Social Neighbor (The Social Series Book 1) (28 page)

“Do I even want to know what’s on this list?”

“This one is more of a teenage girl list. Firsts and whatnot.” I waved my hand dismissively, hoping Con wouldn’t ask for details. That list was painful to even think about, but I’d made it knowing that the full kid experience meant covering our bases from little girl on up through teenage years and young women got flowers from boys and experienced their first dance with a guy, their first kiss. I planned to recreate everything for Flor. She’d experience all the things girls went through. Girls had crushes and were crushed on. Flirted with the neighbor kid. Made out with the bad boy. Got into trouble. They fell in love for the first time. They also got their hearts broken…

I didn’t include that on my list. Not initially, anyway, but after Matt had dropped the bombshell about her dad being an alcoholic, I knew I’d end up breaking her heart. I didn’t want to break her heart at all but there was no help for it. Once she found out about me, or I confessed, whichever came first, she’d hate me and whatever we could have had would vanish. I didn’t want to acknowledge the dull ache in my chest that told me that I’d have a broken heart too. I knew this woman would destroy me.

Like a train headed off a cliff, I plowed ahead, ignoring the signs that told me to turn back now. I couldn’t turn back. There was nothing to turn back to. My past was my past and try as I might, there was no escaping it.

“Thanks, Con. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t forget to feed the fish!” I called after him. He waved his arm at me as though I were a nuisance. I probably was. He shut the door behind him and I pulled my phone out and began tapping out a new text to Flor,
my employee.

Knocking at the front door distracted me from the text I was attempting to send. I heard the slight scrape of metal on metal that a key slipping into a lock makes. The dead bolt slid open and in walked Flor.

“Where were you?” she asked with wide eyes.

“I went to the store to get a few things. I am known to even buy my employees a gift or two on occasion.” I glowered at her.

“I was worried something had happened. I thought maybe your fever came back or something.” She looked relieved and it made my heart swell. It also made my chest ache.

“You bought me something?” she changed the subject eagerly.

“Yes, I did.” I motioned with my chin to the box on the coffee table and watched her closely as she took it in her hands, sat down with it in her lap and looked up at me. “Open it,” I ordered. She went to work and looked slightly confused when she pulled the black and white Chuck Taylors from the shoebox.

“These are my size,” she stated, peering inside the shoes.

“I know. I bought them.”

“Thank you.” She smiled and bent to slip them on her feet.

“Do they fit?” She wiggled her toes and flexed her feet.

“Yes. Perfect.” The ghost of a smile tilted the corners of her mouth up.

“Good. Take them off.” With that, her smile vanished. Her smooth, arched brows wrinkled.

“What?”

“Take them off. It’s time to cross something off that list. Let’s go. I have a driver waiting,” I said, checking my phone. I told him to come pick us up as soon as I texted him. He’d be there in a few minutes as long as traffic was decent and it took me a few minutes to get myself out the door and to the elevator.

She squinted her eyes at me and fished her list from her back pocket. Her clear gray eyes scanned the lines. Understanding flashed in those gorgeous gray eyes and she snapped her gaze back to me.

“Oh no.” She wagged her finger at me. “Absolutely not. I won’t do it.”

“You have to. Now hurry up and put your other shoes back on. We have to make a trip.”

“I’m not doing it, Graham.” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the couch. I liked a challenge.

“I demand that you do it.”

“Demand all you want big guy, but I’m not doing it.”

“Do you want to be a successful author or not?”

“You know I do, but this is so beyond ridiculous. It’s flat out childish.”

“That’s the point, Flor.”

“I won’t do it.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, making them impossibly fuller. It was distracting.

“Then I quit. I won’t help you with the list and I won’t need your services any further. I’ll have Conrad send you severance pay and that will be that.” It was a dick move and an empty threat to boot, but I was counting on her folding. I played one hell of a bluff when it was necessary. It was a skill that I had carefully honed over the years.

“What? You can’t be serious.” It was difficult to say if she was more hurt than angry or more angry than hurt. If I had to guess, I would have said it was an equal split between the two.

“We’re doing it,” I insisted.

“Fine.” Her jaw clenched and her cheeks burned but not because she was embarrassed. She was flat pissed off and I kind of liked the look on her. I was relieved that my bluff worked. I winked and it only spurred her anger on. She haphazardly shoved the Chucks back into their box and snagged her purse. She waved her arm out in front of her. “After you,
sir
.”

She was about to scratch one more thing off her list and I just did, too.

Make her angry.

She refused to talk as we made our way to my penthouse. I looked at her over and over but she kept her eyes fixed on the window and the passing scenery.

When we arrived at my building, Flor jumped out before I could even unbuckle my seat belt.

“I’ll text you when we’re ready, John.”

“Yes, sir.” My driver nodded and returned to the driver’s seat. Flor was standing fifteen or twenty feet away and was looking impatient. I actually felt bad for a moment but I reminded myself that this was all a means to an end. She’d thank me later…before she ended up hating me, that is.

I smiled widely at her, trying my best to break her mood. She remained aloof, turning from me and tugging at the strap of her bag.

“Follow me, baby.”

“I’m not your baby,” she protested on a mumble.

“Better hurry, baby. Don’t want to miss the elevator.” I wheeled past her, smiling on the way. She rolled her eyes and I didn’t need to check to see if she was following me. I heard her reluctant footfalls, shuffling behind me.

I jabbed the button on the service elevator and waited. She still wasn’t speaking to me and it was driving me nuts. I felt like shit for what had happened last night. I needed to make it up to her. I planned on doing just that.

The elevator spit us out on the roof. It was relatively bare atop the building, but none of that mattered because I knew there were utility lines running from a gray metal maintenance shed to a light fixture that lit an orange-gold at night.

“Okay. We’re here. On a roof. Now what?”

“Shoes,” I said, holding my hand out to her.

“I don’t want to.” She pouted and the affect on me was nearly enough to make me relent.

“Do you want to write the books?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So, we do kid shit and this is kid shit. I still can’t believe that you did none of this as a little girl,” I said, shaking my head as she handed over the Chuck Taylors.

What is it about the way new Chucks smell? I didn’t think the scent of new Chucks had ever changed in the history of Chuck Taylors. The scent of rubber and glue and freshly manufactured Converse filled my nose and a wave of memories crested and toppled over in my brain, forcing a smile across my face as I knotted the laces together. I tested my knot, jerking at both shoes a few times. The knot cinched tighter and I held the shoes up like a prize. “Ready?”

“No,” she grumbled.

“Good.” I held the shoe laces across the tips of my fingers, drew my right arm back, aimed for the utility line and hurled the brand new Chuck Taylors to their permanent home. The left shoe flew over first and did a full spin around the line, ensuring they’d likely never fall down on their own.

I looked at the girl next door as she pouted and glared at her new shoes that I, the boy next door, had just thrown across a utility line. Mission accomplished.

“I can’t believe you,” she griped.

“Don’t get your panties in a knot. Come on. We need to make sure Frederick Jim got his dinner.”

“I’m not talking to you.”

“Okay,” I chimed then shrugged, enjoying the fact that she seemed sincerely upset over the shoes. She had no way to know that another pair, exactly like the ones we just tossed, was already at her apartment thanks to Conrad and Matt.

“Who is Frederick Jim?”

“You’ll see. Come.” I wheeled onto the service elevator after her and punched the button for us to descend. We switched elevators and ascended to my apartment. I actually felt a tiny bit nervous to have this Aphrodite of mine roaming around my personal space. I hoped she liked it. A small voice inside laughed at me. Why did it matter if she liked my apartment? It wasn’t like she’d ever spend the night there. Still, in spite of that small voice, I wanted Flor to like where I lived.

I punched the security code into the panel in the foyer outside my penthouse and opened the door for her to go in. She glanced down at me and breezed into my home. I thought I’d heard her gasp but I couldn’t be sure. I shut the door behind us and wheeled up beside her. I couldn’t wait to be back on my feet. Crutches or a cane, perhaps.

Flor walked quietly into the great room and looked around at my things, my space, and the bits of my life that adorned these walls. I watched her with fascination as she drifted her fingers lightly over things here and there, careful not to disturb anything. She turned to face me and I felt a slight skip in my pulse.

“Why don’t you stay here? You should recover here, Graham. It’s big enough and you would probably be more comfortable here.” I thought I saw something in her eyes—something small and barely there—but it looked like reluctance.

“You aren’t here,” I whispered almost immediately and without thought. My response was involuntary but it was the absolute truth. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t right next door and the idea that I wouldn’t get to see her made me feel terribly lonely. Her gray eyes met mine and I couldn’t make it to her quick enough. I locked the wheels on my chair and stood up. I gimped to the breakfast bar just a few feet from her and leaned against it, bracing myself.

“Be careful,” she gasped and moved toward me.

“Flor,” I spoke her name and I sounded pleading even to my own ears. She approached me silently. I pulled her to me and soaked up the feeling of her against me. She was small in front of me and yet she fit seamlessly against my body.

“I don’t like the idea of not seeing you, and not because I’m paying you to help me with things that I can’t do for myself right now, and not because of the stupid list. I don’t like the idea of not seeing you because it makes me feel lonely, and I think I’ve about had my fill of being lonely, baby.” I rattled off what I was feeling without giving it much thought. I just wanted her to know what I was thinking—what I was feeling. I didn’t want my words to be refined or calculated or measured. I wanted them to be the truth and that was it. “Flor, I’m sorry about last night. I know I seemed
off
after…” I squeezed my eyes shut, hating that I’d snapped at her in the first place. “Please just know this. It had nothing to do with you. You were—are—exquisite.”

“Then why did you get mad?”

“I…I don’t like the idea of taking pain medication. I don’t like the way they make me feel. That’s all.”

“Lots of people don’t like pain medication because of how it makes them feel,” she whispered as she brought her palm to my cheek and brushed her soft warmth across my scruff. “You should have just told me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I kissed her forehead and inhaled the scent of her red-flecked brown hair. I swallowed hard, and like the coward that I was, I kept my eyes downcast. I was cowering.

“That’s not it, is it?” Her hand fell away from my face and I missed it the moment her warm touch had abandoned me.

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t deny it and I wasn’t brave enough to get it over with and just tell her the truth. I wasn’t ready to let her go. I’d only just found her. If I told her, we’d be over before we’d even begun, and that thought frightened me even more than the threat of relapsing did.

I kept my head down. My eyes shut. “Look at me,” she demanded firmly. I obliged her and met her intense, clear gray eyes head on and the woman left me bare, transparent and transfixed all at once. “That’s not it, is it?” she repeated, barely loud enough for me to hear and yet those words, the accusation in her melodic voice, speared me.

I shook my head so slightly that even I wondered if I had done it. She nodded but didn’t move away from me. “Tell me?”

“I can’t,” I whispered.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“I-I can’t. Both. I don’t know.” I ran my hands through my hair, wishing that it would somehow soothe the ache in my head.

“Did I do something wrong? Did I scare you? Is it something to do with your brother? I… What is it?”

“It’s nothing to do with you. I swear.”

Flor nodded. “I deserve to know, Graham.”

“Yes. You do.”

“So?”

“I’ll try. I’m trying. Give me some time to think about it, okay? It isn’t easy for me to open up. I know you can understand that. Please. Just a little time.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you.” I held her, memorizing the feel of her against me, the smell of her hair, the warmth of her body…

“But I have to know right now, whatever it is, is it the type of secret that is a deal-breaker?” She looked nervous and I hated that I was responsible for the flighty look in her eyes.

“No. It’s not.” I sounded firm and confident but I knew the moment the lie had tumbled from my lips, I had just sealed my fate. I was a liar and the worst kind of man. I couldn’t blame her for hating me once she knew just how fucked up I was.

“I would stay here if you asked me to. If you needed me. If you wanted…” I pulled away from her enough to search those gray eyes for sincerity. She bit the inside of her lip and I couldn’t help myself. I tilted her chin up and covered her mouth with mine. I nipped and kissed at her pouty lips and wanted nothing more than to keep her tucked away in my penthouse forever. This place felt…right with Flor here. These four walls felt less lonely. I felt strong here, with her. I knew right then that I was right in thinking that maybe Flor gave me what Tommy’s apartment gave me. Strength, courage, conviction. That realization made what was to come more unbearable than it already was. I needed this woman, but fate had seen fit to make sure that she’d never be mine. I was my own fault, I supposed. I was, after all, the dumb motherfucker who had no self control, no discipline.