To The Rude Guy in Apartment Five - J. S. Cooper Page 0,56
face as I knocked on the door.
“You don’t look surprised to see me.” I pushed past him and walked into his apartment.
He frowned, sensing my anger as he closed the door behind me. “What do you mean?”
“Just thirty minutes ago I was texting you, and now I’m at your door, obviously not working.”
“I assume you got the day off?” He smiled. “You must have a nice boss.”
“Jagger, I know.” I walked up to him and poked him in the chest.
“You know what?” His smile faltered.
“I know that you’re a part-owner of Cool Credit.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Uh huh.” I rolled my eyes. “When? In ten years.”
“No.” He sighed. “Of course not.”
“Jagger, I’m so mad at you, I can barely even talk. What the hell is going on?”
“We need to talk. You should sit down.” He walked over to the couch. “Please?”
“Fine.” I walked over to the couch and sat next to him. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“This is long and this is hard, and I might not come off in the best light.” He made a face and sighed. “But this is the truth and the whole truth.”
“Why doesn’t this sound good?” My heart lurched. What else hadn’t he told me?
“Ten years ago, I made the biggest mistake of my life.” He took my hands in his. “Actually, twelve years ago. I wanted to ask you out, but I waited too long and then you started dating Doug, and my whole world crashed around me.”
“It did?”
“It did.” He nodded. “Why do you think I was home so much? Why do you think it was always you and me hanging out when you came to hang out with Doug?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because I wanted to be with you. I wanted to see you. I wanted to hang out with you. I loved hearing you laugh and watching you smile. I was in love with you, and I wanted to be with you, only I didn’t know what to say once you started dating Doug. I always knew he wasn’t right for you, but he was my brother.” He shrugged. “So I did nothing.”
“Well, not nothing. You did date my sister.”
“That was another mistake. I never should have agreed to help her. I thought it would make you as jealous as I was.”
“It did.”
“I know that now.” He shook his head. “When you left me that note to seduce me, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone—have you for myself and have both Daisy and Doug off of our backs. But it totally backfired.”
“It wasn’t a great plan.” I shook my head. “Though my seduction plan wasn’t that smart, either.”
“So, after that blew up in my face and you ended up hating me, I resolved to become a better man for you. I thought it would blow over and you would wind up back with me, but you never came back. You avoided my calls, my texts, you changed your number, I never saw you. It broke my heart.” He rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t know what to do, and then Anna asked me if she could borrow ten grand.”
“What?” My face went red. “For me?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “She told me you’d moved to San Francisco and were having a rough time. She didn’t have much money but knew I’d been very successful. I had already been approached by Tate to invest in his company. He and I went to business school together, and I saw it as a sign that I needed to try and win you back.”
“So you moved to San Francisco?”
“So I moved to San Francisco. And became a silent partner in Tate’s new venture with the condition that he hired a certain someone.”
“That’s why the tech company approached me?” It was all starting to make sense now.
“Yes.” He gently played with my fingers. “I knew your address because Anna gave it to me, and I contacted the building management and offered to pay your neighbor fifty grand if he would move out immediately.”
“So you moved here on purpose?”
“I knew I had to be close to you. I had to see you.”
“But why didn’t you just knock on my door and introduce yourself? Why the notes?”
“I did knock on your door initially, but you never answered.” He smiled crookedly. “And then I got the idea to leave notes.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what you did for me all