Where Would I Be Without You (3 page)

I bolted for my bathroom faster than superman could change in a phone booth.
  I took the first look at myself after a night of crying from my birthday party and loss of my latest and realized - I looked like hell.  My mascara was waterproof but somehow had failed me.  Dark black inking stains lined under my eyes like a raccoon and one long streak of faded black masked my face from the tips of my fingers constantly wiping the tears away.  I could sue the mascara company for defamation of the truth but then again, is any mascara truly waterproof?  I noticed my rat's nest of a hair that once had been updo'd upon my head the night before for the birthday dinner party.  My long sleep tee shirt showed the wrinkles from many nights of sleep, and then I did what I was afraid had put that devilish grin upon his face.  I lifted my arms and realized, yes it did; my underwear was exposed, holes and all.  I bolted to the full-length mirror in my bedroom, bent over to touch my toes while glancing sideways into the mirror.  Just like I thought, the horror of it.  My holey granny panties made my ass look baggy, and one particular hole gave a bird's eye view to my precious jewels.  UGH!

I tore off
my panties and threw them in the trash.  I stared at my reflection, wondering what my new neighbor thought of the crazy lady across the way.  I grabbed a brush off my nightstand, the same one I had used last night to sing sad love songs to myself and brushed with one hand while I took the updo clips out of my hair with the other.  Tossing those hairpins on the floor like pennies in a fountain, wishing my neighbor could see me in one of my finer moments, not like he saw me this morning.

As far as first impressions went, I was sure I just made a doosey on my part. 
However, for him, it was like watching a male centerfold model in action, an athletic winning his game, fine dining or luxury sports car.  He looked way out of my league, but that wasn't going to stop me from doing a little daydreaming.  At this point, I was not going back to the window or near it until I looked like a respectable woman.

I went back to the bathroom and decided I needed a quick shower before heading down into the basement to get
the laundry done.  I might as well just go on with my Monday.  Chances were I wasn't going to run into my new neighbor, but I wanted to make sure if the chance happened, my hair and makeup looked great, and I would be wearing something that showed off my body that pilates worked so hard at almost every weeknight at the gym after work.

Just as I was about to jump into the shower, my phone rang.  I reached the kitchen in just a towel,
luckily positioned out of the line of sight of my new neighbor.  I glanced at the caller ID and noticed it was my mother.  There was not a prayer in hell I wanted to talk to her after her witty repertoire last night at my birthday dinner party.  It was bad enough she made me feel completely unsuccessful in life, but had to compare me to my twenty six-year-old sister who, according to my mother, was the star on the Christmas tree.

I had to completely agree that my job as a
production plant, low on totem pole, administrator to the production line manager, was not where I wanted to be at thirty.  Not to mention, I had every intention of going back to college after my freshman year fiasco, but life, parties and good times just kept on rolling by, and I had no strong desire to return.  Besides, I had full health benefits, a retirement package in the works and four weeks of vacation and sick leave a year, which was almost unheard of anymore.  Nobody bitched when I wanted my Monday off to handle errands, and the first few really nice days in summer got a sick call in as well.  My workload was easy, and my boss was a breeze.  At this juncture in my life, and with the way the economy is, I would be a fool to go back to college and wait tables part-time to pay for it.

In all my daydreaming,
as my mother's message sung out on the answering machine playback, I only caught a resemblance of an apology from my mom and a mention that I left my birthday card at the restaurant with my two hundred dollar Macy's gift card in it.  I didn't forget; it was intentional.  After the speech my mother gave, I wanted to leave the waitress a little something extra for having to deal with my crazy family.

It was bad enough that my
best friend's husband offered to leave the tip on a seven hundred dollar tab.  I think the thirty minutes everyone spent bickering about what their share in food and alcohol was, not differing by more than ten or twenty bucks either way.  I figured he was afraid of how long it might take when my dad mentioned that the gratuity wasn't automatically added in.  The grumbling started, and Carl dropped four hundreds on the table in addition to already paying for their own meal and told me it was for the tip and my dinner, and this was their birthday present.  That started a bit of back and forth conversation of 'that's too much', and 'you don't have to do that'.  However, I let Marion and Carl kiss me good-bye, after they told me that they had a cab with paid fare waiting out front for my escape, and they hustled out of the restaurant before anything more enlightened happened with my family, which usually did.  It was too late for me at that point; I was already too far gone with my blissful alcoholic haze as I shouted out to the waitress 'shack me up my snake', which of course, meant pack me up my cake.

I deleted the message from my
mom.  I had to figure that was the best apology I was ever going to get from her.  The sting at the end of the message mentioning a community college package should be arriving in the mail only made the apology feel like a bee sting - which I am allergic to, by the way.

I peeked around the corner of my kitchen towards my front
room window, making sure my neighbor wasn't looking this way for a glimpse of the crazy lady across the alley way.  Coast is clear.

I made a mad dash for the bathroom and almost
made it unscathed.  Somehow or another, I brought a drink home from the restaurant, half-filled with alcohol, ice, and something sweet.  Don't ask me what, I was too drunk to remember.  I just realized, as I laid flat out on my back and my towel now slipping open that - that drink from the restaurant, which was illegal for me to walk out with - somehow spilled on my wood floor causing a nice slick spot for me to lose my footing.

I laid on the floor for a few
minutes, glad my ass and right shoulder took the brunt of the fall and not my head.  I noticed the peeling paint on the apartment ceiling and added calling the super to my to-do list.  I notice a cobweb that appeared since my last dusting on the top of the doorway molding.  I turned my head and noticed the restaurant glass had not broken when I must have inadvertently dropped it on the floor, aiming for my entryway table, but instead it landed and rolled partially underneath.  I was a bit hung over to notice it this morning.  Although this morning, before seeing the gloriously naked body of my new neighbor, I was perfectly content to walk about my place without staying close to the wall and out of sight of my delectably handsome and totally edible neighbor, if you get what I mean.

I finally took a deep breath and figured I could
chalk this up to the fact that I was not officially thirty until Wednesday, so I could get the stupid twenties shenanigans out of the way until then.  Because once I was officially thirty, I was going to grow up, somewhat.  I was going to buy a new car, volunteer for the needy, put more money in savings instead of charging more on my credit card bill, or at least try.  I was going to take a class or two in business management; not through the community college like my mom insisted, but through my work's job enrichment program, which, by the way, was free.  I was going to knock my lousy common sense of my twenties out of the ballpark and be a more mature thirty-year-old woman.  Yup.  That was what I was going to do.

As I lay on my floor, staring at my ceiling, two thoughts crossed my mind.  The first led to the second.  My neighbor.  He was my first plan.  I conjured up his looks that were still fresh in my memory and thought of how strong his hands looked to match the muscles that rippled on his chest.  I wondered how those strong hands would feel on my body and
what color his eyes were.  Not that it was important.  The rest of him was so sexy I truly wasn't going to be fixated on the color of his eyes.  Then I thought about my birthday cake.  It was going to be my emotional substitute for losing Steve.  Not that he was mine to take, ouch, that hurt finding that out a bit too late.  However, I wanted some leftover cake to eat, sober... perhaps while catching the next naked show of my neighbor.

Chapter Three

The day was
cloudless, and the sun had heated it up to a nice warm seventy degrees so far with an expected high in the eighties.  I dressed in my 'let's go to the bar' jeans, since everything else was dirty.  I put on a purple lace bra to encase my size C cup girls.  They were always happier in something pretty.  I didn't have a single pair of underwear left that was clean, unless I wanted to wear my thong underwear.  That, I usually saved for fun date nights, like I use to have with Steve.  That thought caught a hitch in my breath.  I threw my shoulders back, my head high and dug in my closet for a top to wear.  I picked out a purple Colorado Rockies tee shirt I liked to wear to the ball games I went to with my dad.  Slipped on my matching purple flip-flops.  I like to color coordinate my casual clothes, so sue me, besides, my mani-pedi, required flip-flops.

I grabbed my
overstuffed, oversized laundry basket, roll of quarters and headed for the basement laundry room in my apartment.

The elevator was taking
forever, and I didn't want to carry my laundry basket down in flip-flops.  I had done that once and spilled laundry on the stairs in front of old man McCarty.  That was not a good idea.  He about had a heart attack at the sight of my bras and underwear spewed out in his doorway.  I guess if I hadn't made such a god-awful sound, he wouldn't have come out of his apartment to find all of it.

I set my basket down and got my cell phone out of my purse.  I texted Marion that I was good now.  Laundry day and pedicure
, and I was good to go.  I didn't mention the cake.  I would save that for a girl's night out moment, along with new naked neighbor, singing in my apartment drunk and the slipping on spilled drink moment.  I would be sure to not leave out my mom's message because Marion always had a way of making me see things in a less hurtful perspective.  It wasn't always true, but it helped to hear it from my best friend any ways.

By the time I slipped my phone back in my purse, the elevator
dinged, and when it opened, I was not prepared for who would be inside of it.  There, staring down at his phone was my neighbor.  He looked up, just as I wanted to run back inside of my apartment.  He stepped out, said good morning, grabbed my laundry basket and made a casual note that it must be laundry day.

I stood there feeling awkward and then while he was holding the elevator door open for me to step inside, it started to ding an alert.  "Better hop on in before it breaks down again."  His smooth sexy voice matched his
body, and I was in some serious womanly trouble.  I took a step inside and feigned a smile that did not match how I felt.  I felt some serious sexual vibes, and my nerves were not up to the task this morning.  Then he said something that was so romantic I whirled around like a ballerina, internally any ways.  "Although, being stuck in a broken-down elevator with someone like you would be alright."

Of
course, the first thing I said to him, but more out loud to myself, made absolutely no sense to him as I let it come out all breathy and unbelievable.  "You're eyes are blue.  Light blue with a hint of green, but you look Hispanic."  Perhaps my comment sounded prejudice, yet I was anything but.  It was just after sneaking a peak at him naked, I had envisioned him with dark intense eyes; eyes that I wanted to roam my body naked.  I had to get these sultry thoughts out of my head as we were standing in a very enclosed space.

An
awkward smile crept across his face as the door began to close behind us.  He hit the button for the basement as I just stared into his eyes.  I could easily get lost in them.  Everything about him said Latin bad boy yet his eyes, they were so soft and colorful.  Then he said something, and I shook my head back and forth quickly to clear the daydream I was in.  I looked down at my laundry basket in his hand, perched on his hip.  He is strong.  His muscles rippled from the sleeve of his tee shirt.  I cleared my throat as I looked back up into his eyes and spoke like a frog was in my throat.  "Come again?"

"My mother.  She's
Brazilian heritage.  My father is part Hispanic part Swedish.  I guess you thought otherwise."  As he said it, a seductive smile spread across his face, and I felt a nervous reaction coming forward.

I laughed and touched his arm that was holding my basket.  I felt his skin under my hand and
a tingle in my tummy.  I was in big trouble.  So I did what any sensible woman would do at a time like this.  I babbled.  All the way to the basement in the slowest moving elevator ever invented.

"No.  I mean.  I didn't know what you were.  Or should I say who you are.  Were.  Whatever.  I just caught a quick peek of you undressing before you
showered, and I guessed Hispanic.  I also guessed your eye color to be brown or black.  Either one.  Either one is ok I guess.  Although your eyes are spectacular in color.  They're not blue.  They're not green or blue green.  They are like their own special color.  Intriguing.  Sexy.  So any ways.  I saw you.  Undressing that is.  Oh God.  That sounds terrible.  Like I'm a peeping-tom.  But I'm not."  I let my hand touch his arm again.  It was irresistibly drawn to him or touching him at least.  I felt I was being pulled in like some magnetic force, uncontrollable force that I was not in any shape to reckon with, so I let my hand linger while I laughed with a giggle, and then I did what I did best while he stared at me with the sexiest of smiles.  I babbled on.