Neighbor Dearest

  “What are you doing here?”

  “This is my place.”

  “No. Your apartment is next door to mine.”

  “That’s right. That’s my apartment. This is my place. My art studio and gym.”

  “This was the address listed for the landlord.”

  A wry smile spread across his face. Suddenly, I felt like the stupidest person in the world as it dawned on me: he was the landlord. That was why the prick had encouraged me to issue a formal complaint.

  “You’re D.H. Hennessey…”

  “Yes. And you’re Chelsea Jameson. Excellent credit, great references…chronic complainer.”

  “Well, this explains a lot…how you’re able to get away with defacing the property and being an overall asshole to your neighbors.”

  “I would hardly compare my creating art to defacing property. Have you not looked around this entire neighborhood? It’s an art mecca. Mine is far from the only mural. And you’re overreacting about the dogs. So, the real asshole in this situation? Debatable.”

  Behind him, I could see multiple canvases of spray-painted artwork as well as a weight bench and other workout equipment.

  “Where are the dogs now?”

  “They’re napping.”

  “Dogs nap?”

  “Yes. They nap. They’re catching up on sleep because your bitching kept them up this morning.” He cracked a smile. That made me realize just how much this exchange was actually amusing him.

  “Clearly the D stands for dick?”

  He didn’t immediately respond, and a little staring contest ensued before he said, “The D stands for Damien.”

  Damien.

  Of course he had to have a hot name, too.

  “Damien…like from that movie The Omen? Fitting.” I looked around. “Why do you list this space as your address for tenants?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want crazy people who compare me to the anti-Christ showing up at my residence at all hours.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little. This was a lost cause. “Alright, well, clearly this visit was in vain, so enjoy your workout.”

  ***

  That afternoon, members of the San Francisco Symphony paid a visit to the youth center. They put on a small performance just for us. Watching the smiles on the kids’ faces as they toyed around with the fancy instruments served as yet another reminder of how much I loved my job.

  While everyone was focused on our guests, I noticed one of the teens, Ariel Sandoval, hiding crouched down in a corner with her phone. Wireless devices were against center rules, since this was supposed to be a place for learning. The teenagers with phones had to leave them in a bin at the front desk and retrieve them on the way out.

  “Ariel, is everything alright? You should really be engaging with everyone else.”

  She shook her head no. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to have my phone. But I need it. And no, I’m not okay.”

  I sat down on the ground next to her. The floor was cold against my butt. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Kai. I’m stalking Facebook now to see if anyone’s tagged him.”

  Her boyfriend, Kai, was also a regular here and played on the center’s basketball team. He was the object of more than one girl’s affections. When I discovered Ariel and Kai were dating, it worried me, not only because of their ages—they were both fifteen—but because of Kai’s popularity.

  So, it came as absolutely no surprise when she said, “I think he’s seeing someone else.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He hasn’t been coming here after school for the past week, and my brother said he saw Kai at the mall with a girl.”

  My heart sank. I wanted to tell her that she was probably right about him, but I wasn’t sure she was emotionally ready to hear that.

  “Well, don’t jump to any conclusions until you confront him, but you should definitely talk to him. Better to know these things than to be blindsided later. You don’t want to waste your time with someone who isn’t honest.”

  Didn’t I know that.

  Even though Elec hadn’t technically cheated on me physically, he had emotionally cheated.

  Ariel wiped her eyes then turned to me. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Whatever happened between you and Elec?”

  My stomach dropped. I wasn’t expecting her to bring him up, and it was way too long of a story to rehash.

  Elec used to be everyone’s favorite youth counselor. When he left the center, the kids were devastated. It had been common knowledge around here that we were boyfriend and girlfriend; everyone had gotten a real kick out of that.

  “You mean you want to know why we broke up?”

  “Yeah.”

  If I was going to sum it all up in a single sentence, there was only one response. “He fell in love with someone else.”

  Ariel looked confused. “How can you be in love with one person and just fall in love with someone else?”

  Ah. The question of the year.

  “I’m trying to figure that out myself, Ariel.”

  “I remember how he acted around you. It seemed like you guys were in love.”

  “I thought we were,” I whispered.

  “Do you think he really didn’t love you at all…or was it just that he loved the other girl more?”

  It was as if this fifteen-year-old girl had searched into my soul and picked out the one question that I’d asked myself the most. I wanted to be honest with her.

  “I’m not sure if there are different levels of love, or if his leaving meant that he never loved me at all. I don’t understand if it’s possible to just stop loving someone. I’m trying to work through these very questions. But the bottom line is, if someone is cheating on you, they don’t love you.”

  She stared off. “Yeah.”

  Nudging her with my shoulder, I grinned. “The good news, though? You are still so young, and there is plenty of time to find the right one if it’s not Kai. You’re at a very difficult age right now, probably the most difficult stage of your life. Both you and he are hormonal and just discovering who you are.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Have you found someone else?”

  “No.” I paused, looking down at my shoes. “I’m not sure I will.”

  “Why not?”

  How could I possibly shatter this young girl’s hopes? How could I admit aloud that I didn’t think I could ever trust another man again? That was my own personal issue, and I refused to taint her with my dark cloud of doubt.

  “You know what? Anything is possible, Ariel.” I smiled.

  If only I believed my own words.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HOLE IN THE WALL

  “I just have a couple of minutes before I have to get my makeup done before the show, but tell me what’s going on,” Jade said.

  I had texted my sister earlier: You’re never going to believe this. Call me.

  It was right after discovering the identity of my landlord.

  “So, you remember Angry Artist?”

  “You banged him?”

  “No!”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Turns out…he owns the building.”

  “No way!”

  “This is not good.”

  “Why not? I think it’s great!” she said.

  “In what way? Now, I’ll never get those dogs to shut up.”

  “No, I mean when you guys start boning, you won’t even have to pay rent.”

  “I’m not going to bone him. Because he’s a jackass. And even if in some bizarre universe, I were doing that…I would never not pay my rent. That would make me like a whore.”

  She laughed. “Mmmm.”

  “What?”

  “Angry sex is the best sex, you know.”

  “Yeah, you’ve said that before. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced it.”

  “Wel
l, when you have it with…what’s his name?”

  “Damien. That’s his name. I’m not going to be having angry sex with Damien.”

  “Damien? Like from The Omen?”

  “That’s what I said to him! I mentioned that when he told me his name. He didn’t seem too happy.”

  “When does he seem happy about anything?”

  Snickering, I said, “True.”

  “That’s hot, though. Shit…they’re calling me. I have to go.”

  “Break a leg!”

  “Fuck a landlord!”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Conversations with my sister always put me in a good mood.

  With an hour to go before my phone therapy session, I decided to go grab some takeout. On my way downstairs, I ran into Murray, the building super. He was sweeping the stairs and whistling while the metal from the dozens of keys he carried attached to his belt clanked together.

  “Hey, Murray!”

  “Well, hello there, gorgeous lady.”

  “You don’t normally work on Tuesdays.”

  “Going through a bit of a rough patch. Boss let me pick up some extra hours.”

  “By boss…you mean D.H. Hennessey?”

  “Yeah…Damien.”

  “You know, I just met him. I had no clue that my anti-social, next-door neighbor with the barking dogs was actually the landlord.”

  Murray chuckled. “Yeah, he doesn’t really advertise that fact.”

  “What’s his deal?”

  “You mean how does a young guy like that own this place?”

  “Well, yeah, that, but also why is he so mean?”

  “His bark is way bigger than his bite.”

  “No pun intended there?”

  “Right.” He laughed. “Deep down, Damien’s good people. Lets me work extra whenever I need to and real generous at Christmas time…even if he does seem to have a stick up his ass sometimes.”

  “A stick? It’s more like a pole.” I snorted.

  “Some days, yeah. But hey, he puts meals on my table, so you won’t hear that from me.” Murray winked.

  “He’s pretty talented, though,” I said. “I’ll give him that.”

  “Smart, too. Believe me. Rumor has it, he graduated from MIT.”

  “MIT? Are you kidding?”

  “Nope. Can’t judge a book by its cover. Invented something. Sold the rights to the patent apparently then used the money to invest in real estate. Now he just collects the rent and does what he wants…makes art.”

  “Wow. That’s…pretty darn impressive.”

  “You didn’t hear that from me, though.”

  “Got it, Murray.”

  “Fancy plans tonight?”

  “Nope. Just heading to grab some dinner and bring it back to the apartment.”

  “Well, enjoy.”

  “I will.”

  Twenty minutes later, I returned to my apartment with tostones and arroz blanco con gandules from my favorite restaurant, Casa del Sol.

  After scarfing down my food, I sat in my room and meditated for a bit in preparation for my phone therapy session with Dr. Veronica Little: Relationship Trauma Specialist.

  At two hundred dollars per one-hour session, Dr. Little wasn’t cheap. It was my mother who suggested I see someone to talk about my feelings. While I wasn’t sure if it was working, I continued to go along with it every Tuesday evening at eight-thirty.

  Perhaps, I should have forwarded the bills to Elec.

  ***

  I had my therapist on speakerphone while I folded laundry in the bedroom.

  “You bring that question up a lot, Chelsea. Whether or not Elec truly loved you. I think part of why we can’t seem to move forward from that can be explained by the concept of the unicorn.”

  “The unicorn? What is that?”

  “A unicorn is something that is mythically beautiful and unattainable, right?”

  “Okay…”

  “That was what Greta was to Elec. He’d ruled out a possibility of love with her because she was forbidden. He was able to fall in love with you in the meantime. That love was quite genuine. However, when the unicorn suddenly becomes attainable, that changes everything. The power of the unicorn is extremely potent.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that Elec really did love me but only when he basically thought that being with Greta was an impossibility. She was his unicorn. I wasn’t a unicorn.”

  “That’s exactly right…you were not his unicorn.”

  “I wasn’t his unicorn,” I repeated in a whisper. “Can I just—”

  “I’m sorry, Chelsea. Our time is up for today. We’ll explore this issue a little more next Tuesday.

  “Okay. Thanks, Dr. Little.”

  Blowing out a long breath, I plopped onto my bed and tried to make sense of what she’d just said.

  Unicorn. Hmm.

  My body stilled at the sound of laughing.

  At first I thought I was imagining it.

  It was coming from behind my headboard.

  I jumped up.

  “Unicorn. What the fuck!” he said in his deep voice before cackling some more.

  Damien.

  He’d been listening to my therapy session!

  My stomach dropped.

  How could he hear all that through the wall?

  “You’ve been eavesdropping on me?” I asked.

  “No. You’ve been interrupting my work.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a hole in the wall. I can’t help but hear your hot mess phone conversations when I’m working.”

  “A…hole in the wall? You’ve known about this hole?”

  “Yes. I haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Must have been there before I bought the building. Probably used to be a glory hole or some shit.”

  “You’ve been listening to me…through a glory hole?”

  “No. You’ve been subjecting me to asinine conversations with people who are ripping you off…through a glory hole.”

  “You are such a…”

  “A-hole?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  YOU BACON ME CRAZY

  The following day in work, I couldn’t help but obsess over the fact that Damien had been listening to my private conversations. Was that even legal?

  The night before, I’d stopped our communication through the wall pretty quickly after his revelation, retreating to the living room and polishing off a bottle of Zinfandel with a side of cookie dough.

  Thankfully, I was too busy at the youth center today to let it totally consume me, since it was the evening of the center’s annual breakfast-for-dinner function. Once a year, the staff cooked a giant breakfast in the industrial-sized kitchen for all of the kids. My responsibility was frying pounds of bacon.

  On the walk home, literally reeking of bacon grease, I resumed my obsessing over the hole in the wall. I’d noticed that the opening was actually right behind my bed. My only saving grace was that if my room was adjacent to his office, maybe he wasn’t typically in there as much at night as he would have been if it were another room. Maybe he hadn’t heard all of my sessions. Or maybe I was just kidding myself.

  Exactly how much did Damien know? I got into some really private stuff with Dr. Little. Backtracking through it all during the walk home, I nearly knocked into a fruit stand.

  Feeling fired up, when I arrived at my building, I impulsively passed my door and charged over to Damien’s apartment. The dogs, who were normally quiet in the evenings, were barking up a storm for some reason.

  Knocking frantically, I planned to demand that Damien tell me exactly what he’d heard through my wall. When he didn’t open, I knocked harder. The barking intensified, but still no answer. Just as I was about to turn around and leave, the door flew open.

  Damien’s dark hair was drenched, and beads of water were dripping from his forehead down to his chest. He was completely wet. The carved V a
t the bottom of his abs was proof that all of that working out downstairs was paying off. A small towel wrapped around his waist was the only piece of fabric on his otherwise naked body.

  Rippled muscular body.

  Holy shit.

  He was obscenely hot.

  I pried my eyes upward. “What are you doing answering the door like that?”

  “What am I doing? What are you doing, knocking on my door like a lunatic? I tried to avoid having to get out of the shower, but I thought there was something seriously wrong. And what the hell is that smell? That’s not bacon, is it?”

  “Yes. I was cooking bacon at work. I—”

  “Fuck!” he growled through his teeth.

  “I came to talk to you about fixing the hole in my wall, but clearly—”

  Before I could finish my sentence, the two black rottweilers had charged toward where I was standing, pouncing on me as their weight knocked me onto my ass. They frantically licked my face, neck, and chest as I lay on the hallway floor. They were also biting at the material of my shirt.

  Terrified, I managed to cry out, “Get them off of me!”

  Damien struggled with the massive animals to finally remove them off my body. My face was sticky from slobber.

  He forced them back into his apartment as their paws scratched and slipped against the hardwood floor. Damien then returned to the hallway and slammed the door behind him to lock the dogs inside.

  He reached out his hand, and I took it as he slowly but forcefully lifted me off of the ground as if my body were light as a feather.

  Speechless, I looked down at myself. A huge chunk of material was missing from the front of my shirt, exposing my bra.

  He looked liked he was struggling with what to say. “Chelsea, I—”

  “Are you happy now? Look what they did to me.”

  “Fuck. Really? No. I’m not happy. The dogs are obsessed with bacon, okay? It’s like their catnip. That’s why they jumped on you. Why the hell did you have to come in here reeking of it?”

  “I need to go,” I said, headed back toward my door.

  He tried to stop me. “Wait.”