you’re on your last HOA violation warning about that.”
Wait. How does he know that? Who in the hell is he? And more importantly, do I have “be an asshole to me, please” tattooed on my forehead?
Before I can get any of that out, though, he walks away, appearing and disappearing under the fake gaslight lamps’ glow as he crosses the street and jogs up his front steps, then disappears behind a perfectly painted red door. Yeah, I watched. He is a total and complete smug dickwad, but it’s still a good view.
Not that it matters. I’m going to show that big jerk.
This is my house, and I’m a new woman.
I’m Mallory Martin, soon-to-be divorcée and already unemployed office manager. I have nowhere to go but toward the light of success—and I will not be mowing the grass until the last possible day now.
Of course, before I can do any of that, I have to find the breaker box.
Chapter Six
Dawn shoves its way past my aunt’s minuscule curtains and bitch-slaps me right across the face the next morning.
It’s just my luck that the one thing my aunt apparently didn’t hoard was good window coverings. The drapes in here definitely subscribe to the same rules that govern most good lingerie—reveal more than you conceal. And like the sexiest lace teddy, the filmy hot-pink-and-lime-green zebra-print fabric over the east-facing windows do the revealing quite artfully. The concealing? Yeah, not even close to mastering that one.
The clock on the once white, now definitely more tea-stained cream wicker nightstand reads 6:12. Fantastic. Great. Perfect. So much for sleeping in. I could bury my head under the pillow and try to go back to sleep, but with the way my luck has been running lately, I’d end up suffocating myself while getting poked in the eye with the feather quills packed inside it…which might not sound like the worst option in the world right now, except I flat-out refuse to give Karl that satisfaction. I already made things too damn easy for him with this divorce. Death would just be overkill.
Plus, since I’ve recovered from the retina-searing brightness shining through my window—dear God, how did Aunt Maggie deal with this every morning?—my mind is racing with all the things I have to get done today.
Go through the HOA complaints and sort in order of importance.
Find a contractor who will work for magic beans.
Buy about eight million garbage bags to take care of the stacks and stacks of junk my aunt has in every single room in this house. Seriously, who still subscribes to magazines, let alone has multiple copies of the Sears Christmas catalog from the eighties?
Mow the damn grass…though maybe that doesn’t have to be today. I’m totally okay with letting my obnoxious neighbor marinate in his own stuck-upedness for a while. I mean, how far up his ass is that stick if he feels the need to whine about the length of my grass? Of course, maybe that’s how he got such a perfect ass—he has a copy of Butt Clenching Your Way to Perfect Glutes For Dummies. If I encourage him, he’ll probably be over here with a ruler to get the exact measurement of my lawn, just to make sure I mowed enough but not too much.
Renewed annoyance sweeps through me like hot fudge over a scoop of vanilla bean, and I push the covers off and all but spring out of bed—and knock over three stacks of magazines. I ignore all the little aches and pains that come with sleeping on a new mattress and mentally readjust my to-do list. Definitely need trash bags before HOA regulations.
But first, coffee. Please God, let Aunt Maggie have hoarded the magical brown bean of happiness.
After a quick shower in my aunt’s searing hot-pink bathroom, I dry off with one of her zebra-striped towels and slap some expensive moisturizer onto my face. It soaks in and—I swear to all that is good in the world—my skin lets out a relieved sigh. Karl got me the moisturizer for my last birthday. No doubt it was his way of telling me I’m looking old. Sure, I was tempted to hurl the hourglass-shaped bottle at his head, but I controlled the urge. And my skin has thanked me every day since.
A quick brush of my teeth and topknot later, I make my way down the creaky stairs, doing my best not to trip on everything my aunt piled on the edges of them.
By the time I get to