NICK
Her apartment complex was made up of a bunch of duplexes that looked like oversize Taco Bells—white stucco, red Spanish tiles, and plenty of decorative arches. When I rounded the corner to get to the back of unit 3A, I realized that she hadn’t been kidding. She was literally around back, hanging out. Her whole front end was dangling out of the window. Her purse swung from her hand, and her long hair was flipped over her head in a glossy curtain.
“Jesus,” I said, breaking into a jog. “How the hell did this happen?”
“Poor planning!” she said with a giggle, talking to the sidewalk below her. “Too many snacks!”
I crouched down to offer her some support. She hooked her arm around my shoulders, and I lifted her up. For a split second, it occurred to me that this might not be her apartment at all. She might have a diamond brooch in her back pocket or a purse full of pearls. If she needed my help, I was damned sure going to help her; becoming the new me was going to have to wait. So I dropped my voice to say, “We can be in Tucson by dinner.”
She let go of her purse, which landed with a heavy thud, then craned her neck to look up at me. “Tucson? For dinner? I’m totally fine with House of Chow on Menaul, but I’m game if you are!”
Well, there went that theory. First things first, anyway. I had to get her out of this jam she’d gotten herself into. “Should I even ask why this happened?” I tried to slip my hand between her ass and the window, but there was no clearance. At all.
“Definitely not,” she said, giggling again. Her whole body shook with laughter. “Just get me out of here!” She flailed her arms, and I heard faint thumping noises from wherever her legs were, like she’d knocked some stuff off a countertop maybe.
I patted my pocket to double-check I had my pick set, and I did. “Give me a sec. I’ll be in before you know it,” I said as I turned to head back to her front door.
“But you don’t have the key!” she said.
Aww fuck. I spun back around. This straight-and-narrow thing was going to take some practice. “Right. Definitely going to need that.”
But Stella shook her head in reply, making her long hair sway like a mermaid’s underwater. “I don’t have mine,” she said in an exasperated growl. “But if you look under the bushes, there’s a pile of dog poop . . .” She peeked out through her thick hair at me.
“Dog poop,” I repeated. I took her purse from her and hoisted it over my shoulder, somehow managing not to groan when I did.
She nodded, and her bangs fell into her eyes. She tried to blow them aside, but it didn’t work, so she clapped her eyes shut tight. “It’s plastic. Looks super real. You’ll find the key inside.”
It didn’t just look super real. It looked scary real. It looked so real, in fact, that it totally fooled me. I tentatively nudged it with my boot, fully expecting it to be actual dog shit, but lo and behold the thing lifted up, revealing a shiny brown underside. Genius. From the hidden compartment underneath, I got her key and let myself inside, still with her purse over my shoulder. I was man enough for it. I definitely was.
Her apartment was bright, messy, and chaotic. From the sheer quantity of purses hanging on the wall alone, I knew immediately that she didn’t live by herself. I sized up the different shoes on the ground, lined up under the purses. On the far left was a pile of different colored Chuck Taylors, like Stella had been wearing last night. Some had rhinestone stars on the rubber toes and some didn’t, but I knew they were definitely hers. Next to those was a single pair of simple leather boots, flat bottomed with a zipper up the side, slightly larger than Stella’s sneakers. Next to those was a whole heap of high heels, every single pair about as useful for walking as tits on a salamander. I picked one up. Size seven, smaller than both the boots and Stella’s Chucks. Stella and two roommates.
The front hallway led me into a room with the television. On the wall was a vinyl decal that decorated the space above the couch and said, in girly, cursive letters:
EAT! DRINK! RAISE HELL!
I made my way through the kitchen. On the fridge was some of that magnetic poetry, and a quick scan over the words revealed it was the X-rated kind—dirty, wet, saucy, now. Next to the poetry was a magnetic re-creation of Michelangelo’s David, surrounded by an assortment of fluorescent Speedos. Next came the hallway, which had four doors—two on the right, one on the left, and one at the end. The first bedroom was neat, tidy, and bare, like an IKEA showroom. The second had a lot of clothes all over the place and a feather boa hanging from the bedpost. And the last one, nearest the bathroom, was definitely Stella’s. It was pretty, clean, and smelled very faintly like her. My eyes got stuck to her bed, with its fluffy pillows and fluffier white comforter. What I wouldn’t give to get in that bed with her. Right. Fucking. Now.
“Niiiiiiick!” came her voice, more of a growl than an actual word. “Get me out of here. My legs are going numb!”
To the bathroom I went, where I was met not only by Stella’s pinch-worthy ass in the window, but also an explosion of towels and makeup, shampoos and lotions, on every flat surface and all over the floor. Dozens of makeup brushes poked out of an old coffee can by the sink, which was encrusted with jewels like Stella’s phone.
Stella had managed to tangle her legs up with toilet paper like the back end of a sloppily wrapped mummy, so I pulled that off her first. She’d also gotten her belt loop hooked over the lock on the window, so I unhooked that too.
But I didn’t pull her out quite yet, because her ass was just too hot to ignore. She was still in the same jeans she’d been wearing last night, and I took the chance to run my hand up the back of one thigh. I leaned down and gave her a kiss on the small of her back. Her body went limp in the window and she let out a moan. Once I’d had my fix, I hooked my arm underneath her hips and gave her a tug. I absolutely loved the way her skin felt next to mine, especially like this, when she was way too out of her element to feel self-conscious. The muscles of her stomach weren’t flexed, and I felt the soft curves and lines like she hadn’t let me feel them before. The narrow strip of skin where her T-shirt had ridden up made all those cliché terms make sense. Soft as silk. Sweet as cream. Fucking heaven.
I extracted her from the bathroom window with both arms around her hips and my own hips in exactly the right position for . . .
She was making a total animal of me.
When I got her back inside, her hair was all mussed up and she had scrapes on her elbows. I unslung her purse from my shoulder and handed it to her, careful not to actually groan out loud as I did. She didn’t even flinch when she took it from me. It was unbelievable. Not even a grunt. She very gently set it on the bath mat. Standing behind her in front of the mirror, I dusted some adobe flecks off her shirt. It sounded like sand as it landed in the basin. “Thanks,” she said to my reflection. “My hero.”
“Getting that text from you made my day, so we’re even.” Reaching around her, I turned on the warm water and helped her wash the scrapes on her elbows. I blotted them off using a roll of paper towels. That was one good thing about this totally chaotic bathroom. It seemed to have pretty much half the stock of Target inside it.
“Band-Aids?” I asked.
She got up on her tiptoes and pulled an overstuffed box of them from the top of the medicine cabinet. As I peeled them off their wrappers, I glanced up at her. She was biting her lip and smiling. “I should get scraped up more often.”
I hadn’t taken care of anybody in forever, and it felt fucking good. It was nice to be helpful, and it was even nicer to be needed. I wadded up the Band-Aid wrappers, pitched them in the tiny wastebasket, and took her in my arms. I planted my hands on her ass and hoisted her up on the sink, where her legs automatically parted for me. With my forefinger, I lifted her chin so she was looking at me. I might’ve been feeling pretty sappy, but I had a feeling I knew what had happened. “You didn’t mean to send that text to me, did you?”
She snickered and smiled up at me. “No. But I’m glad you came,” she said, and walked her fingertips up my shirt.
Christ. Suddenly, I was that guy who couldn’t stop thinking about sex, and I wasn’t ashamed of it, either. “I haven’t come yet and neither have you.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she touched the edge of her teeth with her tongue. “Naughty.”
I nodded at her slowly. “You were the one with your ass in the window. I’ll be in the gutter for the rest of the week.”
Before I could really start putting the moves on her, her phone started buzzing in her purse. She stuck her hand into the abyss and pulled it out, the rhinestones gleaming. She poked the home button, and her eyes flashed when she saw the screen. “Uh-oh . . .” she said, zeroing in on what appeared to be a text and clicking on a link.
Up popped the local news, live streaming. A guy in too-tight jeans and a too-small button-down shirt was standing in the blazing sun. Behind him, a fire hydrant shot water twenty feet into the air like a malfunctioning fountain in Vegas. There were ambulances, cop cars, and a fire engine. And right in the middle of the chaos, with its front end folded around the hydrant, was what looked a whole hell of a lot like Stella’s white Wrangler.
“We’re at the scene of a single-car accident on Lomas!” said the reporter, just a little too excitedly. “Two women are being rushed urgently to the hospital for broken bones!”
The camera zoomed in on a blonde bombshell with a smudge of blood on her cheek. As soon as Stella saw her, she slapped her hand to her forehead and grimaced. “Oh no.”
Whoever the blonde was, she was a flirt. She was batting her eyelashes shamelessly at one of the EMTs, a big-boned guy with tribal tats and a neck like the thick end of a traffic cone. The blonde put her hand to his biceps and giggled, then pressed that same hand to her chest. If she hadn’t had her right arm in a sling, I was pretty sure she would have pulled him right down on the gurney with her. The EMT gave her finger guns in return, and she giggled some more. Her laugh tinkled out of Stella’s phone like a wind chime.
The frame panned over to a second woman on a different gurney. The blankets were tucked in tight around her waist, but not over her legs. Her left leg was in a splint and slightly elevated. Her right foot had a boot that looked like the pair I saw in the front hallway. She had black hair, straight and smooth, cut at a sharp angle below her chin. She looked dead serious, and she was typing something into her phone.
A text message alert dropped down from the top of Stella’s screen, pausing the live stream as the anchor gestured wildly at the chaos behind him.
Message from Ruth
Did UPS come?
To which Stella tapped out a speedy:
No and OMG ARE YOU OK?
Remind me never to let Roxie drive anywhere again. K?