big believer in it myself, actually. Between the blonde, the brunette, and the redhead you undoubtedly have on deck for tonight, it looks like you’ve got a nice arrangement for yourself here. And under different circumstances, I’d probably say, hey, rock on with your frisky self. But as the person who has to share a wall with you, these antics with the partying, and the penis pops, and the late-night hookups showing up on your doorstep—and mine—are starting to wear a touch thin. And frankly, it all seems a little . . . juvenile.”
Ford blinked.
“But hey—to each his own, right?” With a smile, she gave him a wave in good-bye. “See you around the building, Ford. And thanks for the tip about the guy in 4B.”
Without so much as a second glance in his direction, she headed for the stairwell, pushed her way through the door, and disappeared.
Ford stood there, taking a moment to digest the fact that yes, that had just happened. Some perfect stranger who didn’t know jack-shit about his personal life had just given him a smug talking-to.
All of a sudden, Victoria the Divorce Lawyer or Something didn’t seem like such a great addition to the building, after all.
* * *
WANTING TO GET some writing done that morning, he grabbed his messenger bag from his loft and then texted Brooke on his way to the coffee shop. Just yesterday, during dinner, she’d asked what his new neighbor was like. At the time, he hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Victoria Slade, Esquire, but now he could give his friend a full update.
Just met the new neighbor. She SUCKS.
He shoved the phone into his bag, Victoria’s speech still ringing in his ears.
Fine. Perhaps bringing the bachelorette party back to his place wasn’t something he would do under normal circumstances. Admittedly, he’d been off his game that night, not wanting to be alone. And yes, he did feel a little guilty about the situation with Charlotte. As soon as he’d seen her on his doorstep last night, he’d known that Brooke had been correct, and that he had, indeed, given Charlotte the wrong impression. But in his defense, he’d been trying to be a gentleman last weekend and not hurt her feelings. As he’d learned the hard way, having any response other than “Hell, yes” to a woman who strips off her clothes in one’s living room was some damn tricky business.
But . . . juvenile?
Hardly.
He got along just fine with women. He’d never had any complaints when it came to dating, at least not in recent years—although, admittedly, he generally kept things superficial enough that there was never much to complain about. And, granted, he was pretty careful about the women he went out with. Either they were like him and not looking for anything serious, or they were women who were in the market for commitment, marriage, and kids, but who were also savvy enough to understand that he was the dating equivalent of a layover. A brief, hopefully fun, pit stop on the way to their final destination.
It wasn’t that he’d entirely ruled out marriage for himself. Or, at least, living with someone. But he’d learned in his twenties, from his short forays into semi-real relationships, that women expected more than what they got from him on an emotional level. They wanted—probably not unfairly—an openness and trust that he just couldn’t deliver.
He’d attended more than one Al-Anon support meeting, and he knew that his so-called difficulty with intimate relationships and trust issues were, at least in part, the product of growing up with an alcoholic parent. And while he supposed it was nice to know that he wasn’t alone in his screwed-up-ness, at the end of the day all that self-awareness did was make him more careful not to drag anyone down into a likely dead-end relationship with him.
“You hear yourself, right? You’re trying to control your feelings and the feelings of others,” Brooke had said one night during their junior year of college when she’d come down to visit him from the University of Chicago. They’d been out at the bars that night, and somehow had gotten into a long conversation about relationships. “That’s so common in adult children of alcoholics.”
In response, he’d told her exactly where she could stick her Psych 300 analysis.
But, seeing how she was a woman, he’d naturally said it with a lot of charm.
He walked into The Wormhole and smiled at the female barista, determined to put his