Opposites Attract - Jessica Prince Page 0,5
body through had done nothing to get my mind off the pathetic direction my life seemed to be heading in.
I was a thirty-four-year-old man living out of boxes because it seemed the only thing I had of any importance was my job, and it kept me too busy to do something as simple as unpack. My divorce from the She-Bitch I’d been married to had finally gone through, after months of her screwing around and dragging it out as long as possible, so I’d been able to move out of the goddamned hotel I’d been living in for the past year and actually find my own place, only to move in next door to a screaming harpy with horrible taste in music. And the saddest fact yet, I hadn’t been able to get a certain woman in a red dress out of my head since the morning I’d woken up to find she’d bailed on me in the middle of the night.
So, to sum it up, I was a workaholic in his mid-thirties, already divorced, who spent the better part of three months mooning over a one-night-stand to the point that I hadn’t been laid since that fateful night because no woman I’d met since lived up to a woman whose name I didn’t even know. It was laughable, really, just how quickly everything was spiraling around the drain.
My phone rang, shaking me from my miserable thoughts. Reaching into the pocket of my track pants, I pulled it out and groaned at the screen. “What?”
“Well hello to you too, brother.”
Rowan’s chipper demeanor coming through the phone almost made me cringe. Ever since getting engaged to Navie, he’d been insufferably cheerful. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was beyond happy for my twin brother. He deserved a woman who would love him more than life, but when your own marriage ends in divorce because you discovered your wife was a manipulative shrew, it makes that smile slip every so often.
“What’s got you in a mood?” Rowan asked.
“Pain-in-the-ass neighbor,” I grunted. “Haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since I moved in here. She even woke me at the crack of dawn this morning. Who the hell wakes up so early on a Saturday?”
He chuckled through the line, making me roll my eyes. “I’m not one to say I told you so—”
“Bullshit, you aren’t!” I barked with a laugh. “You live do say ‘I told you so.’”
He was silent for a few seconds, then, “You’re right. I do. And I told you so, Rich. If you’d have just moved into my and Navie’s building like I suggested, you wouldn’t be dealing with this shit.”
It wasn’t that Rowan’s place wasn’t nice. It really was. But after years of having no relationship whatsoever because my ex-wife, Bree had played us both, we were still working on building things back up. There was still a voice in the back of my head that niggled at me, warning not to wear out my welcome when it came to Rowan. I found myself occasionally walking on egg shells just so I wouldn’t risk losing him for another chunk of my life. Discord between siblings was hard enough, it was something you felt on a daily basis, but your twin? Well, let’s just say that was a personal Hell I never wanted to experience again.
“There’s nothing wrong with my building… except for the woman next door trying to make me deaf at ungodly hours of the morning.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“She blares ‘Lose Yourself’ every morning like a goddamned anthem or something. I swear to Christ, Row, if I had ever liked that song, she’d have ruined it for me.”
The asshole had the nerve to laugh. “Well, at least it isn’t Britney Spears or some boy band.”
My jaw actually ticked as I admitted, “Oh, it’s that too. She’s got a very… eclectic taste in music, and she plays it all the fucking time,” I drawled out. “If you’re planning on getting me a housewarming present, might I suggest earplugs? I’d be forever in your debt.”
“Speaking of debt…”
I took another swig from my water bottle. “Well that sounds ominous.”
“Navie was supposed to go to the florist today to check out her bouquet or some shit…” Ah, hell. “…but she has a rush jewelry order she has to get to Pepper at Fire & Ice by this afternoon, so she asked me to do it.”
“Not seeing where this is my problem.”
“Well,” he dragged out. “She passed the job to me, and