Page 2 of The Player Next Door
She grabbed her panties from where he’d tossed them earlier. “Early meeting,” she said, and Logan didn’t know her that well—they didn’t exactly spend a lot of time talking—but he could tell it was a lie. She wasn’t looking at him, and there was an urgency to her movements that was out of place. He stayed where he was, watching her shimmy back into her clothes at nearly record speed. Amber fluffed her nut-brown hair out from where it was caught in her T-shirt and turned to face him, unusually fixated on straightening the hem of her shirt. She took a deep breath. “Okay, there’s no not-awkward way to say this, but tonight was the last time.”
“You moving or something?”
Amber refused to make eye contact. “You know how I was seeing that guy from Tinder, right?”
Logan made a noncommittal noise because he couldn’t say he remembered a specific guy, but he did know she was seeing other people. He was a lot more monogamous than most people thought, but when it came to casual sex partners he had no problem with them having other entanglements. Relationships meant having to care too much, in his opinion. His way meant getting laid regularly, but he never had to drive anyone to the airport.
“Yeah, anyway, I think he and I are going to go exclusive soon, so I probably won’t be seeing you anymore.”
Logan decided if he was going to get dumped, he might as well put his underwear on. “Probably? Or definitely?” he asked, pulling them on and picking up the jeans he’d been wearing when Amber arrived. He didn’t bother with a shirt. He worked hard to look this good, and he believed in showing off the results of that work.
“Depends on how the conversation goes, obviously, but—yeah, this is the end.”
Logan shrugged. He liked Amber well enough, but it wasn’t like either of them were particularly invested in this. He couldn’t even remember what her job was, although he thought it might be something that involved kids. Teacher, maybe? He didn’t think she was a nanny, if only because he probably would have made several borderline dirty jokes about that. Either way, she definitely didn’t have a meeting on a Sunday morning.
He realized belatedly she was waiting for him to have more of a response than just a shrug. “Okay then,” he said. “It’s been fun.”
Her shoulders relaxed. “It has been, hasn’t it?” she said, and he followed her out of the bedroom. “You might not be boyfriend material, but you’re a hell of a fuck.”
“I could be,” he said, more because he felt like he should protest that categorization than anything else. “I could be boyfriend material, I mean. If I wanted to be.”
Amber laughed. “Tell me one thing about myself that doesn’t have to do with sex.”
“You like red wine but not white.”
“Okay, fine—one thing about me that isn’t sex or drinking.”
Logan blinked, thinking hard. Everything that came to mind—her bra size, the fact that she liked to leave her heels on during sex—would make her point for her. “You’re a teacher,” he said finally, hoping he was right.
“What grade?” She lifted her chin, eyebrows raised, waiting.
Logan took a valiant stab in the dark. “Kindergarten.”
“So close,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “High school.”
That rang a bell. “Oh right, you’re an English teacher.”
“French,” she sighed.
This was not going well, so Logan did what he always did when things stopped panning out his way: he changed the subject. Or more accurately, he poured on the charm to distract her from the discussion entirely. He grinned, the grin that worked miracles on anyone attracted to men, and cocked his head to the side. “Maybe you have a point,” he said, and she shook her head fondly.
“Take care, Logan,” she said, stepping back into her heels and brushing a kiss to his cheek.
The door clicked softly behind her. He stood there for a moment, chest oddly hollow. Then he shook his head and put Amber out of his mind. Logan never saw the point in dwelling on women. There were plenty of fish in the sea, after all, and he was fairly irresistible bait. There was no reason to feel like this, so he simply wouldn’t.
Logan padded back toward his bedroom and noticed that one of the blinds was still open. He was high enough up that if he craned his neck, he had a view of the Hennepin Avenue Bridge from the windows on the other side of the apartment, but if he looked straight out this window it was into the units on the other side of his complex. Amber had a bit of an exhibitionist streak—and Logan was up for pretty much anything—so he’d gone down on her a handful of times on the couch that faced the window.
As far as he knew, none of his neighbors had ever complained, so either they hadn’t seen, or they enjoyed the show. The unit straight across from his never, ever opened their blinds—he might have thought it was unoccupied if not for the string of Christmas lights that went up on their balcony last November and never came down—but the one just one floor down was occupied by The Nerd.
He sort of liked The Nerd. There was an air of geekiness that seemed to surround her in an unapologetic way that he admired. He saw her often enough around the building, either in the elevator or, if the elevator was on the fritz, in the stairwell. Once he watched her trudge across the lobby with an armful of medieval weapons, loudly explaining to everyone she saw that they were both fakeandfor work, andpleaseno one call the cops on her.
He saw her sometimes out on the sidewalk too, walking that tiny, fluffy dog that he only occasionally saw in her apartment. To be perfectly honest he was most curious about that part, which was why he had stopped to talk to her earlier that afternoon. He had been delighted to discover she was funny as hell, if still a little puzzling to him. Where did she take her baking every Saturday afternoon? What was with the dog sweaters? And what sort of job required fake medieval weapons?
She couldn’t be less his type, considering how much time he had spent wondering about her. He went for women like Amber—tall, willowy women with cheekbones that could cut glass and attitudes to match. The Nerd was cute, although in an off-beat sort of way. She was shorter than most of the women he dated, and certainly a little mousier, but her chin-length blonde hair always looked soft to the touch. He wouldn’t say no to fucking her, but he probably wouldn’t pursue her, either.
There used to be a guy who hung around The Nerd’s place a lot, some skinny, glasses-wearing dude who had once set up what appeared to be a diorama of a battle in the middle of her kitchen, but Logan hadn’t seen him in probably a year. He wondered about that too—did she dump him? He looked boring, so he hoped she had, for her sake. She’d been really funny about those weapons.
The Nerd was still awake. She baked a lot, sometimes late into the night. Logan liked to watch when she did, although not in a creepy, lurking sort of way. Mostly he’d just glance out his side window and try to guess what she was making, and then an hour or so later he’d see if he was right. But she wasn’t baking tonight. She was watching something on her TV—it featured lots of swords and possibly a trebuchet, so maybe medieval weapons were both a hobby and a job for her. He shook his head and spun the blinds closed. Whatever was wrong with him, spying on his neighbor was not going to fix it.