Page 18 of The Player Next Door
Chapter Eleven
Clare loved the rain. Which sounded maudlin and emo, for sure, but she did. Especially thunderstorms on humid summer days, when she could sit inside her dry, cozy apartment with the sliding door open to her tiny deck, smelling the petrichor and listening to the soothing slap of raindrops on cement.
Thunder cracked and a distant siren wailed, but otherwise the streets were quiet. She rested her feet on the chair next to her and breathed in. The half-eaten pan of brownies lay nearby on the table, and the horn-tipped hood from her onesie flopped back off her hair.
A unicorn onesie was annoying as hell to pee in, but whatever, it was cozy and fun and she was an adult and there was no one in the world who could stop her from buying it, so she had, and had zero regrets. And tonight, she wanted to bake brownies in a unicorn onesie and then eat them fresh from the pan, all on her own.
Besides, she felt good. She had managed to have sex with a super-hot guy, and now that she had that experience under her belt, she figured she should be able to land at least one more, easy. Then she could tell Craig in no uncertain terms she was, in fact, the person to write Captain Ellis Ravencroft. It was awkward to more or less announce to your boss that you’d just had sex, but Craig was the one who told her to go get some life experience. She knew there was a gap between who she was at home and who she was at work—Clare-who-played-as-Yaen always spoke her mind and didn’t care what others thought of her, while Clare-at-work was much less confident—and she hoped this would be the start of a new version of herself at work, one that was more like her non-work self. There was still the matter of getting Captain Ellis integrated into the pitch, but she had weeks to cross that bridge. Even if Leadership shot it down, it was worth the effort.
And while it was odd that it turned out Logan was Peggy’s employee—making last Saturday way, way more awkward than it needed to be—it could have been worse. When Peggy came back on Sunday to pick up Kiki, they had talked things out, with Aunt Peggy admitting she wasn’t expecting to see any man, much less her direct report, in her niece’s kitchen on a Saturday morning. Peggy had seemed wary of Logan, although not outright disapproving. It was probably his reputation, but the fact that his reputation was why Clare wanted to sleep with him was probably more detail than either of them wanted to get into. She agreed to give Peggy a heads-up on unexpected house guests—including names—in the future, and that was that. All things considered, her life was going pretty well.
Someone knocked on her door and Clare put her feet down, smothering a sigh. It was probably Jennifer from two floors down, who sometimes got her mail. She didn’t love the idea of a neighbor seeing her dressed like this, but the alternative was making Jennifer stand in the hall for an absurdly long time while Clare changed into normal clothes, all for a thirty-second exchange.
“Hey,” she started, swinging the door inward, but then her mouth went dry and every other thought in her head flew away like a Sulzurian faerie caught in a hurricane.
Because standing on her threshold was Logan. After the other night it was somehow even harder to look him in the eye, but she made herself do it, realizing way too late what she might look like to him.
But he just grinned that cocky half-grin, like she wasn’t standing there in a white, pink, and purple fuzzy onesie with a rainbow mane. “What’s with the get-up?” he asked, stepping past her into her apartment.
“What do you want?” she said, more out of shock than anything else. When he’d left on Saturday, she’d sort of gotten the impression he wasn’t planning on seeing her ever again.
Which was fine. That was the whole point and Clare was fine with it. Totally, completely fine.
“I owe you for the wine.”
“Um,” she said eloquently.
Logan dropped a ten-dollar bill on her counter. “I’m overpaying you in the hopes you buy yourself something slightly better next time. And do you wear that all the time? Is this like, a thing I should know about?”
His gentle teasing pulled her out of her stupor. “Only if you’re going to be showing up at my door randomly.”
He shrugged, so apparently he would be. “Do you have a matching one? I’m feeling left out.”
“Everything I have will be about a foot too short for you, so no.”
“But thereareother onesies, got it.”
“Just a Chewbacca one,” she muttered.
“There’s a Chewie one? That’s settled, I need to try it on. Where is it?”
“Shut up, it’s only for nerds.”
Logan looked affronted. “I like nerd stuff,” he protested, and Clare rolled her eyes. “What? I do. I likeStar Wars,” he insisted.
“Everyone likesStar Wars,” Clare countered. “MymomlikesStar Wars.”
Logan leaned his elbow on her countertop. “Prequels, originals, or sequels?”
“Sequels. She’s really into Kylo Ren. I think it’s the hair.”
“He does have excellent hair,” Logan said thoughtfully.
“Not that I’m not enjoying this banter, but did you really come over to pay me for the wine?”
“Is that such a surprise?”
“Well, you hated it. So yeah, kind of.”