Heat Wave: Richmond

Chapter 3

I drive down the street and pull into the small parking lot between the two garden apartment buildings. Most of the spaces have both a number and a letter painted on the tarmac, which corresponds to the apartments in the buildings. I find the one marked 23G, like it says on the front of my folder, and pull into the spot. For a long moment I just sit behind the wheel of my car, taking it all in—I’m going to be living here from now on, I tell myself. I’ll be coming here after work, not Rob’s place. I’ll have friends over for dinner or to watch movies, maybe throw a Halloween party sometime, maybe…

A sporty little red car zooms into the lot at breakneck speed and skids to a stop next to mine, half in two spots. I glance over at the driver, a young woman my own age who still has that fresh out of college look going on—tousled hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, sunglasses obscuring half her face, a crop top paired with sweats that hug her round ass, and flip-flops that smack the pavement with the same sound she makes cracking her gum. I stare at her as she exits the car, trying to catch her eye, but she studiously ignores me and disappears around the back instead. I hear her pop the trunk, hear the rustle of grocery bags, and think, My first neighbor. I should probably introduce myself.

When I get out of my car, too, she still ignores me, so I lean in and grab the folder full of paperwork off the passenger seat just for something to do. By the time I’m standing, the sunglasses are pushed on top of her head and her hands are full of grocery bags.

Now she looks at me. I flash her a winning smile and say, “Hey. I’m Danny.”

Her response is anything but cordial. With an exasperated sigh, she rolls her eyes and starts to walk away. Then she notices where I’m parked and stops. “Oh, wait,” she says, as if she’s just remembered how to play nice. “Are you moving in?”

“Upstairs,” I tell her, nodding. “Apartment G? So I guess that makes us neighbors, or something?”

Shifting all the bags to one hand, she sticks out the other. “Sorry, I thought you were hitting on me. I’m Nadia. We live under you in A.”

I give her hand a good shake and follow her gaze to the terrace below mine. It’s double the size of my balcony, with two screen doors instead of the one I have. “We?” I caught that. As she starts to redistribute the bags, I ask, “Do you need any help?”

“Can you get the water from the trunk?” She nods at her car but doesn’t answer my other question.

We. I imagine an apartment full of sorority sisters, slumming it like Nadia here or camped out by the pool I haven’t seen yet, maybe sunning themselves on the terrace over the weekend. The downstairs apartment can’t be much larger than mine, but they probably sleep two girls to a room, so I’ll hear squeals and giggles drifting up through the floorboards at all hours of the day and night, like a perpetual slumber party, or something. They’ll run up to knock on my door, ask me to open pickle jars and come kill spiders in their bathtubs or hang pictures on their walls. It’ll be Rob’s girlfriend Lara multiplied to the nth degree.

I’m already wondering if I can’t maybe ask about any other single apartments in the complex that might be available when Nadia hoists the grocery bags over the terrace railing and hollers, “Kyle! Get out here and help me, you lazy ass.”

So, no suite full of sorority sisters but the usual boyfriend/girlfriend playing house scenario. Which lets me off the hook, then, since anything she’d need a guy to do, she already has one to do it for her. It really is Lara all over again.

As I duck down into the trunk to retrieve the case of bottled water, I hear a screen door open and shut. Someone yawns, a loud, leonine roar, then a man’s sleepy voice gripes, “You woke me up.”

“You sleep too much,” Nadia complains. “Here, take these.”

I heft the case of water out of the trunk and step around the side of the car. With my elbow, I try to close the trunk but can’t. I get it down halfway, then have to turn my back to it and catch it with my hip. In the end, I’m practically sitting on it before it clicks shut.

Her boyfriend sees me before I see him, because I hear him ask, “Who’s that?”

“Danny,” she says. “He’s moving in upstairs. Danny, this is Kyle.”

When I turn back around, he’s standing on the other side of the railing, on the terrace itself, dressed in a too-tight heather gray T-shirt and a pair of baggy Bermuda shorts. His short-cropped hair is mussed from sleep and he blinks owlishly at me, as if he’s still waking up. With his tanned skin and blond locks, he’s about as all-American as you can get, and so damn sexy, it hurts. Physically; I feel lust grip me somewhere below my balls and squeeze hard, threatening to never let go.

Damn, he’s one fine mother.

Eyes as gray and faded as his shirt, slightly too big for his face, shielded by lashes a little too long to belong to a guy. Strong, straight nose. Wide mouth and thin lips that slide easily into a welcoming grin. Teeth so white and perfect, he could do toothpaste commercials. The faintest blond fuzz on the corners of his chin, as if he forgot to shave this morning, the bristles curling up along his jaw to meet the darker hair in front of his ears. It’s cut close at the sides and back but kept long on top so it sort of flops over his forehead. I bet he spikes it up sometimes, though. He looks like the type.

You’re staring, I warn myself. I know I am, and worse, I know Nadia knows it, because the slightest little grin toys at the corners of her mouth, a smirk that says, Look all you want, but you know he’s mine, right?

Yeah, yeah, b***h. Rub it in.

As I carry the case of water over to the terrace, Kyle seems to shake himself awake. “Hey, man. So you’re our new neighbor, huh? That’s cool.”

“Just got the key.” God, I sound so fascinating. I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole right about now.

“Don’t just stand there gawking,” Nadia says, miffed. “A little help would be nice.”

Is she talking to me? I move faster, hefting the case up onto the railing. When Kyle takes it from me, our hands brush together and I imagine I feel electricity arc down my arms, igniting my blood. We’re so close now, his face mere inches from mine; all I’d have to do is lean forward over the bottled water and touch my lips to his to claim a kiss.

What’s gotten into me? I’m never this horny, falling head over heels for a guy I just met—a straight one, at that, with a cute girlfriend watching us as if she knows exactly what goes through my head every time I look at him. You know it’s been too long since you’ve gotten laid when…I think, and if Rob was here, I’d say it out loud, joking around, but I don’t know these people, I can’t just kid about something like that right off the bat.

Instead I smile weakly at him—so close!—and take a step back, relinquishing my hold on the water. I feel awkward and dumb, and I’m almost thirty percent sure he knows I’m sporting wood. Nadia, I’d guess ninety percent; she’s one sharp cookie, and I can tell she finds this whole encounter pretty amusing. Later, when they’re lying in bed, she’ll tell him how badly I was crushing on him and he’ll be surprised, because straight guys never catch on, ever, and then things will go from awkward to downright embarrassing between us. The next time I see him in passing, he’ll smirk at me like he knows he gets me hard, and then I really will have to move, jeez.

And I haven’t even seen the apartment yet.

“Well,” I say, hoping to start something that will end with us parting ways, them back to putting away their groceries and me upstairs in my new apartment, alone at last. Relaxing with my thoughts, my mind whispers, and right on the heels of that, Christening my new bedroom…and why not? I’m half-hard already. A good jerk off session thinking of Kyle under me, in more ways than one. Might as well break in the new place now, really make it feel like home, know what I mean?

But apparently getting away isn’t going to be that easy. “You moving in tonight?” Kyle asks, leaning on the case of water. He obviously has no intention of taking it inside just yet.

“Tomorrow,” I tell him. “I have a few things in the car, but my buddy and I will be renting a U-Haul in the morning.”

Kyle nods and shares a look with Nadia that I can’t read. “Hmm. Your buddy.”

She’s finished depositing the last of the grocery bags on the terrace; now she turns and leans back against the railing, squinting at me in the setting sun. “You know, I’ve never seen any of the one bedroom apartments. Let me get these bags inside, and then we can help you carry your things upstairs and check it out?”

So much for my solo plans. I don’t have too much, only what I managed to grab before I rushed over to sign the lease. The backseat of my car overflows with trash bags of clothing, and my trunk is filled with shopping bags of new items I’d been buying for the past few weeks, ever since I knew I was going to move. Pots, pans, silverware, dishes, towels, cleaning supplies, things I didn’t have to have at Rob’s but would need in a place of my own. The thought of making several trips upstairs was exhausting. Any help would be appreciated.

Hell, I could always yank one out once we were done. Watching Kyle get all sweaty and seeing the muscles in his arms bulge as he carried boxes of my stuff, or in his legs as he hurried up and down the steps, would fuel my fantasies later.

Jingling the keys in my pocket and trying very hard not to accidentally cop a feel at the same time, I shrug. “Sure, that’d be great.”