Neanderthal by Avery Flynn
Chapter Two
Kinsey
Kinsey Dalton was going to puke.
Not literally, but the uncomfortable rumble in her belly was definitely there.
“There is no way you can live here,” her formerly-online-and-now-in-real-life-too friend Morgan said for the tenth time—not coincidentally the exact same number of apartments available to rent at outrageous prices that they’d toured so far today. “The toilet is in the kitchen!”
Kinsey’s whole body clenched with revulsion as she tried to keep the sweet-as-pie smile on her face from crumbling like dry pastry crust.
She sneaked a peek at the landlord standing in the doorway to see if he’d caught Morgan’s true-but-better-kept-to-herself statement. Lucky for them, his attention was fully focused on his phone screen and the soccer match playing on it. If he’d heard, he didn’t seem to care—unlike his thoughts about how Manchester United was doing.
Still, the fact that he hadn’t noticed didn’t matter. Her home training alert system had kicked in. Meemaw had drilled manners into her with the strenuousness that could only come from a seventy-year-old who still mowed her own lawn, canned her fruits and veggies the old-fashioned way, and had taken in her wayward daughter’s three kids when the law caught up to her—again. Talking shit about an apartment with the landlord right there definitely would have landed on the do-not-do side of the ledger.
“But look at the window. It’s south facing, so the light will be great,” she said, focusing on the first possible positive thing she spotted in the otherwise very questionable apartment. It only took a few steps from the toilet of infamy to look through the pane and onto the trash-strewn plot of weeds surrounded by a chain-link fence bearing a No Trespassing sign. “It’s practically a park.”
“Yeah, maybe if the light is just right and you’ve been hit in the head with a brick,” the other woman said.
Rounding her eyes, she sent Morgan a pointed hey-shut-your-mouth look as she tilted her head toward the landlord. Morgan just pointed at the toilet, which was literally right next to the fridge without even a half wall between them. On the other side of the toilet was the glass wall of the shower. Yes. That was right. One entire wall of the studio apartment was kitchen cabinets, the sink, the world’s skinniest fridge, the toilet, and finally the shower—all of which looked out onto the living room/bedroom and the window overlooking the very much not a park.
“Okay, it’s not ideal,” Kinsey said with a shoulder-drooping sigh, already eyeballing the space in front of the toilet and shower for a ceiling-to-floor curtain that could give a little privacy and slow down the free flow of airborne bacteria. “But I start my new job on Monday, and I want to live within walking distance, since I don’t have a car and don’t want to waste work time on multiple trains—which means living in Harbor City’s expensive downtown area. Sadly, this is all I can afford.” She spun in place, taking in the full majesty of exactly how little a dollar went in the city, and shrugged. “Besides, I’ll be spending so much time at work, I’ll hardly even be here.”
Maybe she could make it the entire term of her lease without using the bathroom.
Probably not, but a woman had to have dreams in addition to working her way up from her current job of entry-level skin-care scientist to someday becoming head of research and development at Archambeau Cosmetics.
Morgan lifted an eyebrow and slid her gaze over to the toilet. “Honey,” she said, settling her gaze on Kinsey again. “This is almost as bad as the five-floor walk-up with the mysterious goo on every window ledge.”
Yeah, that place had been scary. Meemaw definitely would have pulled on her bright-yellow plastic cleaning gloves and broken out the small emergency bottle of bleach she carried in her purse—in a Ziploc bag stuffed with dryer sheets, of course, so neither the liquid nor smell would leak on the Baggie of peanuts sprinkled in Old Bay seasoning or the extra tube of watermelon-pink-colored lipstick she always had on her as well.
The kitchen-slash-bathroom was nasty as well, but Kinsey’s options were limited. Finding an apartment in Harbor City was a total and complete racket.
Morgan strutted over in her mile-high heels and slung an arm across Kinsey’s shoulders like she were her kid sister even though they were both twenty-five. “We can do this the long way or the short way,” she said. “But either way, by the end of this conversation, you’re coming to live with me until you can find something that isn’t this.”
One look at Morgan’s face was all it took to confirm she was sincere. The woman had the poker face of a toddler looking at a pilfered handful of Pixy Stix. It really was a sweet offer. One Kinsey shouldn’t agree to.
After being a part of the same online planner group for the past year and a half, when Morgan had found out Kinsey was moving to Harbor City for a job, she’d almost lost her mind with excitement. When Kinsey spilled that she was putting her PhD in pharmaceutical sciences to work in the R&D department at Archambeau Cosmetics, Morgan had called her immediately and had sworn her to secrecy in the planner group. That’s when she’d found out that the bullet-journaling fiend and corgi-butt sticker aficionado was one of the Beckett Cosmetics heiresses (sadly, Archambeau’s biggest competitor)—something Morgan really wanted to keep on the down-low with their group because people always treated her differently when they found out.
Now that Kinsey could understand—not because she was also in line for a billion-dollar fortune but because people loved to take one look at her and put her on the shelf as big-boobed blonde with bupkis for brains.
So she’d promised to never tell, and they’d made a million plans about what they’d do as soon as Kinsey got to Harbor City, including apartment hunting and lunch—but definitely not sponging off her mega-rich friend.
“I can’t impose on you like that,” Kinsey said.
“What imposition?” Morgan scoffed. “My place is big enough that we might not even see each other.”
“But no toilet in your kitchen?” Kinsey teased. “How would I survive?”
Morgan laughed. “I have no clue what is actually in my kitchen, but I can guarantee there isn’t a toilet in it.”
The offer really was the nicest, but Kinsey’s brain was going a million miles an hour pulling up all the other options and tossing them out one after the other in quick succession. Morgan was right—living here wasn’t an option. Toilet kitchen notwithstanding, the rent was already over her budget. The walk-up could be cleaned, and it was cheaper, but it also meant a three-train trip to get to work. Morgan’s place, though, was a fifteen-minute walk from Archambeau, and it would only be until she could find a better fit. It was the logical choice.
Still, it was a big ask for someone Morgan hadn’t set actual in-person eyes on until yesterday.
“You barely know me,” Kinsey said. “What if I’m the kind of person who hits snooze on a super-loud alarm clock forty-five times every morning?”
Morgan planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her bright-blue eyes. “We’ve been a part of our online planner group for two years and snarky DMing each other the whole time. I know you wear days-of-the-week panties.”
Heat exploded in Kinsey’s cheeks as her head whipped around to look at the landlord, who—thankfully—was just as entranced with the soccer match as he’d been before.
“You know I can’t get pedicures because people touching my feet freaks me out, and you know that I didn’t lose my virginity until last summer,” Morgan continued, seemingly impervious to the idea that the landlord was literally six steps away and could probably hear every word. “Anyway, we’re good enough friends that if you pulled that shit with snooze, I’d just smother you during your eight minutes of extra sleep.”
“And what about the work thing?” Archambeau was the biggest competitor to Beckett Cosmetics’s spot at the top of the luxury, privately owned cosmetics companies.
“Considering I have nothing to do with the family business, if you’ve chosen to befriend me in order to do some corporate spying for the Evil Empire—oops, I mean for Archambeau Cosmetics—then you’ve made a massive mistake.”
“Morgan—”
“Nope.” She raised her hand. “You sound just like my brother when you say my name like that. Speaking of which, his gym is just down the block from here, and he owes me brunch. Let’s go drag him out of there. I need some eggs Benedict in my belly, then we can get you moved in”—she shot Kinsey a don’t-even-think-about-arguing look—“to my place.”
