“You never got back to me with the actual dates,” I argue back. “I figured you’d tell me the dates before you arrived on my doorstep in the middle of the night.”
“You know what I don’t understand?” my dad interjects. “How I’m supposed to have any privacy for my morning constitutional behind a goddamn shower curtain? What the hell?” he grumbles. “New York City’s never heard of bathroom doors?”
“The landlord is working on it,” I mutter on a lie. My landlord is a skeevy guy named Randy, and he’s way more likely to take doors off than put them on.
Plus, I’m not going to tell my dear old dad this, but that shower curtain serving as the bathroom door has been here since before I moved in.
“I thought you were paying $2,500 a month for a place, for shit’s sake,” my dad grumbles some more as my mom worries her lip before asking, “How strong are the locks?”
Instead of explaining to my dad that I am paying that much in rent for this glorified shithole or getting into an hour-long discussion with my mom about hardware, I sigh heavily and shove a bite of bagel into my mouth.
It tastes like a last meal before my execution.
A horn blares below my window for the fourth time in a row, and I roll my eyes at New York’s display of hospitality.
As if my parents weren’t already disillusioned enough with my life choices, some cabbie on a power trip really wants to drive the point home.
When it honks a sixth time, I get annoyed enough to get up off my pillow, and my mom follows. It’s six o’clock in the morning, for God’s sake, and I got next to no sleep last night because I had to entertain the nosy, paranoid, and very opinionated Rockfords. This isn’t the time to mess with me. I’m liable to lose my shit like Daenerys and burn everything to the ground.
I shove open the window and peek my head out over the fire escape, prepared to give some asshole stranger hell, but when I look down, all I find is an asshole I know.
Cap, dressed in jeans and a blue-and-white flannel shirt, stands in the door of his Range Rover, looking up at me.
His smile is a mile wide, and to be honest, my heart feels like it skips an actual beat.
Freaking traitor heart.
“Come on,” he yells up at me obnoxiously. “Pack a bag, doll. We’re going to the lake.”
“Who’s that?” my mom asks from a startlingly close proximity. I jump as she leans out beside me to take a look. “Is he a sex trafficker?”
My eyebrows rise with the possibilities of several inappropriate jokes, but thankfully, I’m smart enough to think better of it.
Instead, I go for the most direct answer I can think of. “He’s my boss.”
“Ruby!” Cap yells loudly again. “Who’s with you? You have some sort of girl-on-girl thing going?”
My cheeks bloom into a cloud of rosiness, and I clench my fists beside me.
I shake my head and then butt my mom out of the way so I can rush back inside. There’s no way I’m going to stand at my window and yell back and forth with him, especially if he’s going to be so….so…him.
I grab my phone off the coffee table, and my dad startles inside the bathroom like I’ve just knocked on his stall door in a public restroom. “Someone’s in here!” he shouts.
“I know, Dad. I’m not even near the bathroom.”
I scroll through my recent calls quickly to Cap’s contact info and put the phone to my ear while it rings.
“Why the hell are you calling me?” he answers.
“So you don’t wake up my whole freaking neighborhood with comments about me having sex with a woman! Who is my mother, by the way.”
He groans a little, and the sound is highly erotic. “Ah, man. You ruined it. And my imagination was doing such a good job, too.”
“Why are you here?” I ask, cutting to the chase. “I know I may give the impression of a sweet girl, but it’s freaking six a.m. on a Saturday, and I haven’t had time to put makeup over the dragon yet.”
“I told you at the window. Pack a bag, we’re going to the lake.”
“Um, no. My parents are here. Surprise drop-in last night. So, you can go to the lake and have fun, but I have to pass. I’m a little busy enjoying my last meal and entertaining the parental units in a