by A. J. Downey
When I got up the next morning, her door was still shut and there wasn’t a sound from inside. I figured she’d gone out. I was making some breakfast when she scared the shit out of me by asking softly from the other side of the kitchen island, “Is there coffee?”
“Fuck! Make some damn noise, would you? You nearly gave me a fucking heart attack!”
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“Okay, yeah, some ground rules are in order. You cannot sneak up on me.”
“I said I was sorry,” she mumbled and wouldn’t look at me.
“It’s not about ‘sorry’, it’s about safety. I’m not just a cop, I’m also a combat veteran. Sometimes training takes over first and questions come later. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
She gave me a long, slow blink as she processed the information I’d just given her and repeated herself once again; I was thinking it was out of some sort of habit at this point. “I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be sorry, just change the behavior,” I told her. She nodded and I changed the subject.
“Yeah, there’s coffee. I’m making it, now.”
“Thank god,” she said, putting her hands flat on the kitchen island and stretching forward, yawning.
“Sounded like you went out pretty quick,” I remarked.
“Yeah, combination of the crappy night’s sleep the night before, a long day at work, and the Xanax hangover.”
I lifted my chin and slid the first mug over to her. She looked like she needed it more than me.
“Didn’t think florist work was that stressful,” I said.
She smirked and I handed over the cream from the fridge and the little pot of sugar I kept on hand. She doctored her coffee while I waited, then said, “You’ve never had to deal with a bridezilla, have you?”
“Only when I arrested one for beating the shit out of her maid-of-honor for fucking the groom the night before the wedding.”
She winced and said, “I think she earned that one, don’t you think?”
I shook my head and took the first sip of my java. “I don’t get paid to think. I get paid to follow the rules, uphold the law, and do shit by the book.”
She pondered that for a moment and finally gave a single nod, “Fair enough.”
I figured she had a stake in the whole solidarity with a fallen sister thing on the cheating front. Isn’t that how most marriages ended? Cheating was usually the top of the list, but with her being the one all moved-out and renting my spare bedroom, it was likely she was the cheater, wasn’t it? I wasn’t about to ask, and it wasn’t my place to assume shit about her, but I did wonder.
Guess it was written all over my face because she gave a bitter little half-laugh and shook her head.
“I wasn’t the one who cheated,” she said simply. “I just didn’t want to live in a house of lies anymore. Besides, I couldn’t afford the mortgage by myself, even if I did want to. Let him have it.”
“I wasn’t asking,” I said, holding up my hands.
“No, you weren’t,” she said simply, then she cracked a faint smile and said, “But you were wondering.”
I nodded slowly. “Fair enough,” I threw back at her, and her smile grew.
She wasn’t half-bad to look at when she smiled. In fact, sitting there with no makeup on, her hair sleep tousled like it was, in her nightshirt and bathrobe, I decided that she wasn’t bad to look at first thing in the morning at all. In fact, she was kind of beautiful.
“So,” I said in an attempt to make some small talk. “What’re your big plans for today?”
“Mm.” She finished her sip of coffee. “Work.”
“It’s Saturday, you don’t get a weekend?”
She shook her head. “Not if I want to keep us all employed.”
I nodded, “Well, have fun with that. I’m headed out.”
“Okay, have fun.”
I nodded, “Have a good day at work, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
I left her sitting at the kitchen island, on one of the tall stools tucked up under it, the dining room table at her back. She was reading on an electronic-reader thing, her long brown hair was up in one of those plastic clips, stray tendrils artfully draped around her face. Yeah, I had to take my earlier assessment of ‘plain’ back. She was a knockout when she wasn’t so self-conscious.
I went for a long ride, solo. Took some wind therapy before heading into the 10-13 for the meetup. When I walked in, the sun was starting to dip below the horizon and a decent-sized chunk of the guys were already in the fishbowl around the big table. I went in and claimed an unoccupied seat. The ribbing began almost immediately.
“So, Golden, I hear you’re living with a chick now.” Oz had this shit-eating grin on his face and I rolled my eyes.
“Fuckin’ Angel,” I muttered.
“Is she now? Do tell…” Poe was grinning, too. I gave him a look like ‘Really, dude?’ and Oz laughed out loud.
“Look at him, he don’t know what to say.”
“You’re right, so I’ll keep it to sign language,” I shot back and gave him the finger. He fell out laughing and I let out a chuckle of my own.
“Where do you get this shit?” Blaze demanded when he caught his breath.
I shrugged.
“Oz, mostly.”
Oz went into another round of laughter, rocking in his seat, and Skids banged his knuckles against the tabletop.
“all right, all right, all right! Much as I find Golden’s new living situation truly fascinating, we got shit to talk about. Although. to be honest, I got no idea what that shit ‒is‒, this time around, so. Golden: what’s she like?”
More laughter and I let it roll off me like water off a duck’s back. I gave a half-assed, nonchalant shrug and told them the truth.
“No idea yet, it’s only been a few days, and it’s not like I’m fuckin’ her. She’s just living there.”
Youngblood rolled his eyes and snorted, “Yet.”
I scowled at him. “I think I know better‘n to shit where I eat, yo.”
Oz, between bouts of laughter, choked out, “Didn’t know you were into it that way! Oh, man.” There was more laughter at my expense and I was starting to get irritated.
I just shook my head and kept my mouth shut after that. Nobody liked to be under fire, friendly or not, and that was what it had started to feel like. I tried not to care, but deep down, it bothered me some. The thing I liked about these guys is they got it when they started to go too far, and they reined it in. They could be dicks sometimes, but they were never dicks about that. Still, my mood was a bit darker and it looked like I needed to have another talk with my twin about carelessly dropping my business.
Meeting turned to this and that, talk about doing a group ride sooner rather than later, that sort of shit. Before we knew it, it was over, and I was already scanning the bar floor, looking for a mindless hookup to work out some of my underlying frustration.
“Redhead, eleven o’clock,” Oz called out from behind me and I got a bead on her. I felt my mouth turn down at the corners as I considered her.
“You hit that?” I asked.
“Crazier than a Mexican lizard. Hell yeah, I hit that. Was a wild ride, but I’d hit it and quit it, boy I tell yah.”
“With a descriptor of ‘crazier than a Mexican lizard’, I’m gonna pass, and also, fuck you.”
Oz laughed his ass off and I grinned; he went up for his turn at the dartboard and I settled on the brunette friend of the redhead. So what if she sort of resembled my current roomie?
“He’s goin’ in for the kill!” Oz declared as I moved through the crowd and I flipped him off over my shoulder to a bunch of raucous laughter.
8
Alyssa…
Weeks went by and Golden’s initial apology about bringing random hookups home and making too much noise turned out to be bullshit. He did it at least once a week, but more often than not, it was more, a lot more. He even brought them home on his work nights, wh
ich I couldn’t fathom. It wouldn’t have bothered me, but for the fact that I’d had two randomly open up my bedroom door, giggling loudly, and at least one throw up all over my bathroom.
To his credit, Golden had cleaned that up, but still, gross. I’d found a new appreciation for the cleanser he’d used, though. I’d never heard of Fabuloso, but it smelled really nice. I guess there was a silver lining to just about everything.
One of my biggest frustrations was that he brought these random women over when I had work the next morning. I’d been too afraid to say anything, but we were well into the second month of my living here, on the cusp of the third, and damn it to hell, I paid rent, too! So, when I was woken, yet again, I finally snapped.
It was just too much. The laughing, the thumping, the porn-star-level moaning, the slapping sounds, I heard everything. It was a struggle for me, too, knowing that I was probably way past my prime in the desirability department, not only due to my barrenness, but also thanks to my whore-mongering ex-husband. He still hadn't quit with the fucking flower orders to that damn dentist’s office with the special request that I be the one to deliver them personally.
There was no proving he had violated the no-contact order explicitly; he always placed the order with Avery, not me, and there was no proof that he was placing the order, he always used an untraceable gift card to do it. I wasn’t about to turn down an upwards-of-a-hundred-and-twenty-dollar order every week, not when I knew he could afford it and I was barely making it.
I lay there, listening to the laughter and the noisy kissing, and wished they would just go to his room already, when my door burst open.
“No, not that one!” he whisper-shouted, but it was too late.
I sat up and yelled out, “Enough is enough!” I threw my pillow at them and pointed at Golden, “We are so talking about this tomorrow, because this is bullshit!”
He cocked his head and shoved the girl, another brunette, back off of him and said sharply, “Playtime’s over, badge-bunny. I’ll see you out.”
Oh, he wanted to do this now? Okay, I was game. He marched her by the hips back down the hall and I sprang out of bed. I pulled my bathrobe off the post of the headboard that it lived on, and swung it on while he dealt with her whiny protests out in the living room. I heard the front door open and shut and the heavy tread of his boots against the faux-hardwood tile that comprised the floors of the main traffic areas in the apartment.
He appeared like a dark shadow in the doorway of my room and I clicked on my Himalayan salt lamp by the bed. Funny, it didn’t do a damn thing to sooth or calm me. When I turned, Golden’s eyes were ablaze with dark light.
“Just what the fuck is your problem?” he demanded, and he wasn’t nearly as drunk as I’d thought he’d been. That was both comforting and even more infuriating at the same time. That mollified me to a certain degree. I didn’t know that such polar opposites of emotion could be felt at once.
“My problem is that I live here, too! I pay rent, I’m not a guest, and this is getting god damn ridiculous! I need sleep, Golden. I have to work!”
He snorted like it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard and that just pissed me off even more. What came out of his mouth had me damn near frothing at the mouth.
“Because arranging flowers is so goddamn important.”
“It’s important to me! It’s important to my clients, and it’s important to the people who depend on me and my business to stay employed! God, you are such an arrogant ass!”
He stood up straighter, his chin lifting, his nostrils flaring, and he took a menacing step into the room. I didn’t want the bed at my back, not when he looked so like Ray from that night, and so I turned and took a step back, the desk and wall behind me. He kept advancing and I shrank back, wedging myself between the closet and the sliver of wall between its sliding door and the desk.
I made this unbidden, animalistic, anguished noise and shrank down as small as I could.
And he froze mid-step.
“What the fuck, girl?” He sounded mystified but I couldn’t bring myself to look up as the memories swamped me, rolled me, and sucked me down, down, down, into that dark, dark, place.
“Whatever,” I heard him mutter, and a second later, my bedroom door slammed shut.
I dissolved into tears immediately.
9
Golden…
I was shook. Right to the core. I had never, ‒ever‒ hit a woman, and as pissed-off as she’d just made me, I hadn’t planned on hitting her, but she acted like I was some big damn brute.
I’d probably meant to run her shit like a thousand times at work, but I’d just kept conveniently forgetting about it. Not tonight, I avowed.
Something seriously fucked-up had gone down with her, and yeah, I may not be a fuckin’ superhero by any means, but that reaction had been way... Madre di Dios. I stood in the hallway, my chest heaving with a shot of adrenaline as I listened to her bawl on the other side of the door.
I felt this fractured ache in the center of my chest listening to that weeping, but there was fuck-all I could do about it. If I went back in there now, I’d just make it worse. She hadn’t met Angel yet, and I couldn’t remember if the fact I had a twin had come up in any of our casual and short conversations. So, that ruled out calling him for help. All she’d probably see in her panicked state was me coming back through the fucking door.
I didn’t want to out her fuckin’ business to anybody, certainly not to one of my bros in the club. So the only conclusion I could reach was to, let this shit go, deal with listening to the crying jag, and try to talk to her after I got off tour tomorrow night when we were both much calmer.
I went into my room but left the door open a crack, so I could hear. She cried like that for what felt like forever and I thought back on the last couple of months of her being here. She hadn’t been a half-bad roommate, but I wasn’t one-hundred that I could say the same about me.
I changed into a comfortable pair of lounge pants and listened. She quieted after a time and I felt hella guilty, replaying all the times I’d brought chicks home and knowingly woken her up. All the afternoons I’d gotten up and coffee was still sitting in the pot from that morning. The time I’d had to scrub drunk-puke out of the bathroom that was supposed to be hers, because the dumb bitch I’d been banging hadn’t realized that I had a fuckin’ toilet right fucking here off my room.
She hadn’t said a word about it. She'd woken up and come to to pee, and blinked owlishly at me. I’d told her to use my bathroom, but she’d simply said quietly that she’d wait and asked if I needed help. Who does that? Volunteers to clean up some other drunk bitch’s vomit? I’d said no, and she’d gone back to her room, but she’d fallen back asleep before I’d finished and I didn’t have the heart to wake her up.
I’d felt like kind of an asshole then, but it hadn’t stopped me. I’d still brought random chicks and badge-bunnies home. I don’t even think she’d noticed that I’d somehow switched from blondes to brunettes. Hell, ‒I‒ hadn’t noticed, until one of the guys had pointed it out last week. Fuck me if they ever found out that the woman living in my apartment was a brunette; I’d never hear the end of it.
I was still awake when her alarm went off, and I got up silently and went to my door, grabbing the handle and easing it shut silently, wincing as I did it, afraid I would give myself away. I heard her door open, the smart little kitten-heeled pumps she wore with her prim-and-proper skirt and blouse sets and business-appropriate dresses clicked down the hall past my door, and she didn’t even stop in the kitchen. I heard the apartment door open and whump lightly shut, and that was it.
I went out and checked, and sure enough, she’d keyed the lock and deadbolt shut behind her. I doubled-down on my guilty feelings for some reason at that and went back to bed. I fell into an uneasy sleep that didn’t really do me much good, right until my own alarm went off.
I dragged ass into work. My partner took one look at me and stated the obvious.
&
nbsp; “You look like shit.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
“Seriously, should I worry?”
“Naw, man. Just had a fight with the roommate, stewed on it way longer than I should have. I’m not hung-over. I tend to pick ‘em up drunk, and play drunk without actually being all that drunk myself, you know?”
“Just looking to hit it and quit it?”
“Yup.”
“Dangerous game, you ask me,” one of the old-timers on the force chimed in.
“Good thing I didn’t fuckin’ ask you, then, huh, Romansky?”
He didn’t take it personal, just chuckled and walked out the locker room. I turned back to my partner, Pruitt.
“I’m actually with Romansky on this one. That’s how you end up on a rape charge due to buyer’s remorse.”
“Never had any buyer’s remorse. You must be doing it wrong,” I said.
“Ha ha, fuck you. Seriously, though. You’re playing with fire on that, bro. All it takes is one.”
“Okay, Mom. Jesus.”
“all right, all right, lecture over. See you at muster.” He slammed his locker door closed and it was a domino effect. I shook my head and stowed my shit in my own locker. My apartment was conveniently located three blocks from my precinct, so I tended to walk over here in uniform for the most part, just with a plain bomber jacket in place of my patrol coat. I had to keep my weapon secured at all times, which meant on me or in my gun-safe at home. I didn’t leave that shit in my locker. I did leave the rest of my duty belt in it, though.
I switched out holsters, made sure my backup was secure down around my ankle and switched coats. I followed the rest of the guys out of the locker room and took formation to stand through another boring briefing before we were released to hit the streets.
