The Apartment (Apartment #1) (10 page)

When she was done there, she directed her car to the far side of town, pulling off the road into the gravel driveway of a small, rundown house. Leaving the engine running, she walked up to the door and knocked, praying that Scott was the one who’d answer. He wasn’t.

“Hey there,” said a middle-aged man with one side of his face drooping from paralysis. He backed up awkwardly to make room for the door as it swung open. “How’s my little Lily?” he slurred through his good side.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Haven’t seen you ‘round for a while. How you likin’ my old ride?” He nodded toward the idling Oldsmobile.

“Good, it’s good. Scott did a great job fixing it up.”

“Yeah, well… I s’pose. Wanna come in?” He backed up a bit more and gestured to the small kitchen behind him.

“Oh no, no. I really can’t stay. I’m just here to pick up Scott. Is he up yet?”

“Who knows? I think I heard him moving around in there a while ago.” Sam Walker spun around clumsily and slowly made his way into the hallway, yelling, “Scott! Get your ass out here! Your girl is out here waiting on you!”

Lily heard another door open. “Yeah, yeah. Stop shouting. My head is fucking killing me.” Loud footsteps echoed as he walked into the kitchen. “Hey, babe. Sorry about the wait,” he said as he grabbed a jacket from the back of one of the chairs.

Scott stood before her, well over six feet tall and very muscular. By all accounts he was extremely attractive, beautiful even, and had always seemed to be more than enough for Lily in the past. But now, he was
too
tall…
too
muscular. His deep brown eyes that had always looked so warm to her were now the wrong color. They weren’t jade, and they didn’t smolder.

“That’s OK, I—”

“Scott!” Sam interrupted from behind him. “When you gonna be home?”

Scott rolled his eyes and threw on his coat, heading for the door. “I don’t know. Later.” He turned his attention to Lily. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Well don’t forget you need to do the laundry later,” Sam called after him as he closed the door. “And bring back another bottle!”

“Jesus Christ,” Scott muttered under his breath. When they reached the car he stopped and grabbed Lily’s arm before she could walk around to the other side. “Hey, come here.” He pulled her into a big hug. “Sorry about that. I didn’t hear you pull up, or else I would have been at the door. He misses you, though. It’s nice for him to get to see you once in a while.”

“Scott, he doesn’t even really know me,” she said as she broke the hug prematurely, walking around to the driver’s side. “I barely remember him from when we were little, and we don’t exactly hang out now.”

“Well, we could, if you would ever do dinner over here. He would love your cooking, and he’s always on his best behavior whenever you’re around.”

Lily didn’t respond to that. She simply pulled out as fast as she could and got back on the main road that headed into town. Sitting around and watching Scott’s dad get hammered and yell at him all night was not exactly her idea of relaxing. And if that was what Scott considered to be Sam’s best behavior, then she would certainly hate to see anything worse.

Sam had always made Lily nervous and uncomfortable, even when she was a little girl and his face hadn’t been disfigured. He’d always seemed to be too hyper, too excitable, too loud and rowdy. She had hated whenever her father would take her over there to play with Scott when they were young so he could hang out and watch the game. Whenever her father asked her why she didn’t like Sam, she could never explain it in a way that he understood, so they continued to go there.

It wasn’t until Sam’s stroke that George, or anybody else in town for that matter, found out about his massive meth addiction. George did what he could to help Sam clean up—he got him into rehab and physical therapy for his stroke, but things were never the same between them again. George couldn’t get past the fact that his own little girl had been able to notice that something was off with his best friend when he couldn’t, and he felt even worse that he’d continually forced her to hang out with an addict.

Scott had gotten the worst of it, though. He was stuck at home in a house with an angry invalid for a father and a distant ghost of a mother. He was sixteen when she finally took off and left him there to fend for himself. By that point, Sam had turned to a much easier drug of choice: alcohol.

Lily shook off the painful memories of the past, hating how they were making her feel even worse for Scott than she already had been. She turned her focus instead to getting back to her house and cooking him the best guilt-free meal she could manage.

* * *

A few awkward hours later, dinner eaten and bowls of ice cream in hand, they both sat down in her living room to watch a movie.

“What did you want to watch tonight? Did you have anything in mind?” Lily asked as she sat down on the couch with one knee bent underneath her.

“Just don’t make me watch that fucking
Eagle vs. Shark
movie again, please,” he responded, grabbing the remote and flipping through cable channels.

“I wasn’t going to… but that
is
my favorite movie. Chances are I might want to watch it again sometime.”

“Then watch that shit on your own time, seriously. I can’t understand one fucking word they say in that thing. What the hell language are they even speaking?”

“Scott, they’re speaking English! They just have New Zealand accents. You get used to it.” She was tired of arguing about it, so she decided to just drop it. He wasn’t even looking at her anyway; he hadn’t taken his eyes off the channel guide since he sat down.

“Whatever, I’ll take your word for it,” he mumbled. “Ooh! Check it out—
Blade
is just starting. I haven’t seen it in years! Is that cool with you?”

“Yeah, sure.” She sat back and started eating her ice cream, wondering why Scott was suddenly so much more annoying than he’d ever been before.

Don’t take it out on him. It’s not his fault you didn’t get to cheat on him today, you selfish bitch
.

As the movie started, Lily soon realized that it must have been a long time since she had seen it, too. In the opening scene, when all of the vampires drag their unsuspecting victims to some underground rave, they begin dancing and grinding to a rather familiar techno song.

Lily nearly dropped her bowl of ice cream on the floor. She had completely forgotten that song was in the movie, and the moment she heard it she was flooded with images of the most amazing sex she’d ever had. It had been playing on his
Fuck Songs
playlist the last time they were together.

“I know, this is a cool scene, isn’t it?” Scott said over his shoulder in response to her gasp. He was perched on the edge of the couch and hunched over his own bowl. Lily sat back again, relieved that he hadn’t seen the instant blush that had risen on her face. Suddenly she was worried that she was never again going to be able to put her stranger out of her mind.

* * *

Later that night, across town, Ethan was finally getting back to the apartment after spending the day with his parents and siblings at a much smaller, family-only luncheon for his father’s birthday. It was a lot easier being around just them than half the town, but he still found himself forcing more than a few smiles and checking his watch to see if it had been long enough to sneak out of there without offending his mother.

He was exhausted. The only thing that got him through the day was the ability to let his mind drift away and focus on his amazing memories from the day before. He would have given anything to have his brunette goddess there at that moment.

Stripping off his suit, he briefly debated starting on his new painting but decided that he was just too tired. He thought that perhaps a nap first might help. Then he could start working whenever he was inevitably woken up with another nightmare.

Crawling onto the empty bed in his boxer briefs, he was surprised to find something resting on his pillow. He leaned over and switched on the cheap lamp he had sitting on the floor. When he rolled back over, he couldn’t believe what he saw.

Sitting right in the middle of the pillow was a pair of lacy blue panties, and on top of them was a note. It was simply addressed
Stranger
. When he unfolded it and read what was inside, he nearly cried out from a mixture of frustration and arousal.

Dear Stranger
,

I’m sorry I missed you today
.
I tried to wait, but don’t worry
.
I found a way to entertain myself
.

Here’s a souvenir
.

Next to her words, there was a kiss mark on the paper from her lipstick.

She had been there.

Ethan set the note to the side and picked up the panties with a hand he noticed was shaking. Unfolding them, his attention was drawn immediately to the fact that they must have been quite damp earlier today. He would much rather have found them when they were freshly wet as opposed to almost dry, but that fact didn’t seem to have any effect on the raging erection he was now sporting.

He was angry he had missed her, but he was so turned on by this bold gesture that his eyes were nearly crossing. Lifting the panties to his face, he inhaled deeply and was gifted with a fresh, potent wave of her heady scent. His cock twitched in approval.

“Fuck!” he groaned into the material. His hand was shaking again as he held it to his face, breathing her in, even going so far as to lick and suck the flimsy scrap of lace. His other hand had already freed himself from his boxers and started working his shaft in harsh, angry strokes.

“God, yessss,” he hissed loudly, overcome with visions of her perfect breasts as they bounced in his face, how eagerly she had perched on his shoulders to let him dine on her delicious pussy.

“You taste so fucking good,” Ethan whispered, as if she were there and could hear him. “I could smell you all day.”

He gripped his erection even harder, swirling his thumb around the tip on the upstroke, imagining it was her tongue. “Yes… please… I want to feel your mouth on me.” She hadn’t granted him the pleasure of reciprocating the day before, and the only thing he’d been able to think about since then that wasn’t a direct memory of their encounter was how it might feel to have her beautiful, plump lips wrapped around his cock.

Smelling her delectable pussy while he stroked himself made it that much easier to imagine having her on top of him, facing away as she took him in her mouth, leaving him to feast on her yet again. He could hear her muffled cries as she moaned around him, letting him thrust between her lips over and over again. “Oh fuck… yes!”

His entire body began to shudder, and he knew that he was close. With a supreme effort, Ethan pulled her panties away from his face and wrapped them around his cock, stroking himself roughly until he was spurting his release all over the fabric.

Despite what he had just done to them, he was unable to let go of her panties, choosing instead to curl up on his side and clutch them to his chest like a beloved stuffed animal.

After that, the room was completely silent except for the quiet “Thank you” he whispered into his pillow.

He had no nightmares that night.

Sunday absolutely sucked.

Lily was a cranky shit the entire day, scowling to herself as she cooked even more stupid fucking deer meat for George, making sure to use his stupid “special” dry rub. She understood hunting as a sport, but kept wondering why the hell they had to actually eat the shit he killed so much. Couldn’t he hand it out at the school? Or sell it to a restaurant?

She usually loved Sunday dinner with her father. It was the one day he stayed home and spent time with her, and sometimes Scott would come over and make it feel like a real family dinner. It was the one day she looked forward to, always viewing it as a true day of rest with a lovely dinner to top it off.

That Sunday was no different than any other Sunday, but for some reason everything kept pissing her off. When she watched her father sitting on his lazy ass in front of the TV while she prepared the meat, she realized that it wasn’t going to be that much of a day of rest, at least not for her. When he called out for her to bring him another beer while she stood there sweating over a frying pan making his dinner, trying to avoid kicking her cats as they circled around her legs in hopes of renegade food hitting the floor, she almost threw the can at his head.

“Why are you so moody?” George finally asked her when they were sitting at the table. She had slammed the shaker down in front of him after he asked her to pass the pepper.

“I’m not moody!” Lily snapped. She took a deep breath and counted to five, reminding herself that it wasn’t fair to take out her frustrations on him. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “Sorry. I’ve just got a bad headache.”

He shrugged and kept eating, ending the longest bout of concern he had shown for her in months. It wasn’t that George was indifferent to Lily—she just so rarely complained about anything that he had stopped feeling the need to ask.

* * *

Monday morning wasn’t much better.

Half an hour into Lily’s shift, people were going out of their way to steer clear of her. Kim stopped calling back new patient charts after she snapped at her and then hung up on her, and even Becky was tiptoeing around her. When Lily got pissy with Dr. Wilde when she asked her to run some extra tests on the mayor’s sister, Becky had seen enough.

“Lily, what the hell is wrong with you today?” she whispered harshly, pulling her aside in the hallway.

“That nasty bitch is here all the time to treat one STD or another. It’s like she never learns!”

“Yeah, we all know that. It’s like she’s never heard of condoms. But it’s Natalie’s job to treat her, and it’s your job to help her do that. You’ve been biting everybody’s head off all morning. What the hell is up your ass today?”

“It’s nothing. I just…I guess I don’t feel very good today,” she hedged.

“Well, that’s obvious,” Becky replied with a laugh. “Lily, is everything okay? I’ve never seen you quite this grouchy before, and I remember when you tried to come to work with the flu.”