“Congrats on the growth.” I rolled my eyes and she swatted at me. “When are you leaving?”
“End of the month.”
“Is Mike already showing your space?”
Her face twisted into a frown. “Well, that’s the bad news part. I think he’s up to something weird. He was here super early yesterday with some guy and they were walking all around the building. I thought for sure he was going to bring him in to show him my space, but he didn’t.”
“Maybe he’s finally getting someone to fix the alarm system?”
“It didn’t look like it to me. I don’t know what’s going on, but you should probably keep your eyes open. That man is shifty.”
Our landlord was another aspect of industrial park life thatwe commiserated over. It killed me that Roz was leaving. Our building wasn’t exactly in a prime real estate location, which meant that I probably wouldn’t get lucky enough to have a neighbor like her again. Definitely no retail, maybe another food-related business. Or worse, something like auto parts or construction. I was probably going to wind up outmanned.
“Do you need any help moving? Packing, or eating your overruns to reduce the weight limit in your moving truck?”
Roz laughed. “Don’t you worry, I’m only going to Hastings. You can still get your fill of Smart Cookies anytime you want to make the drive.”
“I hate this.” I pouted, pretending to kick a rock on the ground, which caused Edith to chase my shoelace.
“I don’t know,” Roz said. “You keep talking about how crowded your classes are getting. Maybe me leaving is a good thing for both of us. You could expand.”
It was something I’d been considering for ages, in theory because I never thought that Roz would leave. But taking over her space would enable me to add new services, and allow me to bring on employees as well. A healthy expansion, which, based on my spreadsheets, was the only way I could hit my long-term financial goals.
“Hey, if you don’t want my space maybe you’ll get another hottie in my spot.” She pointed to the cursed portion of the building. “I met the new guy. What’s his name again? Alex?”
“Andrew.” I frowned as I said it.
Roz immediately picked up on my displeasure. “What? You’ve got a problem with him already?”
There wasn’t enough time to explain who’d fired the first shot in our little war. “Not sure yet.”
“Well, I think he seems like a sweetie. I ran into him a few days ago. Great smile. I gave him a little welcome box and he said my oatmeal raisin were the best he’d ever tasted.”
Andrew eatscookiesnow?
“Gotta watch him with his garbage, though,” Roz continued. “He keeps stacking it next to the bin.”
“Iknow, right?”
“If that’s the worst thing he does you’ll be fine. He seems like a genuinely good guy.”
And that was Roz’s first mistake when it came to Andrew Gibson. Believing the hype.
chapter six
Andrew was a walking cliché.
It wasn’t even nine a.m. and I could hear the hardest of hard rock seeping through the ceiling. I hadn’t seen his Jeep in the lot when I’d arrived so I wasn’t sure why I was being subjected to metal in the morning. I couldn’t identify the artist screaming away in my HVAC but I could tell it was eighties rock. I squeezed my hands into fists until the fire shooting from my left wrist reminded me that Andrew had been causing me pain since the first night he’d arrived.
I was used to silence from my neighbors. Even when Roz blasted Prince right next door I could barely hear it. What quirk of architecture was turning his stereo system into my surround sound? And how long was I going to let him get away with it? To keep from freaking out I tried to identify what he was listening to. One of my useless party tricks was being able to name almost any song within a few notes. I cocked my head like a dog hearing a siren in the distance. Ozzy? Judas Priest?
“Whatever it is, it’s too damn loud,” I said to Edith, who was happily chewing on a bully stick on her bed beneath my desk.She paused, then went back to gnawing on the thing that now resembled a wad of wet paper towel.
In the three weeks since he’d arrived, we’d both been making good on our promise to stay away from each other. I’d expected to run into him in the parking lot at least, but he’d managed to work out a schedule that was the exact opposite of mine. At times I doubted he was really moving in, but then I’d see the telltale garbage bags stackednext tothe dumpster and the nightmare would be real again. Plus, Roz mentioned that he’d invited her into his space for a crack-of-dawn tea break after he finished unloading various weight machines from a moving van, so there were sightings.
And of course, now there was glam rock keening through the vents. So it was definitely real.
I looked down at the stack of paperwork on my desk and realized that I’d left the rest of my handouts in my car. As much as I wanted to get rid of homework sheets, I’d learned the hard way that emailed homework tended to be ignored. Handing out something tangible at the end of class, with measurable progress listed for each exercise, was like a paper guilt trip that no email could match. I slid a baby gate in front of my desk, effectively trapping Edith beneath it for the three minutes I’d be gone, and jogged to the door.
