Page 33

Chapter One

With a few minutes to kill, I pull up the dating app on my phone as I lean against the wall. The first message I see brings a smile to my face.

Username: How is your day going?

The thing I’ve learned about dating apps is that the chance of someone you don’t like writing you is a full ninety-nine percent. But the moment you find someone who seems to be at least halfway decent and doesn’t have skeletons buried under his rosebushes, he’ll never write you again.

Username quite clearly isn’t overly original with his… username, and his pictures look like he whipped out a camera in a dark room and went “Wow, I love the way no one can really see my face” and posted it, but there’s a growing list of why I get excited every time I see he’s replied.

He’s nice.

He hasn’t immediately sent me a picture of his dick. (Or even told me the length, circumference, or what he calls it.)

He hasn’t told me he’s spent his entire life waiting to take care of me (I don’t need to be taken care of —it makes it sound like they’re planning on offing me).

And he hasn’t confessed his undying love to me. (Nah, that’s a different guy whose second thing he said to me was how much he wants me to love him. I’m pretty sure he’s going to find me and murder me, but let’s hope I can murder faster.)

SO either Mr. Username is a rare and elusive “normal” man or he’s just much better at hiding his serial killer tendencies. Guess we’ll find out!

Me: My day is going excellent!!

God, do I sound too excited? I sound too excited, don’t I? Why did I use two exclamation marks? I mean… is it really excellent?

I glance around at the small area I’m in, stuffed between two faux fur coats, one of which keeps going up my nose, while a shoe rack jabs me in the ass. This is subpar at best, but hearing back from him immediately makes me forget all about that.

Me: You?

Username: Mine is going well. I just finished teaching my final class for the day and walked into my house.

Me: That’s great! I’m working right now. There’s a little hiccup, but nothing I can’t handle.

That’s when I hear something that perhaps… maybe I can’t handle.

Sniffing.

The door shakes a little and I stoop down to peek through the slats in it before realizing that a dog has decided to say hi. Usually, I’m all for dogs saying hi, but right now… not so much. Through the small slats I can see that it’s some toy dog breed, fluffy and white, that’s currently standing guard outside the closet I just might have happened to find myself in.

“I can’t believe we blew a tire,” a woman says outside the door.

“At least we were within walking distance of home,” a man says.

Ha. Good thing. Such luck. Such wonderful luck that their five-day vacation was postponed by a flat tire.

Username: In case of a zombie apocalypse, what skills do you bring to the table?

Well, that sure was a change of topic.

Username: Sorry! That was one of those premade questions the app suggests asking. I didn’t mean to click on it. Just ignore it.

Me: Um. No? I now need to know what skills you bring to the table. Let me think…

What skills do I have?

The dog, who is like a mini fluffy Cujo, has decided that ruining everything is in its best interest. I’ve decided to rename it Fluffjo and hope Fluffjo fucks off. The man and his wife are no longer in the room, so I stoop down until the dog and I are eye to eye.

“Hey, little furry fucker. Stop being cute. If you don’t turn around, I will take all of your toys, all of your bones, and make you watch me toss them in the trash, do you hear?”

Fluffjo wags his (or her) tail, quite pleased. Obviously, he’s a masochist. I will not judge, of course I won’t, so I slide open the door enough to poke the dog in the snout.

It doesn’t bite me, it just tries cramming its body in with me. Okay. Maybe if the dog gets to greet me, it’ll be pleased enough to leave me alone, so I slide the door open a crack and he runs in and starts mauling me with kisses.

“You’re disgustingly cute,” I whisper.

He’s wiggling this way and that, pleased to satisfy the intruder in his home, so I pick him up and put him on my lap as I decide to get comfortable and turn back to my phone.

Me: Okay, here are my skills. I’m phenomenal at B his ears bleed every time they copulate.

Think. Think. Think. I can’t suffer through this. I can’t just?—

“Ooh, Mr. Montgomery is clearly hungry for momma,” she squeals.

Well… I guess she’s at least not dead, but if I have to listen to this, there’s no saying whether or not they’ll live. Or if I will. She’ll come in to grab her stilettos and find that I rammed one through my ear in the hope of not hearing this shit. Let’s focus on Username and ignore everything else that is happening right now.

Username: Did that horrify you?

Me: That you were a Girl Scout? Depends on if you bring some mint cookies when we meet up.

Username: Are you asking me out?

Me: Depends on if you have the cookies.

“Oh! You’ve been a bad boy! On your knees, you swine! Squeal for me!” she says.

Things are getting weird, but I guess it’s not their fault that I’m hiding in their room. Why would they ever expect that an uninvited man has origamied himself in their closet?

Username: I’ll have the cookies.

Me: Tomorrow at 6?

Username: Works for me. I’m looking forward to meeting you.

Me: Same here!

The moment I hear an oink from the man, I realize that I need to get the fuck out of this room while my sanity is still in check. So after some hurried scrolling on my phone, I find the number of the man who is outside the door I’m hiding behind, open the app I use to call my clients (it allows me to use a different phone number so they can’t track me), and make the call.

His phone starts to ring.

“Just leave it,” the wife says.

“What if it’s the tow truck driver or something, though?” he protests.

She sighs. “ Fine .”

I hang up the moment he leaves the room since I don’t need them to hear me whispering in the closet. Instead, I send him a text as if I’m the driver, asking him to meet me outside in five. That’s enough of a damper on the situation that both he and a very unsatisfied wife leave the bedroom.

I slip out of the bedroom, dart into the hallway, and move to the next room, the one I’d planned on going into when they’d showed up unexpectedly. I go in and shut the door before hurrying over to the desk. The bottom drawer holds a simple lockbox, one that doesn’t take but a few seconds for me to break into.

I hastily shuffle through the papers as I hear a scratching at the door. The moment I see what I need, I grab it as I hear someone moving down the hallway. “What are you doing, Broderick?”

Shit, shit, shit.

Quickly, I reach the window, slide it open and pop the screen out. It drops from the second floor and bounces once as I climb through then dangle for a moment so I can use what strength I have to pull the window down before lowering myself onto the roof of the porch. Crouching low, I swing my legs over and leap down to the ground where I slam into a man.

If I hadn’t been panicked, I’d have looked before taking my leap of faith, but this is what I get for not paying attention.

“I’m so?—”

I eye the man standing in front of me before pulling forth my most beaming of smiles. “Hello, Officer Hach.” I used to call Dylan Hach Officer Hunk, but I feel like thirty-year-old me is not as much of an idiot as seventeen-year-old me.

The man in question just stares at me. He’s a tough-looking man with a hard-set face and muscles for days. Muscles that I might have, on more than one occasion, tried to discreetly touch. I mean, it’d be a crime not to feel up the officer as he was restraining me, right? I was also an older teen at the time and the sexy officer immediately made me reconfirm that I was gay.

“God, it’s been a while since you caught me. What do you think? Ten years?”

“Not long enough, apparently,” he says. “Did you just break into that house?”

“Which house?” I ask as I look around.

“Honestly, any of the houses.”

“Oh, gosh, no. I would never do that. The wife and I were playing with a piggy, that’s all,” I say as I give his muscular arm a big hearty pat. It makes a nice sound when I smack it. “It was alllll my pleasure.”

He gives me some kind of grunt, like he didn’t have as much pleasure as I did with this experience as I start backing away.

Weirdly enough, the distance never grows any bigger since he continues walking toward me. “Reed, what did you steal?”

“I didn’t steal anything. I was a kid last time I got caught.” And though I was an adult when I saw him last, he at least didn’t arrest me that time.

“‘The last time I got caught,’ not ‘the last time I stole something,’” he clarifies.

That might get a full-on grin out of me. “Stop scrutinizing things so closely, m’kay? Now, I’m going to get going before you whip out those kinky cuffs. It was a pleasure seeing you. I hope I don’t see you for another ten or so years.”

Dylan just keeps staring at me because apparently he’s lost the ability to use human language. He thinks by simply staring and looking extremely unhappy, I’ll just tell him what I was up to in the closet of Miss Piggy’s house.

That’s when I notice he’s holding the leash to an adorable mutt. “Your poor dog. Do you glare at him too?”

He glares harder as I reach down and pet the happy pup who is sniffing me. “Aw, do you smell Fluffjo on me?”

“Is that your dog?” Dylan asks.

“No, when I was breaking into their house and hiding in their closet, their dog came and greeted me. It was extremely sweet. Now have a good day!”

I hurry away before he can march me off. Instead, I rush down the street, get in my car and text “I got them” to my client before heading to a restaurant I park outside of. When I walk inside, Ann immediately sees me and tsks. “You’re late.”

“Or am I early?” I ask.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Five o’clock. You said you’d be here at five o’clock.”

“Yes, but I didn’t specify which day,” I remind her.

Ann raises an eyebrow, obviously not finding me as funny as I thought I was. She’s a woman in her early seventies with black hair (that she claims she doesn’t dye) and dark brown eyes that are currently scrutinizing me. While we share no relation, Ann cared for me for many years after I ended up falling asleep on her doorway one winter night when I was seventeen.

When she found me, she called me a hoodlum and acted like she was going to smack me off her doorway with a broom. I asked if she was a witch who just finished riding it. Somehow, despite that rocky introduction, she gave me so much food that I felt full for the first time in days.

After that, I was kind of like one of those stray cats that just hung around until she caved and kept me fed. In exchange, I started running errands at her little restaurant. Now, I rent a small room in the back for my business, even though she refuses to take my money and I’m forced to just slip it into the drawer whenever she’s not looking.

She mumbles something under her breath that makes me smile because, even though she’s surely sassing me, I know she loves me.

“Can you help in the kitchen? Park called in sick.”

“Park did? When’s the funeral? You know if he’s calling in sick, he’s probably not even going to make it,” I tease.

“At least he’s never late,” she says.

I grin and squeeze her shoulder. “I’m early for tomorrow,” I remind her as I walk toward the back. “A young lady named Hailey will be in to see me. If you see her, let me know.”

She nods but she’s fixated on a couple who have just walked in and rushes off to greet them.

I head to the back to get cleaned up and assess the mess she’s left behind. Ann is a fantastic chef, but she’s also one of the messiest cooks that has ever graced a kitchen. I try to organize a bit of what’s going on before she starts barking orders at me because she’s allergic to writing anything down and seems to think that I also have an amazing memory. Then I pull out my favorite skillet that I’d scratched the name Fryer Fran into the handle of when I was a teenager. Ann didn’t find it as funny and threatened to smack me with the next thing I named. She upheld that promise when I started using her new label maker to name everything.

I guess naming the freezer “Fuck It’s Cold in Here” wasn’t the right thing to do, yet I still replace the sticker every time the name starts to wear off—especially because it’s too big for her to threaten to smack me with.

I was really hoping to get to talk to Username before getting suckered into anything else—since I’ve already done my work for the day and thought I’d have the evening to enjoy—but it’s quite clear that’s not going to happen. But as soon as things calm down, I pull my phone out.

Username: What about Finch Italian?

Me: I love that place. I’ll meet you there. Don’t forget to bring your apocalypse skills with you in case shit goes down. We’ll have to decide who we’ll eat first. I volunteer my mother.

Username: I think the zombies are supposed to be the ones eating people, not us. Or is that just how much you dislike your mother?

Me: I’d totally sacrifice her first. I don’t actually know my father, but I’d sacrifice him too, just for fun.

Username: Remind me not to get on your bad side.

Me: Trust me, if my mother is still happily ruining lives, then you have nothing to worry about. She’s the first on my hit list. Do you get along well with your parents?

Username: I do. My sister and I can be at odds every now and then just because she’s one of those conspiracy theorists. She claims she’s not, but she also told me the other day that the earth is hollow. Don’t ask. And definitely don’t ask her unless you like it when your ears bleed.

“What are you doing?”

I freeze and look over at Ann who is scrutinizing me from the doorway. “I promise I’m a good boy!”

“You are ridiculous. Are you helping or playing on your doodlydat?” She waves at my phone, but of course I can’t let her know that I understand her.

“Please don’t tell people I was playing with my doodlydat back here. That’s private. There might be a lot of questions and maybe a few who even want to play with my doodlydat as well.”

She gives me a sigh to make sure I know she’s not pleased. “You’re not funny, Reed.”

“I think you might be mistaken,” I say as I realize that if she’d been a minute later in disrupting me, Fryer Fran (not me) would have burnt the chicken.

“Who are you talking to anyway? You were just grinning like a maniac. I hope whoever it is, you don’t look at them with that expression when you’re in their presence or you’ll be single forever. Is that why you’re still single?”

“Are you… are you telling me that my smile is the reason no men like me?” I ask.

“Yes. Now where are those plates?”

“Ann, my heart,” I whisper.

She smacks my heart with her notepad that she refuses to even write on, so I never really understood why she carries it around. I guess for the super big orders or waving at people when she’s mad. “Your heart is fine. Now stop moving like a sloth.”

“That’s my zodiac animal,” I say.

Ann sighs. “Sloth is not a zodiac animal. Nah. Yours is more like an earthworm.”

“I feel like that’s not an animal at all, but you know best. I also love the way you make me feel confident about myself. I feel ridiculously good when I get done talking to you,” I say as I finish up the plates, wipe off a drip of sauce that was hanging on the side, and slide them over to her.

“You’re welcome,” she says before hurrying on her way.

The moment she’s gone, I pull my phone back out, feeling like a teenager hiding it in class. Before I pull the dating app back up, I go over to my messages and click the one from Hailey.

Me: Are you still coming tonight?

I get nothing but silence in return.