Chapter Two—Sky
By the time I saw the sign for the highway exit, letting me know I’d finally reached my destination, I was exhausted. The trip had been one of the longest of my life. Denver was a long ways from my little hometown in Michigan. It had taken me two days because I’d gotten off to such a late start yesterday, but I was finally where I was supposed to be.
It wasn’t quite what I expected. For some reason I’d thought there would be snow. It was May, but as high up as the city was, it seemed like skiing would be a year-round activity. And I was pretty sure I remembered seeing pictures of the Rockies with snow in July. But apparently that was freak weather; from where I was, the only snow I could see was atop a mountain range far in the distance. It looked like the big parka my parents had insisted on giving me as a going away present would be going into the closet for a few months. Once, that is, I found my new closet.
“What have you gotten yourself into, Sky?”
I’d asked myself that at least a dozen times since setting out; it was a question that I still wasn’t sure I had an answer for. Sure, it was a kind of amazing job opportunity—full time, benefits, the whole enchilada. That had been the reason I’d given everyone, but the real draw was the little tingle of adventure that came with it. I wanted to try something new. I’d gotten to the point that I was afraid that if I didn’t get out of small-town Michigan soon, I would be trapped there for the rest of my life. I was going to end up like my mother: married to a man I didn’t really love, with a kid who I mostly just liked instead of loving with all my heart. Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d have some machine-cog, interchangeable-person job somewhere—oh joy!
So here I was. The GPS droned on, telling me to get into the right lane, and I did as I was told as if I really were that machine cog, interchangeable person I was afraid of becoming. According to my phone I was only about ten minutes away from the little apartment I had paid good, hard money—first and last month’s rent, security deposit—to lay claim to. It was going to be my new home, and although I’d only seen it in a virtual tour and a handful of pictures, I was optimistic about my choice. I had to be optimistic or I was going to lose it.
The GPS told me to take a left. The apartment building was at the end of a cul-de-sac not far from downtown. I pulled into a parking spot that said “Resident” and looked around. It was dark out already, but the property was well-lit and I was able to get a little bit of a feel for my new home. The place was painted nicely on the outside and the landscaping was all up-to-date. It wasn’t the most modern building I’d ever seen, and even so late at night I could see signs of wear-and-tear on the brick and the decorative metalwork, but I told myself that made it look homey. Considering the high rents of other places in the area, I figured it would be fine. Unless there were chalk outlines on the floor or suspicious interior doors that didn’t open.
I found my apartment, and I could feel the fatigue in every bone of my body, weighing me down. I decided that I would unload just enough to let me sleep and shower in comfort. I could get into the rest of my stuff in the morning. Right now, I was going to crash. I took out the key I’d gotten by courier mail last week and tried it in the lock.
Nothing.
“Of course,” I muttered to myself, closing my eyes and taking a moment to breathe in. I tried it again. I tried with all my might to twist the little piece of metal in the hole that supposedly was made for it, and I was probably lucky I didn’t break it off, but still nothing—nothing at all. I couldn’t even get it to budge. I groaned and leaned against the door, pressing my aching forehead against it, trying to think of what to do.
Walking around the place, I tried to find a door that said ‘Manager’ or something like that. I needed to talk to him, but there was no clue as to where to find him. I knew that the owner lived on site, but I had no idea where, and all of the doors looked alike.
What was his name anyway? Link? No: Linc. I thought about just calling it out a few times, but I had no idea if he was even on the property, and on top of that I didn’t want my neighbors’ first impression of me to be that I was some shrieking, shouting girl who woke people up in the middle of the night. Finally I remembered that I still had Linc’s number in my cell phone. I called it and let it ring until it went to voicemail.
I left a message, and when I hadn’t gotten a call back after ten minutes, I called again. Still no answer. By now I was beyond irritated with the whole thing. After the long drive, all I wanted to do was get into the apartment and drag my bed in there. It was a roll-up futon that I could handle myself, but that wasn’t going to help if I couldn’t even get in. I considered the possibility of just rolling it out on the ground in front of my door. It would have made a funny picture, but the humor of it was not good enough to justify the risk of sleeping outside of my own apartment with a bunch of strangers around me.
Calling the landlord’s number again, I finally got an answer. It wasn’t at all what I expected.
“What?” The voice was sharp and rasping, more of a bark than a greeting, and I felt the familiar tightening in my stomach that I got right before an argument.
“Is this Linc?”
“Yeah, why? Who is this?”
“This is Sky Davis. We talked a few weeks back when I rented the apartment from you. 6A?”
The line went silent, and for the span of a heartbeat I wondered if the call hadn’t been dropped. Fast on the heels of that thought was the suspicion that Linc had hung up on me; but no—I would have heard a beep if that had happened. For almost a full minute, Linc was silent, and I realized it must be because he was trying to remember. Why didn’t he remember me? It wasn’t like there were that many apartments there. I counted maybe thirty at the most. How many other people were moving in this month?
“Oh yeah, you’re that chick coming from the East Coast, right?”
I bit back a comment at the ‘chick’ part of the statement and refrained from pointing out that Michigan wasn’t exactly on the East Coast. Instead, I just agreed with him for the sake of getting into my apartment sooner rather than later.
“What do you want?”
Hearing the slight delay, the slur in his voice, I decided that the reason that he couldn’t remember me was likely that he was drunk. It didn’t exactly make me more confident in him, but the important thing was getting into my apartment—not lecturing my landlord about proper phone courtesy.
“The key that you sent me doesn’t fit the lock in the door. I would really just like to get in. I’ve been driving for twelve hours.”
“Are you sure you put it in the keyhole the right way?”
I took my phone away from my ear and stared at my screen for a moment or two, battling between anger and absolute incredulity at the question. I made myself take a quick, deep breath; I couldn’t be sure that he was actively trying to insult my intelligence, and since he was clearly drunk I had to take the high road.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Well, sometimes you gotta jiggle it a little bit. Just try it a few more times and it will open for you. I’m sure I sent you the right key.”
He hung up before I could say anything else. Once again I stared at the lit-up phone, which was blinking the call duration. How rude was he? The guy I’d talked to when signing the lease and sending the check had been a lot nicer. He’s drunk and it’s the middle of the night, I reminded myself, trying to shake it off.
I went back to the door and tried the key several more times. It wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t turn so much as a fraction of a millimeter in the lock. I wanted it to work so badly, but there was just no way that it was the right key, which meant that I was going to have to call that asshole back. “Oh, goody,” I murmured to myself sarcastically—since I didn’t exactly have anyone else to talk to. “Well, it’s either deal with him or sleep in the back of the moving trailer.”
So I called him again, even though I really didn’t want to talk to him. At least this time he remembered who I was.
“You haven’t even moved in yet and you’re already my most annoying tenant, Sky.”
I’d had just about enough of his attitude, and my reply came out of me before I could do what my mom would call “the right thing” and think of a nicer way to say it.
“This key doesn’t work. I swear to you that if I could get in without having to call and talk to you, I would do it. Trust me, I don’t think anyone would want to talk to you right now. So what are you going to do to help me, sir?”
“Don’t call me ‘sir’. It makes me feel old.”
“Okay, Linc, I’ll call you whatever you want me to call you. Just help me out here. I’m stuck in the hallway and I don’t know what to do.”
“I think what you need to do is calm down. Go stay at a motel or something for the night. Do you know how late it is?”
My irritation blossomed into outright anger; I was tired, I ached all over, and I was pissed. Go stay at a motel or something for the night? What was the point of making sure I had a place to stay when I got here if it was going to turn into this? I was starting to think that I should have waited until I got here to look at apartments. Then I wouldn’t be stuck with the landlord from hell. I opened my mouth to raise some hell of my own, but the words that came out started to turn into something closer to a helpless sob about halfway through.
“Look, I’m really sorry to bother you, Linc, but I’m stuck out here with barely enough money to eat tomorrow, let alone get a motel for the night. I just need to go to sleep. Please, is there anything that you can do?”
I heard a long sigh on the other end of the line, and I smiled to myself. I hadn’t meant to pull some kind of damsel in distress routine, but if it worked—and the sigh made me think he was reconciling himself to the need to do something about the situation—I wasn’t about to knock it.
“Okay—okay, fine. I’ll come over.”
I’d assumed that he was at some friend’s house, or maybe crashed out at a family member’s, and part of me thought that he probably shouldn’t be driving—but I wanted get into my damn apartment too badly to really care. But when I heard heavy footsteps in the hallway leading to my apartment just a couple of minutes later, I realized it had to be him. It was hard not to get up and instantly tear into the man. If he lived that close, why was he giving me any trouble about coming to help? Be nice. You have to deal with this guy for the foreseeable future—you can’t just go off on him. I took a deep breath. I’d had to deal with my share of hard men in the past.
The man who came around the corner wasn’t what I expected. Not at all. Instead of some hard-bitten old man with a bitter scowl and grizzled stubble covering his face, a gorgeous man with piercing—if bloodshot—green eyes stood in front of me. He looked like someone from an HBO series. Maybe not the dashing young lead—more like one of those competent, experienced supporting characters who sweep up the heroine’s friend and save her from some bad guy. I knew I’d been angry a minute ago, but just now I couldn’t think of why that was.
His hair—impossible to tell the color in the weird hallway light—was cut military-short, and his arms were massive, as was his neck. The tee shirt he’d obviously picked up off the floor before coming to me showed that he had a broad, muscled chest. His hands were probably twice the size of mine, strong-looking, with callused palms. Why was I looking at his hands? My body shook a little with an idea that I pushed back quickly: What would those hands feel like on me?
The movement of his full lips caught my attention, and I couldn’t help but notice how soft they looked for such a hard man. The imagery that came to mind was enough to make my face burn, from the roots of my hair down to my neck. What was wrong with me?
I must be tired. That was it. That had to be it. I was tired, and my emotions were just going off the map. That was all it was.
Linc didn’t seem nearly as impressed by me, which gave me a little insecure twinge. He paused for a moment, his dark jade eyes running over my body and then stopping on my face. The man looked about three sheets to the wind.
“Are you the tenant who couldn’t get in?”
His words were even more slurred than they’d been on the phone, and I was thankful that he hadn’t driven anywhere in the state he was in. Apparently he’d been just around the corner, at most.
“Are you deaf, girl?”
His tone snapped me out whatever delusional, exhausted half-fantasy I was trying to avoid having and restored all my irritability as I remembered that it wasn’t my fault he’d had to come here. If he’d sent me the right key in the first place, I would have been able to get in on my own and he never would have seen me until we met in the halls or I paid him. I was the one who should be angry, not him. I especially didn’t like being called ‘girl’. He was older than me, but not that much older, and being sexy as hell didn’t give him any right to be rude.
“No, I’m not deaf. Yes, since we’re standing in front of the apartment that you rented to me, yes, I’m that tenant.” I knew I should have been more careful—with a guy like that I should have kept playing the helpless damsel card—but I didn’t care anymore.
“Well, it’s good to see that at least you’ve got a sense of humor. You sounded a little scared on the phone. I’m surprised you didn’t faint before I got here.”
I started to ask him what in the world he was talking about—I’d been pissed, not afraid—but I decided that getting inside was more important than prolonging this pointless conversation with this rude jerk. I handed him the key and waited.
“Did you even try it like I told you to? Give it a little jiggle first?”
My hands balled into fists and I forced myself to count to five before I gave him any kind of reaction. What I wanted to say roared through my mind: Of course I tried it! Of course I gave it a jiggle—and what kind of place are you running here that a normal person can’t get a door open with a normal key without having to practically molest the door first?
Nodding my head, I waited for him to get another key out. He must have given me the wrong one, so he must have the right one on him. Instead of searching for another key, he took the one I’d just handed him and slid it into the keyhole. I wanted to say something like ‘I told you so’, or ask him why he didn’t believe me, but I didn’t get the chance.
He made some kind of movement with the key that I couldn’t make out, and like magic, the little sliver of metal turned and the lock moved with a clank. He twisted the knob and the door opened maybe an inch. The look on his face when he popped the door open made me want to slap him. But at the same time, I could feel my stomach sink, and my face burned hotter than ever. I could have been in the apartment an hour ago instead of standing outside like an idiot.
“Like I said, a little jiggle is all you need. Sometimes you just have to know what you’re doing.”
With that he turned away, and I couldn’t even summon up the moral courage to come up with anything to say to that. It was bad enough that I’d been humiliated, but I’d had my share of those experiences. Everyone makes an ass out of themselves sometimes. What made it worse was that my landlord was hot. If only he were a little nicer, I could see myself with a man like Linc. He was the kind of man I’d gone for in the past, but I’d learned my lesson. Men like that weren’t worth the trouble, even if they were nice to look at.
Shaking my head at the sentiment, I walked into the apartment without even going back out to get my futon mattress. I was ready to put this whole night behind me, even if it meant sleeping on the floor.