Something I’ve never done with a woman before.
Then again, I’ve never had to worry about my landlord greeting me when I slip sheepishly into my apartment across town after debauching his granddaughter all night.
It’s not until I pull my truck in behind Perks and Rec that I realize I don’t have a key to this building either. Bruce never gave me one. I suppose he assumed I would be coming and going during business hours. Or maybe my comings and goings didn’t occur to him at all.
Until this moment, they didn’t occur to me either.
Fuck.
I get out and try the back door anyway. After all, Nora doesn’t lock her door and Bruce helped raise her. Maybe they’re just not a door-locking family.
But no such luck. Bruce at least locks up his business. Which I approve of. Especially since I am sleeping upstairs.
I sigh and look around. I can go back to Nora’s, I suppose, but then I’ll have the same problem of explaining where I’ve been when I come back at six.
There are only two other places in this town where I can be let in at this hour. And not judged.
Beckett’s place, or my sister’s.
I don’t really feel like putting up with Beckett at this hour. There is no doubt in my mind that he’s a morning person. Aperkymorning person.
So fifteen minutes later, after a short jog, I’m knocking on my sister’s front door.
It takes her, understandably, several minutes to answer.
This is not the first time I’ve shown up at Astrid’s in the middle of the night.
It is probably the first time I’ve done it completely sober, though.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she asks, swinging the door wide open for me to come in.
“I was at Nora’s, and I am locked out of Perks and Rec,” I say.
Astrid doesn’t need any more explanation than that. She nods. “I appreciate your commitment to this fake dating scheme.”
Right.
Nothingabout things with Nora feels fake, and that should be concerning.
Instead of dwelling on that, I look around my sister’s house.
We’re in the “foyer”, the small square of linoleum just inside the front door. Two steps ahead and I’ll be in the living room.
And I can’t stop staring at it.
This place has to be what shows up in the dictionary as an example of a ranch-style house. In nineteen seventy-one.
The suite Astrid lived in at college was smaller than this, square footage-wise, and with fewer rooms, so this is the second smallest place she’s ever lived.
But that’s only the beginning of the…staring.
“What thehellis with that wallpaper?”
She grins widely. “Isn’t it horrible?”
Yes, yes, it is. It’s yellow. And orange. Andbrown. There is a lot of brown in this room. The wallpaper pattern looks like multiple halved avocados. But the avocados are orange.On top of yellow. With brown pits.
The orange matches the sofa, though. The yellow goes with the weird round chair. And the brown complements the one wall that’s covered in wood paneling that extends all the way around the built-in bookcase that has a gigantic TV right in the middle.
