My Side (2 page)

Were the walls thin?
Was it coming from another apartment?

I tiptoed down the
hall to the first bedroom. My heart was pounding as I rested my hand on the
cold, metal knob and waited for the courage to open the door. I turned slowly,
not making any noise.

The room was a bit
stale but it was empty. I sighed and closed the door.

I did the same in the
bathroom, but again, it was empty. The new glass tiles and beautiful four-piece
bathroom made me happy. But the sound of people moaning and a girl giggling
didn’t.

I left the bathroom
and walked to the end of the hall, where the last bedroom was. I gripped the
mace as I heard the sound again. I clutched it and the
door
knob
. I turned the knob slowly, cracking the door open only a bit.

Feet moved, squirming
on the end of the bed, pushing beautiful beige covers to the floor.

Two people mauled each
other, sliding against one another. A strong male body with tattoos and lean
muscles was grinding against a slim,
overly-tanned
female with bleached hair.

My heart felt like it
was going to explode. I pulled my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1 as I sprayed.
Screams rose from the bed as I hosed them in mace.

“
What the fuck
?” the guy screamed.

I turned and ran down
the hallway to the bathroom. I closed the door and locked it. In a low tone, I
whispered, “Hi, I need police, I live at seventy-three Hemenway Street.
Apartment 521. There’s someone here. Intruders. Please hurry.”

I turned off the phone
and sat on the edge of the bathtub. My heart was pounding, my mouth was dry,
and my hands clutched the mace so tight, I couldn’t feel it in my grip anymore.

Hands started pounding
on the door. Shouts and screams and footsteps were everywhere, making the small
bathroom so tiny it felt like a coffin. I closed my eyes. Names were called,
sentences were screamed, but I didn’t stop rocking and clutching the mace. The
door sounded like it was going to be ripped off the hinges.

I looked at my phone.
I wanted my parents. I wanted Danny. I wanted anyone who would solve the
dilemma and make it go away.

My brain taunted me.
It laughed almost at how right it had been. How I had made such a mistake. How
I wasn’t strong.

“
You open this god-damned door and get the fuck
out of my house! Crazy-assed, stalking bitch!”
the guy screamed.

I trembled but then I
heard it, the sounds of rescue.
The sounds of people shouting
for them to get down on the ground.
I started to cry; tears of joy
streamed down my cheeks.

I got up and banged on
the door, “I’m in here. Is it safe?”

A man shouted at me,
“Miss, are you the one who called?”

I turned the lock on
the door and nodded.

A police officer
greeted me in the small crack space I let the door open, “Miss, you okay?”

I started to cry
heavily, “Noooooo.”

I let him open the
door all the way and pull me into his arms, “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

He led me from the
bathroom to the living room where two half-naked people were cuffed and on
their bellies on the floor.

The guy turned. His
face was puffy and red from the mace. He glared, “
She’s crazy. This is my house. Jesus. You idiots arrested the wrong
person. She’s in my fucking apartment. What the fuck? Do you know who I am?
she’s a stalker.”

The cop gave me a
look. I ran to my bag and fished out the lease agreement that I had printed
out.

“See—my house,”
I said defiantly.

The cop looked it over
and shook his head, “She’s got a lease, man.”

The girl was crying on
the floor with no shirt on, and her
obviously-fake
boobs holding her up in the air, like she was doing ‘upward dog’ without hands.

I looked at my watch,
it was 5:00, I wasn’t on schedule,
the
way I wanted to
be. I wanted to be running and unpacked by 5:30.

Roomies

I felt considerably
worse when the tattooed guy produced a lease agreement, identical to mine, from
a cupboard. He ranted and pointed at me, cussing up a storm when the cops
removed the cuffs from him and the girl. They tried to calm him down, shaking
their heads and muttering, “This is a civil issue. You need to hunt down the
property-management people.”

The guy rinsed his
eyes at the sink in the island and pointed his middle finger at me, with water
dripping from his red face, “This is bullshit. I want her escorted off the
property. Use the cuffs.”

I felt sick. My whole
plan was taking a huge turn down a road I hadn’t been prepared for.

The cop shook his
head, “It’s as much hers as it yours—in our eyes.”

One of the other cops
motioned for the guy to come over, “Lochlan, can I get you to sign this?”

Why didn’t he want my
signature? I was the one who called? Maybe it was a witness statement for his
defense, and I didn’t need one ‘cause I had called. I hugged myself and paced
the living room.

The sobbing girl ran
and grabbed her shirt. She slapped the dark-haired guy when she left.

The guy took the hit,
staring daggers at me, “Guess there’ll be no happy ending at the end of that
meal.” I noticed the red was starting to lighten in his eyes, flashing dark-blue
hatred at me. I hadn’t noticed his eyes were blue before. They had looked
black—with hate. The way he furrowed his brow, took away all the light
from his eyes.

The cop laughed with
the guy and pocketed the thing he signed, “This is pretty funny. You have to
admit. You being you and whatever.”

The guy didn’t look
like he felt like laughing. He looked savage. I didn’t feel like laughing. I
hugged myself and dialed the property manager’s office… again. When I got the
answering machine, I felt homicidal.

The guy pointed to the
door, “Well, now that we’ve determined this is both our place, can y’all leave
and let me and her figure it out, before we get evicted? And I’d like to get my
shirt on.” He dried his dark hair with a tea towel. His ripped and tattooed
body had droplets of water running down it. I tried not to look, but he was
incredible to look at, like watching athletes or seeing a celebrity. He had a
rough edge but there was so much beauty.

He caught me staring
at him. I quickly changed my look of awe to annoyance. He gave me a half-assed
grin, shaking his head.

The cop nodded at me,
“You guys okay, alone together?” he almost joked, as if he was implying
something. I ignored his weird comment and clutched my mace in my hands. I
looked at the tall, angry guy next to me and sighed, realizing there was no way
out of it. I nodded, “I’m fine.” The guy left the room and came back with a
shirt on. He rubbed his eyes, “My eyes are still fucking burning.”

The cops laughed again
and left us standing in the living room, staring at each other. There was a
darkness about him that scared me. He was stunningly beautiful but looked
angry, like he might not be able to control it.

His murderous stare
didn’t lessen when he lifted one side of his lips into a cocky grin, “You want
a beer?” He sounded annoyed still but I caught something, a twang in the way he
said beer. I could still see the hostility in his eyes. They were beyond
expressive.

I nodded and sat on
the couch. Angering him wouldn’t help the situation. I pinched the bridge of my
nose and took deep breaths. When I felt better, I looked up at him, “Since it’s
your house too, I’m really sorry for spraying you with mace.” I really wasn’t
though. The girl looked like a hooker. I didn’t want hookers in my house. The thought
of it made me want to clean everything. Yuck. My mother would have had a fit.

He gave me the same
cocky half smile and pointed at me, “I call bullshit on that. I’m
gonna
bet you feel pretty good about hosing me with it. You
seemed to enjoy it.”

I bit my lip and
nodded, “I probably saved you from paying for whatever that was going to cost
you, and whatever STD’s you would have gotten.”

He brought me a beer
and sat across from me on the white couch against the wall, opposite me,
“Funny. So where you from?”

I frowned, “Not here,
obviously.” I wanted to unpack, clean my room, and make everything feel like
home. I didn’t want to be having small talk with a sleazy, tattooed stranger,
beautiful or not.

“You here for school?”

I nodded and took a
sip of the beer, tapping my finger against the bottle, “So, you rented from
T&N Property Managers, as well then?”

He nodded and took a
long pull from his beer.

I ran my fingers
through my hair and had a small sip of the beer. I processed it all as I wiped
my mouth, “Who was the guy you spoke to, Tom?”

He shook his head,
“Lady named Leslie.”

I crossed my arms and
sat back, “So we spoke to two different people about renting the same place?
Clearly a miscommunication.”

He gave me a look,
“Obviously.”

I laughed, “Sorry, I have
to say it out loud, it helps me figure it out. How much did you pay?”

“Fifteen hundred a
month, all in, except my own cable and phone. But everything else is included.”

Tapping my fingers
against the bottle, I nodded, “Me too.”

He winked at me,
“Cleary this is a mistake; I’m sure they’ll find you a nice place somewhere
else.”

A frown crept across
my brow, “Why do you assume I’ll leave?”

He drank till it was
empty and then sighed like he was refreshed, “Because my lease agreement was
signed before yours.”

I had no argument for
what he’d said. Technically, his contract would be the one that was valid. A
sickening feeling was creeping around inside of me, when my phone rang.

“Hello?” I snapped it
up fast.

“Hi, Erin, it’s Tom
Banks at T&N. I got your message. We definitely have an issue. We don’t
have anything in that neighborhood or anything that is that nice.”
His voice was annoying
,
maybe it was his
words
.

I winced, “Can I put
you on speaker, the other tenant is here as well.”

“Sure thing.”

I pressed speaker and
held it out. He cleared his throat, “Like I said Erin, we don’t have anything
for rent that would compare. Can you two hang tight for a couple weeks until
something comes up? It’s a two bedroom, no different than having a roommate.”

My eyes shot up at the
dark-haired guy. He shrugged but I shook my head, “You can’t expect me to live
with a stranger?”

The dark-haired guy
smirked, “My name’s Lochlan, Lochlan Barlow.” He said it like I might know him.

I scowled at him and
sat upright, “Tom, you have to fix this. I came all the way from North Dakota.
That’s a long way to come, for this level of unprofessionalism. I signed a
lease for a two-bedroom apartment, overlooking the park. I signed for this
specific apartment. You can’t think we can just live together.” My heart was
racing. “He could be a pervert. I can’t share a house with him. He’s already
had some strange woman here; I think she was a hooker. He’s probably on drugs
or something.”

Lochlan’s dark
eyebrows went up, “Whoa now. Hold on. I don’t need some prissy, little girl
calling me a pervert, Tom. That hooker-looking girl happened to be a very
friendly server at Cappy’s.” He gave me a cold stare, but I caught the
slightest bit of amusement in it, “Now I signed the lease before she did. I
rented this before her. If she’s gonna be calling me names and shit, or macing
me again, well then, I think she has to leave.”

Tom sighed loudly,
“Look you two, it’s the start of the new semester, we never have anything for
this time of year. I am very sorry. We will throw in this half-month for free
and next month. So August and September will be free. If you can just adjust
and be okay with a couple weeks together, we are bound to find a few suitable
places. I will reimburse the rent you’ve paid for August and September. Then,
starting in October you will only have to pay half of your rent for each of the
months that you’re together. Surely a compromise is possible. Act like adults
for God’s sake. I’ll send over new contracts for this month and we will go
month to month from there, until you’re comfortable signing a full-year lease
together or we find another apartment. Lochlan, your lease will supersede hers,
still though. I’ll have something added that if you forfeit on the new leases,
the old ones are reinstated. I don’t know what else to suggest.”

I was about to lose
it, so I stood and paced, “This is unacceptable. I’m a law student; I don’t
need some hood rat bringing home women. I paid the money and we have a
contract. I could sue you…”

Lochlan cut me off,
“I’m in. I want my rent back; I’m in for sure. I’ve always liked having a
roommate. Least this one’s easy on the eyes, Tom.”