“Or this feather tickler,” Ignacio continues.
Yep, I’ve opened Pandora’s box, but instead of dark magic, I’ll be suffering in my own sort of hell because these guys are never going to let me live down the day I came in with a huge box of sex toys.
“I’ve used that lube before, but the cherry flavored is better,” Brooks adds.
“If you need lube—” Gaige begins, but Brooks throws a butt plug at him, pegging him in the chest.
“Don’t judge me. This is about Wren.”
Only it’s not, I want to argue, but at this point slinking away would probably be better.
Without a word, I leave them—and the box of toys—in the break room, heading to my office. I’ll be able to get to the bottom of this in no time. I know clearing my name won’t stop the jabs, but hopefully it’ll give them something else to focus on.
My fingers fly over the keys, pulling up information quickly.
“What are you looking for?” Ignacio asks from the doorway, and I’m not at all surprised that they all followed me in here.
“Doesn’t matter to me at this point,” Gaige says with a laugh. “I’m already invested.”
“Is this real life?” I mutter when the smiling face of the woman who lives in apartment 913 fills the biggest screen in my office.
She’s absolute perfection, very similar to the character that has participated in more of my fantasies than I’m comfortable admitting even in my head.
“Major has great tits!” Puff Daddy squawks. Leave it to the damn bird to call me out right now.
“Major?” Brooks asks.
I don’t pull my gaze from the purple-haired woman in front of me. How have I lived in that apartment complex and not run in to this beauty before?
“A character from Ghost in the Shell,” Jude explains.
When in the hell did his ass show up to the party?
“You into anime porn, too?” I ask, hopeful I’m not alone in my kink.
“I’m into Scarlett Johansson, not anime,” Jude amends, and my face falls.
Johansson played Major in the live-action movie.
“Can we get back to what’s really important?” Finnegan prods. “Who is that chick?”
“Whitney Nelson,” I explain. “The W. Nelson in apartment 913. They gave me her box of stuff.”
“You have to return it,” Deacon says, ever the one to take the moral high road.
The guys all laugh when I turn to look at him. He can’t be serious.
Chapter 2
Whitney
“This is Satan’s work,” I mutter, my foot tapping with irritation as I wait for the elevator to arrive.
I stare at the metal doors as if I can use mind power to make the car arrive any faster. An eternity passes before I realize I’ve been standing here for more than five minutes.
“Great,” I hiss. “Just awesome.”
I turn toward the door to the stairs, angry with having to even get out of bed this morning, but sometimes being an adult is hard. Being an adult who spends fourteen plus hours a day on a computer is even worse. I blame my high school PE teacher for today’s problems. If he never told me most people with high metabolisms in their teens end up fat, I wouldn’t be up at the ass crack of dawn heading to the gym. Well, maybe most don’t consider ten in the morning even close to dawn, but it is for me since I was still working at three this morning.
As I descend the stairs, I also blame my love for pasta and any form of Mexican food for having to roll out of bed at such an ungodly hour. I’m four flights of six down when I start to bargain with myself that taking the stairs should count as my exercise for the day.
Thankfully, the gym is nearly empty, and I’ve found the angry old man lifting hand weights like he’s carrying a hundred pound bag of dog food on his back is just as resistant to social interaction as I’ve grown in the last two years since graduating college.
This complex has all the things I could ask for, considering I hate people for the most part. Of course I have friends, but no one local. The people I associate with live in my computer. I mean, not technically. I’m not a head case or anything. I just prefer to make friends with people online. Ones I don’t have to worry about knocking on my door on a Friday evening, insisting I go to a bar or club with them. No, my friends are much like me. They stay at home, have food delivered, and play games until the sun starts to come up over the horizon.
Most work from home, also like me, and rely on energy drinks more than what can be considered healthy.
I eye the treadmill like it’s a venomous snake ready to strike, but I climb on anyway. I told myself I’d make it forty-five minutes today, but I’m only doing thirty since I had to take the stairs. Granted, the two-minute walk doesn’t come close to the time I’m cutting off, but I run my life, not this stupid machine.
Setting a timer on my phone, I take my sweet ass time putting in my headphones and connecting my Bluetooth to the television on the wall. I hate watching the news, but the angry old man seems to be enjoying the bullshit they’re spewing this morning, so I’ll martyr myself and just deal with it.
A slow walk transforms into a slow jog, and I know without even looking at my timer that I’ve been at this mess for well over an hour. At least that’s how my body feels.
The gods must be on my side today because my phone rings, the sound echoing in my ear so loudly that I nearly trip and eat the rubber under my feet. I struggle so long to get my balance and turn off the machine, that by the time I answer the phone, it’s already gone to
