What If You & Me by Roni Loren
Chapter Two
Hill Dawson groaned as he let the water run over him, feeling like an idiot for nearly busting down his new tenant’s door over a damn movie. He’d been doing his nightly exercises, hoping they’d tire him out enough to actually get some sleep, when he’d heard the screaming. His instincts had kicked in, and he hadn’t even considered that the noise was something innocuous—like a neighbor playing her scary movie too loudly.
All he could think of was the petite redhead, whom he’d only gotten a few glimpses of over the past few weeks, getting attacked. He’d imagined her trying to fight off an intruder or a violent boyfriend, losing the battle. So he’d rushed over like it was the old days, ready to bust down a door and save the day. He’d almost hoped that there would be a day to save. Something to give him that old rush of feeling like a hero to someone—even if only for a few minutes. Which was fucking bent. But anything to penetrate the numbness would’ve been welcome.
Instead, he’d ended up scaring the hell out of his new tenant—though she didn’t know he was the landlord—and lying to her about his firefighter status. He’d conveniently left out the former part of that title. Great job, asshole. Nothing like starting off a meet and greet with a lie.
But he’d wanted to calm her, to make her feel like he could help. When Andi had first opened the door, pink pepper spray in hand, she’d been trying to look tough—chin jutted out, blue eyes glinting in the porch light—but he’d seen the fear underneath that thin layer of bravado. Her body had been trembling and her face pale. She’d looked so…vulnerable.
Seeing her like that had hit him square in the gut. He’d wanted to pull her to him and hug her. What the hell had that been about? He didn’t hug strangers.
The urge had been weird and completely inappropriate. There was a difference between wanting to protect a citizen from danger and what he’d felt in that moment. That urge had been anything but professional.
Luckily, his training had gone on autopilot when he’d seen her pepper spray—the training that said to speak to her in a calm voice, to be professional, to assure her he was there to help—and he’d kept his hands and hugs to himself. Thank God.
He’d never gotten an up close look at Andi before tonight, and he hadn’t realized how young she was. Or how beautiful. Big blue eyes with smudged black liner, a little silver ring in her nose, and a body that would’ve seemed boyish if not for the small, pert breasts he’d forced himself to look away from when he’d realized she was only wearing a thin tank top and the shadows of what was beneath could be seen in the porch light.
He had no business looking at her that way or allowing the surge of heat that had moved through him. At thirty-one, he probably looked like an old man to her for one, and two, he didn’t do that anymore. No flirting. No charming his way into a fun hookup. Those days were long past him. He wasn’t anyone’s good time. He was a goddamned charity case at best, a pity fuck at worst. He’d learned that the hard way when one of his buddies had tried to set him up on a date after his accident and the breakup with his former fiancée. The woman had let it slip on the date that she was doing it as a favor to his friend. He wasn’t interested in repeating that particular lesson in humiliation.
Not that someone like Andi would’ve been interested anyway. She looked like the type who dated skateboarders or vegans with full-sleeve tattoos or drummers in punk bands. Not disabled firefighters who’d been put out to pasture.
Hill grabbed the metal bar attached to the shower wall and eased down onto the bench he’d installed. He dipped his head and let the water run over him, his eyes stinging with the shampoo. Tomorrow, he’d go back to keeping to himself. He and Andi now had an agreement not to disturb each other. Perfect.
He didn’t need a chatty neighbor, especially one that made him think about things he shouldn’t, made him crave things he couldn’t have. He’d let himself slip a little tonight, getting caught up for a moment and joking with her when she’d made a clever reference to a David Allan Coe song his aunt used to love. But he couldn’t open up that kind of door with someone like Andi, even in a neighborly way.
He’d bought this duplex for the quiet, to start fresh somewhere, and to get a little rental income to add to his firefighter pension while he figured out what the hell he was supposed to do with the rest of his life. He didn’t want to be friends with his tenant. That was why he had a management company handle the rental logistics. He wanted to be anonymous in this new place, left alone. Andi looked like the type who would organize the neighborhood watch and throw block parties. No, thanks.
He lifted his head, wiped the water from his face, and took a deep breath, feeling better now that he’d come up with a plan of action and had shaken off the weird feelings the conversation with Andi had left him with. Nothing had changed. He didn’t need to worry about it. He met his neighbor. No big deal.
But as he settled down into bed that night, instead of being plagued by nightmares of fiery buildings collapsing around him like usual, he was plagued by dreams of fiery redheads.
He woke up in a sweat and didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
***
Andi weaved her way through the first floor of WorkAround, the coworking space where she spent her weekdays, feeling the ripple of energy from all those clicking keyboards. She adored the bottom floor of the building with its tall windows lining the back wall, the exposed red brick and ductwork, and the soaring ceilings. But what she loved more was that this floor was where the hot desks were located—desks that people could rent for a few hours or days. That meant a regularly rotating mix of interesting people, which was like candy for her extroverted self. On any given day, she could chat with a musician, an actor, a book blogger, a journalist, a day trader, a visual artist. The list went on and on.
People were endlessly fascinating to her, and though she knew the stereotype of a writer was someone alone in an attic room, her writer brain needed people. How was she supposed to come up with interesting characters if she never met any interesting people? So each morning, she made a point to stop by a few of the hot desks and make small talk—“desk” really meaning “any solid flat surface you can place a laptop on” because the floor was dotted with blue, yellow, and gray couches, cafe tables, and boxy chairs. But today she breezed past most of them with only a few waves or smiles of acknowledgment toward people she already knew. She had pastries to deliver.
She headed to the stairwell next to the in-house coffee bar and made her way up to the second floor, where she rented space. She passed the podcasting and video rooms, cruised past her own office, and then knocked on a door at the end of the hall.
“Come in,” her friend Hollyn called out.
Andi opened the door and slipped inside, the library quiet of Hollyn’s office a stark contrast to the flurry on the first floor. She set a narrow black canister and a grease-stained bag from the bakery on her friend’s desk and plopped in a chair. “Mornin’, rock star. I come bearing gifts.”
Hollyn glanced over from the entertainment article she was working on, her nose wrinkling a few times in a facial tic that Andi had gotten so used to, she barely noticed anymore. “Ooh, presents.” Hollyn examined the offerings on the desk and tucked her lion’s mane of curly blond hair behind her ears. “Well, I can guess what’s in the bag. I can smell a cinnamon roll from a hundred yards away. But what’s this?”
Hollyn picked up the black canister and turned it over in her hand.
“Gel pepper spray. A firefighter friend of mine says it’s the best, better than the normal stuff because it doesn’t blow back in your face.” Andi opened the bag and pulled out one of the cinnamon rolls she’d picked up from Levee Baking Co. on her way in this morning. One of the bonuses of renting an office at WorkAround, besides being able to have actual coworkers in a job where she normally would be stuck alone, was that she had NOLA’s endless supply of restaurants at her fingertips when she was craving something yummy. “I thought you should have one, too. You know, you can protect you and Jasper if you two are ever attacked.”
Hollyn laughed. “You don’t trust Jasper to be the action hero?”
Andi smirked at the thought of Hollyn’s adorable improv-actor fiancé attempting any sort of violence. The guy would lay down his life for Hollyn, no doubt, but Andi couldn’t picture him in a fight. “He would probably be able to talk a criminal out of robbing you guys.”
Hollyn set the canister next to her bag, which she’d left on the back corner of her desk. “I wouldn’t put it past him, but I’ll keep this in my purse in case negotiations don’t work out. Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Hollyn pulled her cinnamon roll out of the bag and grabbed two napkins from her desk drawer, handing one to Andi. “I didn’t know you had a firefighter friend.”
Andi spread the napkin on her lap and unrolled a piece of the cinnamon roll. “He’s my new neighbor. I met him unexpectedly over the weekend.”
Hollyn licked a glob of frosting from her fingertip and grimaced, but Andi knew the grimace was her friend’s Tourette’s acting up and not her opinion of the pastry.
“I love that you meet someone once and you call them a friend,” Hollyn said. “There’s like a ten-step application process and a gauntlet to make it through to get that designation from me.”
Andi grinned as she swallowed her bite of dough. “Ha. Well, I feel honored to have been accepted into your circle of the chosen few. I have my own tests. Neighbor dude has only passed the preliminary quiz. I’m not inviting him over for grilled cheese or anything. But his pepper-spray advice was solid. I googled.”
Hollyn watched her for a moment, chewing, her eye twitching a little. “Does he live alone?”
Andi shrugged. “I assume so. He wasn’t wearing a ring.” She frowned. When had she even noticed that? Her subconscious must’ve been taking notes. “Plus, I’ve only heard his big feet traipsing around over there.”
“Big feet. Interesting.” Hollyn’s gaze took on a mischievous look. “Young guy? Old guy?”
Andi thought back to the other night. She’d been so freaked out to see anyone on her doorstep at that hour, and then taken aback by her body’s reaction to Hill, that she hadn’t thought about what his age might be. “Not old. Older than us but like, I don’t know, late twenties, early thirties? He had that old-soul look like he’d seen some stuff. But that’s not surprising if he’s a firefighter.”
Hollyn’s brow lifted. “Old soul, huh? Is he cute?”
Andi scrunched her nose, the question catching her off guard, and she forced another bite of cinnamon roll down. Was he cute? Cute was not a word she’d use for him. There was nothing “cute” about that serious face, those wide shoulders, and that deep voice. Sexy, yes. Hot, for sure. Her fantasy from the other night flashed through her mind, and warmth rushed to her cheeks. She cleared her throat. “I guess. If you like the big, bearded, dark, and broody type.”
“Please God, don’t let that be her type,” said a voice from the doorway.
Andi turned, finding Hollyn’s fiancé, Jasper, leaning against the doorjamb with an amused look on his face.
He stepped inside, adjusted his dark-rimmed glasses, and then spread his arms, Hulk-style, trying to widen his lean frame. “But if it is, I can be beefcake.”
Hollyn bit her lip, smiling adoringly at her guy. “What you are is exactly my type.”
“Goofy improv actor?” he confirmed and walked over to peck Hollyn on the lips.
“Obviously.”
“Sweet. I’m your man.” He turned to Andi after stealing a piece of Hollyn’s cinnamon roll and popping it in his mouth. “So, who are we talking about? What’s the word? Give me all the details.”
“Andi’s new neighbor is apparently a hot firefighter,” Hollyn said, tone playful.
Andi groaned. “I said no such thing.”
“Uh-huh,” Hollyn said.
“Fine,” Andi admitted. “He’s not…difficult to look at.”
Jasper propped a hip on the corner of Hollyn’s desk and grinned. “Uh-oh, Andi finally likes a boy. Fitz is going to be so bereft when I tell him. He’s harboring a mad crush.”
Andi gave him an oh-please look. Fitz McLane owned an investment firm that took up most of the fourth floor of WorkAround, and he was a nice enough guy, but he also could sell ice to an Eskimo. “Fitz acts like he has a crush on every woman in the building. He likes to be adored. And I don’t ‘like a boy.’ Neighbor dude is definitely a man. And I never said I was into him. I’m just objectively saying that he is a nice-looking human.” She pointed at them, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t do that thing.”
“What thing?” Hollyn asked, setting her chin in her hand and obviously enjoying the teasing way too much.
“That thing that people do once they’re a couple and want everyone else to suddenly couple up,” she said. “You become like gossipy grandmothers playing matchmaker.”
Hollyn shook her head and held up her own wagging finger. “Oh, no you don’t, Lockley. You were like my own personal cheering squad, trying to get things to work out with me and Jas. You don’t get to pull that couple card on us.”
Andi put her hand to her chest. “Me? I was simply seeing two people who obviously needed to be together and encouraging that. That was being a good friend. But you don’t even know this guy. I don’t even know this guy. He could be a crappy human. He could be married and not wearing a ring. He listens to country music, so we’re already starting off at a deficit.”
“Country?” Jasper cringed. “Yeah, sounds like a lost cause. I’ll tell Fitz his crush is safe.”
Hollyn offered the rest of her cinnamon roll to Jasper and cleaned her fingers on her napkin. “Look, I won’t be that person. You’re a grown woman who can make her own choices on who she’s interested in or not. But at the very least, it can’t hurt to get to know your neighbor a little, right?”
Andi frowned, that old tight feeling filling her chest. Just because someone was a neighbor didn’t mean they were someone worth knowing, someone worth trusting. But she didn’t want to go there with her friends. They didn’t know about her past. Didn’t know that the story of her first crush involved a guy currently sitting in a maximum-security prison. These friends knew her in the After—as the quirky horror writer, as the weird girl who finds comfort in the macabre, as the woman who wants to run background checks on all her friends’ dates but rarely goes on a date herself. She didn’t want them to know what had gotten her here.
“Sure. I mean, maybe I’ll need to borrow a cup of sugar one day,” Andi said noncommittally.
Jasper’s lips hitched at one corner. “Is that what the kids are calling it?”
Andi snorted and tossed her balled-up napkin at Jasper as she stood. “See if I bring you people pastry and weaponry again.”
“Ooh, there’s weaponry?” Jasper asked, turning to Hollyn.
Hollyn lifted her hand with an apologetic smile. “Fine. I’ll drop it. Maybe we are doing that couple thing. Gross.”
“No worries. I know it’s coming from a place of love, but really, it’s nothing. It was just a meet-the-neighbor.” She nodded toward the computer. “I’ll let you get back to your article.”
“Thanks again for the presents. What’s on your agenda today?” Hollyn asked.
“Oh, you know, the usual. I have to write a chapter of my book and then…” Andi stretched her neck from side to side like she was getting ready to enter a boxing match. “I have to put together a podcast episode covering this documentary about a guy who kidnapped and murdered three women. He hunted them at shopping malls in the eighties.”
Jasper’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Andi said. “It’s a grim case, but at least he was caught. I wanted to cover it because there’s a lot to be learned from it. If nothing else, it will remind women that we have to check our back seats before we get into our cars. And not to trust some random guy appearing to be helpful at the mall.”
“You realize you make what we do for a living look like utter bullshit when you say stuff like that,” Jasper said. “You’re like a crusader. You need a cape or something.”
“Nah,” Andi said, picking up her laptop bag. “We need people to make us laugh, too. If all we thought about all day was how sick and cruel people can be, we’d never get out of bed in the morning. I’d be in a bunker dug into my backyard.” She smiled at her two friends. “We need people to entertain us. To make movies, to write books, to sing songs. It’s all important. And it’s not like I’m doing any real public service. I’m not investigating unsolved cases or helping catch the bad guys like some podcasters are. Not my skill set. I write scary books, and I tell people about real-life scary stories. I’m not fixing anything.”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” Hollyn said. “You’re telling people what the victims would if they could. I know I’m a lot more careful after listening to your show.”
“She keeps me safe,” Jasper confirmed, setting his chin on Hollyn’s shoulder.
Hollyn rolled her eyes.
“You keep each other safe, all right?” Andi wiggled her fingers in a little wave. “See y’all later.” She looked back and forth between the two of them. “And I’ll shut the door. Enjoy borrowing a cup of sugar.”
They were laughing when Andi clicked the door shut. And though she doubted they were going to get it on at the office, it made her grin to see her friends so happy. She didn’t believe coupledom was in the cards for her, but for some, it really was a beautiful thing to behold.