by Sarina Bowen
“Well, I don’t know her real name. She doesn’t introduce herself when I say hello. But I’ve only ever seen her in slippers. You’re not wearing slippers.”
“Of course not.” I’m wearing kickass fuck-me boots. Just, you know, what I wear when I’m running out to get pizza or an enormous plant for my sad, blank apartment.
“Look,” he says. “If you hear comings and goings in my apartment at night—”
I freeze. Are we going to discuss his sex life right now? Omigod!
“—Just know that I’m a cop. I work weird shifts, okay? I’ll try to be quiet, but sometimes I roll in at five a.m.”
“A cop…” I breathe. And then something clicks. That voice. That heady, masculine scent. The elevator lurches. I readjust my grip on the plant. But I’m losing my grip on reality. Because now I know who my new neighbor is.
“The name is Maguire. Or just Mac.” He then parts my fronds with his big hand.
Mmmm. He parts my fronds. That sounds dirty.
Focus, Meg! He wants to shake hands!
But I can only stare at the big hand in front of my face. “Kinda holding an enormous plant here.”
I hear him chuckle, and then the weight of the plant is lifted away from me as he grabs it with only one arm. Then he offers me his hand to shake again. And I notice his foot is already holding the door of the elevator open, ensuring that it won’t close on us.
What a great neighbor I have! This dude has the sexiest voice on the planet, he grunts while fucking, and his limbs are multitalented.
Our hands clasp. And that’s when I feel it—that crackle of tension. We have the kind of instant chemistry that’s hard to ignore. I’m too young to have hot flashes, but when his thick fingers close around my hand, I feel a surge of heat and awareness. An actor’s first job is to notice people, so I know chemistry when I see it.
And so does he. Our gazes lock, and his is very familiar. But now there’s recognition dawning there. “It’s you.” The words come out soft and low. “The Wench.”
“Hi, Chippendale,” I whisper.
He grins. He’s still holding my hand. Neither one of us wants to let go. I look down at our joined hands, and he does that trick with his thumb, where he slips it past the pulse point on my wrist.
Oh my. This is wonderful. This is also terrible. My neighbor is a sexy cop. A sexy cop with a girlfriend.
Just like that, I take my hand back. As we both step out of the elevator, I whip out my keys, so I can reclaim that plant and cool my head. And other body parts.
When I moved home to Michigan, I vowed never to date, screw, or flirt with anyone who was attached in any way. My ex turned out to be married, and I’m never making that mistake again. This is new Meg. Meg 2.0. Meg who-is-thirty-and-done-with-losers. And I’m ready for a real commitment.
I unlock my door in record time. “Thanks for holding that. I can take it from here.”
“Nah, I got it,” he says, stepping right into my apartment, uninvited.
Dammit! Now he’s in my space. He’s going to leave behind some of the testosterone that rises off of him like a mist.
“Where were you putting this?” he asks.
“Right there,” I snap, pointing at the spot under his feet.
“Really?” he scratches his chin. “The feng shui can be better optimized over here, I think.” He carries the plant to a corner of the living room.
I blink. “What quadrant is that?”
“Health, career, and luck with parking spaces.”
I blink again. My neighbor, the hot cop, knows about feng shui? Swoon!
No! No swooning. He has a girlfriend. Of course he does. I think I might cry. “Okay,” I say with a gulp. “Better put ‘er there. Thank you.”
“Anytime,” he says in that gruff, wonderful voice.
I’m doomed.
3 She Middle-Named Me
Maguire
What’s wrong with me? I’m actually looking around for reasons to keep standing here in my neighbor’s apartment? She blinks at me, her expression cool. I’ve outstayed my welcome already. “You have a good day, now,” I grunt.
“You too, neighbor.”
Lordy. And here I thought I’d left my teen years behind more than a decade ago. But apparently not. I give her one more longing glance, and an awkward wave. The stunning serving wench from Ye Olde Tavern is my new neighbor?
I am shook.
The effect she has on me is inconvenient, to put it mildly. There’s a naughty sparkle in her dark brown eyes. There’s something about the way she tosses her head, sending her corkscrew curls swinging against the smooth brown skin of her kissable neck…
It’s not easy to make neighborly conversation when your libido is firing up like a 400 horsepower engine. It’s lucky I didn’t mispronounce my own name. All I can think about after I see my new neighbor is ditching my current hookup and taking this woman to bed instead.
Maybe we wouldn’t even make it that far. Her coffee table looked sturdy.
I saw it in her eyes, too, if only for a second. She feels the pull. If we’d met under different circumstances, I might already know how much weight that table could bear.
But I do the sane thing and make myself scarce.
Back in the hallway, I try to shut that shit down. It’s just an impulse, I remind myself. And I can’t afford to live by my impulses. That’s my brother’s strategy. He lives by impulse and nearly destroyed me in the process. I have to be the better man.
It’s just rotten luck that my new neighbor is the unforgettable serving wench from Ye Olde Tavern. The one who within five seconds of meeting me tried to rip my clothes off. What kind of man is immune to that?
Not this kind.
She’ll never know that I’ve been looking for her. My partner Lance and I have a deal. We take turns choosing the bar we go to after work. And I’ve chosen Ye Olde Tavern three times, hoping to run into her. Lance is probably onto me. “What’s with your sudden love of turkey legs?” he asked me last time.
“They’re...meaty,” was all I could think of to say. He’d laughed.
Oh, and I’ve endured a mountain of ribbing over my neighbor’s assumption that I was a stripper. But it was an honest mistake. And after my last turkey leg, I finally asked the waitress if she knew where the dark-eyed beauty with the fake English accent had gone.
“She quit,” I was told.
But here she is again, just as sexy and startling as the first time I saw her.
I still don’t even know her name. Just now, I was too startled to remember to ask her. So I’m just going to call her Trouble, because I can just feel like that’s what she is. For me at least. Because a guy who doesn’t like attachments can’t boink his neighbor. If things go badly, you gotta move out of the building. Maybe even the whole neighborhood. I like this neighborhood. It’s close to work. And the breakfast special at Hot and Crusty is only $3.99.
These are my thoughts as I unlock my own door. Whatever fire is trying to ignite between me and Trouble is not important. I should just blow that shit out.
Of course, now I’m thinking about blowing.
Those legs, though. And that smile. If my dick had any say in the matter, I’d already be peeling those jeans off her.
I open my own door and remind myself that I have a fuck buddy already. It’s casual, of course, but we’re a good fit. I close my eyes and think about her for a second. Nicole Nicole Nicole.
Maybe I should call her. I mean, she just left my apartment a few hours ago. So that would probably be weird.
A cold shower it is, then.
Grumpy for no reason, I step inside my apartment. It’s clean and orderly, just the way I like things. I tug the mail out of my back pocket and toss it onto the countertop. I pull a beer out of my refrigerator, open it, and then sort the mail so it doesn’t become clutter. There’s a cable bill and a postcard offering me a free tire rotation with purchase of an oil change.
But the third envelope is the one
I really don’t want to open. It’s fancy, which is the first clue that I’ll hate what’s inside. It’s also made from paper with little bits of flowers and seeds trapped in the weave. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
My name is swirled across the front in calligraphy, which seems like a waste. My own sister paid someone to write my name so that I look like the king of England. MACKLIN JAMES MAGUIRE.
She even middle-named me. And everyone knows that when your family uses your middle name, there’s no getting around them.
With a sigh, I use my thumb to tear open the fancyass envelope, ripping it open to reveal two fancyass cards and yet another envelope inside. The cards are edged in gold, too. There are villages somewhere that could eat for a week on what this piece of mail cost.
And none of that would offend me at all, except for one simple fact: I really do not want to attend my sister’s wedding.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister. I see her every week for lunch. I don’t know much about this guy she’s marrying, but he isn’t the problem, either.
It’s the rest of my family. Ten years ago I excused myself from family holidays and events. That was necessary to save my own sanity. But now that Rosie is getting married, I will probably have to show up to this thing and be civil.
My beer is half gone already. Huh.
The wedding date is in a couple of months. That gives me a few weeks grace period to pretend like it isn’t happening. Or does it? There’s a reply card, which I will probably fail to fill out. Rosie knows I won’t blow off her wedding. But aside from the “will attend” and “won’t attend” boxes, there’s a line to enter the name of my date.
I don’t have a date.
Christ, I need a date.
I cannot show up to this thing alone.
In addition to a date, I also need a new suit, a promotion at work, and probably a new personality.
The first thing is doable. The second is possible. The third is a nonstarter.
There’s one more slip of paper in the envelope, containing instructions. Place your seed paper on soil, and cover with 1/8 inch of additional soil. Give it a good drink of water! After that, make sure it’s always moist and in a sunny spot. You should see sprouts within 7–10 days!
Fuck me, now I’ve seen everything. This wedding invitation is inviting me to bury it in the ground. I scoop it up—including the response card and its envelope—and carry it out onto my deck. There’s a pot of dirt there already from last year’s petunias.
Good enough.
Two minutes later I’ve buried the wedding invitation. After draining my beer, I refill the bottle with water and soak the whole business.
That was seriously therapeutic. Now if I could also repurpose my asshole brother the same way…
My phone rings in my pocket. The caller is Nicole. That’s a little weird. We don’t know each other very well, and we don’t usually call each other. “Hello?”
“Hi, Maguire,” she says. “I’m really sorry to bother you. But I’m having a bit of a crisis.”
Uh-oh. I do have a weakness for a damsel in distress. “What’s the problem?”
“When I got home I found that my apartment is flooded. A pipe broke upstairs.”
“Oh hell.” I shudder in sympathy. I hate chaos. “You need help moving something?”
“Not exactly. I spent the last couple hours getting the property manager involved, and the cleanup has already begun. But I can’t stay here tonight. They’re ripping out all the carpeting and drying the place out. My renters’ insurance is offering me a night at Motel 72 on Division. Is that a safe neighborhood?”
“Well, no,” I growl. “A woman shouldn’t stay there alone. That’s all they’ll do for you?”
“It’s eight o’clock on a Friday, though. They said I could call back on Monday and ask.”
I can’t stand the idea of her staying in that shithole all weekend. We see drugs and prostitution at that motel all the time. “Come here instead,” I hear myself saying.
There’s a silence before she speaks again. “That’s really generous, Maguire. You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” I say, wondering if I’ll regret it later. “But it’s okay. Couple ‘a nights, right? We can be roommates.” She doesn’t even have to know how weird that will be for me. I haven’t had a woman stay over in my space more than a few times in ten years.
But it’s the right thing to do. Even if Nicole and I aren’t going anywhere as a couple.
“You’re a good man, Mac Maguire.”
Good enough, I suppose. And it’s just occurring to me that I’m about to have a lot of sex. Nicole and I don’t hold back when we’re together. And sharing a bed for a couple of nights? “Come right over.”
This good guy is going to have a fun and dirty weekend.
4 That’s Not a Leg
Meg
“Do all the McAllister kids know how to cook?” I ask Cassidy as she peeks into my oven at the chicken she made. She mixed it with a dry rub of Indian spices before roasting it. Then she made a cucumber salad with yogurt and cherry tomatoes.
I keep her wine glass full and just watch.
“Yep. We all cook because our parents can’t. No lie.” She closes the oven door and rolls her eyes. “They hire everything out. In the days before Grubhub, that meant paying a personal chef or sending the nanny to fetch takeout. So we all grew up wishing for the homemade food on our friends’ tables. And now we all cook. Liam is probably the best, though.”
I’ve seen Liam in action in my sister’s kitchen. It’s pretty sexy, I have to admit. There’s something about having a man cook for you.
“Are your parents excellent cooks?” Cassidy asks.
“They are,” I admit.
“That’s probably why you aren’t. Just saying.”
“Oh,” I say slowly. “Is that also why I’m not an overachiever? Oh, wait—my sister is, though.” She’s a shrink with her own practice. “Can achievement skip a generation?”
“That’s an interesting question, but…” Cassidy breaks off. “Did you hear that?” she whispers. “It sounded like moaning.”
Ooh! It’s showtime, apparently. I clap my hands together, then beckon, urging my friend closer to the screen door.
Cassidy’s pale eyebrows lift. “Omigod,” she whispers. “Are they starting up?”
In the two weeks I’ve lived here, I’ve heard more sex than a sound tech on a porn shoot. Clearly the cop next door and his girlfriend are sex fiends. She lives there now, too! I’ve spotted her in the hallway, arriving home from work, a shiny new key in her hand and a happy smile on her face.
I’d be happy too if I were getting it from Mr. Stamina every few hours. I swear, they’re like rabbits on steroids. Every night as I lay in bed, I can hear all the dirty things he whispers to her. Put your hands up. Do as I say. Ride me, sugar.
Just thinking about his deep, gruff voice makes me feel all tingly.
And that nickname? Sugar. He must really love her.
Sigh.
Cassidy has heard all about the sexual soundtrack in apartment 503, although she hasn’t experienced it. She won’t right now, either. Because the sounds next door aren’t sex. There are a couple of unfamiliar bumps to the wall. And I hear the girlfriend’s voice.
But not his voice. Hot Cop is disappointingly silent. Ah, well.
“So tell me about your new man,” I say, wiping down the countertop.
“Oh.” Cassidy’s face is solemn. “Date number two is coming up.”
“God, could you look any less excited?”
“It’s early,” she says flatly. “We don’t really know each other yet.”
Oh dear. Her lack of enthusiasm tells me everything I need to know. But I can sense that Cassidy isn’t ready to hear it. “Well, if you’ve snagged a good man in your life, it’s my turn next.”
“Deal,” she says.
“I could make the thin walls shake, too.”
“Loudly,”
she agrees.
Although that only makes me think of Maguire next door. Would it be too much to ask if the man I end up dating looked like him?
When dinner is ready, I plate everything up and carry it ten paces to the living area, where I’ve set out napkins and silverware on the new coffee table. “Thanks for cooking. I feel spoiled.”
“Anytime.” Cassidy sits down on the couch beside me. “Well? Tell me how it tastes. And then tell me what’s happening with the Chicago audition.”
I take a bite of chicken. It’s succulent and spicy. “This is terrific. Wow.” The cucumber salad is a nice contrast, too.
“You didn’t answer both questions.”
“I’m avoiding my email, to be honest. My agent sent something, but I’m afraid to read it.”
Cassidy sets down her fork at once. “Where is it? I’ll look. I have a good feeling about this one.”
If only I did, too. Right before I moved into this apartment, I drove to Chicago to audition for a tampon commercial. Don’t laugh. A single tampon commercial can earn enough for a house if it gets enough airplay. Cassidy rode along with me for fun, and to do some shopping.
We ended up staying an extra day, though, because I got a callback. And then another one. By the time they were done with me, it was down to three women, and they said they’d be in touch.
Today.
I take another bite of chicken and sigh. Then I fish the phone out from under the couch cushion, unlock it, and open my email. While it’s tempting to make Cassidy read it for me, I’m a big girl.
A big girl staring at bad news.
Megan, we loved meeting you! And we were impressed with your poise. But ultimately we went in another direction.
Wordlessly, I hand the phone to my guest.
“Oh!” she gasps. “No! I was so sure. This is awful. How could they? I mean, when you were pretending you had those cramps, I totally believed you! I tried to give you ibuprofen and rub your head, remember?” As I watch, Cassidy’s eyes get red.
Mine don’t, though. I’ve had a good ten years to get used to this kind of rejection. “It happens to every actress. Even Emma Watson.”
