a killer fuckin’ hangover. You done makin’ noise?”

“Am I done cleaning your mess, you mean?” I snap. “Because I shoulda called in a Hazmat team it was so disgusting. Can’t imagine what your room looks like.”

“Bet you’d like to imagine, though, huh?” He wiggles his brows. “Imagining lookin’ at my ceiling lyin’ on your back or looking at my black satin sheets while you’re starin’ at them ‘cuz I’m doin’ you from behind?”

My mouth drops open in shock. I have no words.

He snickers, his eyes sparkling, and he strides back to his room muttering, “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it down.”

I look around. The place looks pretty damn good. You’d think he’d offer a thank you or an apology or something.

What a grouchy ogre jerk. I sure hope we don’t have to work in the same department at Carmichael. I also hope I can get matched with a new roommate on Monday.

I’m going to ignore that his dirty talk made my nipples tingle. Though I might have to change my panties in order to forget.

I shove that thought aside and huffily being to unpack my clothes.

That evening, as the sun sets, I sit at the little bistro set on the balcony, which starts at the living room and wraps all the way around the corner of the building where I’m guessing his room likely has a door. Mine does. This apartment and the location, the view? Gorgeous. I enjoy the beautiful view as I eat lasagna, drink my glass of wine, and think about moving forward, instead of looking back.

I won’t continue to be a doormat. My sister can find someone else to bail her out of trouble all the time. My disloyal two-faced ex-friend can find someone else to be her Agony Aunt. And Jon? Jon can go fuck himself, meaning he gets to fuck his favorite person in the world. He was never that good at thinking about the other person he was having sex with anyways.

 

***

 

I stay up and read on my e-reader half the night. I sleep weird --- time change, I guess.

When I get up Sunday morning, it’s eleven o’clock, San Diego time. I wanted to get up earlier so that I’d be tired at a normal California bedtime Sunday night and not be all groggy on my first day at my new job.

I decide to try to busy myself with sightseeing so that maybe I’ll tucker myself out. I head to the kitchen to put on the coffee and see there’s a pile of dishes on the counter and a dirty frying pan on the now-greasy stove I meticulously cleaned the day before. The blender on the counter is also dirty, with some green grainy-looking stuff in it. There are green supplement and protein powder bottles on the counter.

I feel my face go red.

Did Shrek eat my groceries? I open the fridge and see he not only used four of my eggs, but he drank half my gallon of orange juice, too. And there are no dirty glasses, so does that mean he drank from the jug? He didn’t. He wouldn’t. Would he?

Two of my bunch of bananas are missing, too. Maybe he drank from the blender. I sniff it. It smells like OJ and dirt.

I had intentionally put all my groceries on the bottom shelf so that it would be obvious that it belonged to someone and that any other person putting food in the fridge would deduce that they could put their food stuffs on one of the other empty shelves.

I lift the foil on my lasagna and cuss under my breath as I see that the jackass ate almost all of my leftovers! There’s one tiny corner piece left, not even a whole piece. I was gonna eat this for dinner tonight. Or maybe lunch at work tomorrow. There was enough left for both. I growl at the fridge, growl at the mess, and then get the coffee going before storming to his bedroom door and pounding my fist on it.

“Aiden! Did you eat my food and mess up the kitchen?” I demand.

No reply.

“Aiden!” I shout.

No reply.

I push the door open and the bedroom is empty. It’s a huge luxurious master bedroom with black bedding all tousled on a king-sized bed with… yep, black satin sheets. My face goes hot as I have a sudden strange vision of him and me tangled up in them.

There are clothes all over the place. And more fast food garbage. And liquor garbage. I crane my neck and see the ensuite bathroom door is wide open. There’s a pile of towels on the floor in there. The jerk isn’t here.

This makes me madder, because I want to holler at him.

I slam his door and pace the length of the hall, raging.

 

***

 

It’s mid Sunday afternoon and I’m walking the beach. It’s not exactly swimming weather, but I am not thinking about the ogre I’m sharing the apartment with, who hadn’t come back yet to face my wrath when I headed out for my beach adventure.

He’s the furthest thing away from my thoughts right now. No one who has made my life miserable lately is on radar, because I am absolutely stoked to be looking at the Pacific Ocean for the first time. My family had done Florida a few times, but I’ve never been on this side of the country.  My phone starts to ring from my bag. I lift it out and it’s my sister calling. I reject the call and scowl as all my troubles flood back to the surface for me.

She can go take a long walk off a short pier. I get a text from her a moment later.

“I need to talk to you. It’s v v important.”

Of course it is. She wants back in my good graces after recently running up my credit card and losing or hocking (the jury is out but my money’s on hocking) our grandmother’s jewelry to fund her drug habit. I’d texted my parents the day before to say I was here, I was safe. Mom also knew where I’d be working. No one else but my folks needed to know.

Mom understood I needed a time out. She knows Jon dumped me but doesn’t know about Steph and I haven’t bothered her with the sordid details of how Cait has been taking advantage. She knows about the jewelry, though. She and Dad have cut Caitlin off and so she has stopped trying to get money and sympathy from them. I need to do the same. My sister has hit rock bottom and I can’t continue to enable her.

She’s so predictable. She’ll try to get back into my good graces and get my guard back down, and then she’ll strike out again, like a viper. Not today, bitch.

I stuff my phone back in my bag and feel an immediate onslaught of guilt for thinking of my sister as a bitch.

I have to work on that. My guilt. I forgive so easily. That’s how I wound up a doormat.

I hear Grams whisper in my mind.

“It’s loyalty, sweet cheeks. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.”

We were close. Very close. And she passed away a year ago and I still feel that loss deeply, which is why I lost it so bad on my sister. It was bad enough she’d put me in debt to the tune of five thousand dollars on my Visa card. It’d sting paying that money back and it would take me months of living lean to pay that debt down, but at the end of the day, it was just money. The money didn’t have memories attached, like the colorful butterfly broach I’d play with, while sitting on Grams’ lap at weddings and funerals. She always wore it on memorable occasions. Grams had a big jewelry box filled with precious memories.

Money wasn’t the necklaces and bracelets that I’d seen on her neck, around her wrists, when she read us bedtime stories or dried tears on my face when I’d experienced whatever heartache was a part of growing up.  She had several antique rings with large interesting gems. Fancy earrings. Our family wasn’t wealthy. Not at all. Mom’s a bank teller and Dad works as a factory foreman.

But, Gram’s parents had been rich, back in their day, and some of that jewelry came from Grams’s mother. Most of it wasn’t my style and I’d never wear it, but I wanted to have it, because it was hers.  Maybe one day have some of it made into jewelry that I would wear.

Our family was close. Family dinners on Sundays. Birthdays. Special occasions. Caitlin, two years older than me so in the position to be the responsible one, had said she couldn’t find it, that she’d taken it to have it appraised, but it was in her car when it got repo’d. Mom went to the company to see about getting the box back and was told it wasn’t there.

Thankfully, I had one item left. A tiara with real diamonds and emeralds in it. It’s a bit gawdy but as a little girl, I’d loved it. The only reason it wasn’t in with everything else is because it was inside my giant dollhouse, on the fireplace mantle inside my dollhouses’ living room. Mom worried it was too valuable to be left in a dollhouse, but Grams had waved her off, telling her it was just a trinket and that I was a careful girl who would be responsible with every trinket in my care, whether valuable or sentimental.

I’d pulled it out of Mom and Dad’s attic before leaving for San Diego and packed it.

Caitlin accused the repo man of stealing all the jewelry. I believe she pawned it all before her car got repo’d. I’d said that if she did that, she just had to tell me where to, so I could go and buy it all back on plastic if I had to. And that was how I’d found out that she’d stolen my credit card and run it up.

“I didn’t hock Grams’ jewels, honey, but I did kind of use your credit card.” She winced and gave me an apologetic look. I was tired of that ‘look’. “I’ll pay you back, ASAP”

Asap? More like, a sap. A fool. The one duped. Always the sap.

Caitlin had been under a cloud of what she’d called bad luck. She’d gotten an eviction notice, had her car repo’d, and lost her job.

Bad luck, my eye.

She was still doing drugs, and her Ponzi scheme eventually unraveled so she resorted to stealing from family. I’d been letting her stay with me. Now Steph could deal with her until it was time to vacate the apartment.

No longer my circus, nor my monkeys, as the saying goes.

Cait is twenty-eight and is acting like she’s seventeen. I’m twenty-six and I act like I’m thirty-six.

What I wouldn’t give for one more family dinner with Grams, with the old Caitlin there.

 

***

 

San Diego is a breath of fresh air. Salty sea air that’s free of the things that made me want to run away from home. It was perfect timing that made me run into Mr. Carmichael in the copy room at work, which led to that impromptu meeting in the boardroom where I had an on-the-fly interview about my social media and internet marketing skills.

When he offered this job on the spot, I decided I’d rock it. I’d rock San Diego. And I’d rock my new life. Perfect timing.

I hadn’t told my folks yet that I wanted to stay beyond the three months. I hadn’t given them the full picture of why I needed to get away. Let’s see how this goes first.

I love everything about the idea of living this city so far and hear great things about working for Carmichael Consulting.

 

***

 

When I get back to the apartment building, Seth the security guard is leering. I’d gotten out of the building when he was occupied with a group of people, but now he’s sitting here, smiling creepily and looking at my chest.

I’m in a tan sundress with my swimsuit underneath, wedges, shades and a big hat on, carrying a straw beach bag.

“Carl-eeee. What’s shakin’?” He greets like we’ve been buds for years.

“Nothing’ at all. Seth. Hey.” I wave and move to the elevator. Old Carly would’ve been stuck in conversation with him for as long as he tried to engage me. New Carly has no time for Seth.

“How do you like San Diego so far?” he calls out while I’m pushing the elevator button.

“It’s fabulous,” I say, barely glancing over my shoulder.

“I could show you around,” he offers. “Know lots of great places to eat. Sightseeing.”

The elevator dings to announce its arrival.

“That’s all right, I’m good. But thanks.” I disappear into the elevator.

“See ya!” I hear him say as I hit the button to shut the doors.

Old Carly would’ve felt bad about sluffing him off. I won’t feel bad about that. He’s not potential friend material. He wants to get into my pants. Nobody is getting into my pants in the near future.

 

***

 

I exit the elevator and my temporary roommate is heading in my direction, walking down the champagne carpeted and textured tan-walled hall. In clothes. Weird to see him in clothes.

He’s in a pair of dark button-fly jeans and a button down white shirt with weathered-looking motorcycle boots on. Damn it, why is he so hot? He’s almost as hot in clothes as he is out of them. Maybe hotter, because everything hangs on his body like it was tailor-made, and yet I have seen what’s under most of them. He has shades and keys in his hand and he eyes me.

“You!” I hiss.

He rears back with a ‘What the fuck’ expression and he’s looking at me like he’s never met me in his life.

“You ate my food and after I cleaned up your massive nasty---” I stab at his chest with my pointy finger, “mess, you go and make another mess!”

He screws his mouth up like he can’t believe I have the nerve to address him. He flicks his shades, unfolding them, then puts them on like he has no time for me, some random hysterical person who has no right to speak to him and continues walking. Continues walking!

“Hey!” I demand, calling down the hall as he keeps going for the elevator.

The elevator must still be there, because that jerk steps out of my field of vision as soon as he gets to the doors.

“Hey!” I call out again, uselessly.

I growl and head into the apartment.