Have you seen those pinup paintings from the 1940s? The ones where some adorably clueless bird bends to pick a flower and accidentally drops her knickers in the process? That’s this girl. She’s little and buxom and wide-eyed and looks like a walking, talking Norman Rockwell illustration. Not a real person at all.
Not to be trusted.
“You’re English,” she said, to which I replied that no, I was in fact Welsh. I didn’t mention the half French part. Wasn’t her business, was it?
“Oh. Okay. Well. Bonne journée, sir,” she said, pink-painted lips parting in a perfect, white smile, before she turned with a swish of mahogany hair and a sugary cloud of honey or vanilla or whatever pixy dust perfume her pores emit instead of regular human body odor.
Feigning interest in a piece of junk mail, I watched her lug her massive suitcase—along with a half a dozen smaller bags—past the lift. She stopped at the bottom of the steep, winding staircase, put a tiny, surprisingly unadorned hand on the railing, and looked up.
“What floor?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know?”
I looked down at her case, which must have weighed a good thirty kilos, glanced at the lift door, and let my gaze return to her. “No reason at all.” I gave her a quick, friendly smile on my way out. “Bonne journée to you, then.”
Why the hell was I such an absolute git? I couldn’t say. Some instinct, I suppose, telling me that the woman would make my life miserable.
And how right it was. Just as guilt rises up at the memory, the laughing starts again, jolting me out of that liminal place between waking and slumber.
Three months I’ve had to suffer through this. Three bloody months.
Rather than lie here and endure one more minute of it, I force myself to roll out of bed and throw on a pair of tracksuit bottoms.
That’s it.
We’re nipping this in the bud. Now.
* * *
Jules
Uh oh. The second I hear the footsteps stomping up to my floor, I know it’s him—Monsieur Grumpy Puss. Le neighbor from hell. The man who, for reasons entirely unknown to me, has hated me since the moment we met in the lobby.
He was the very first person I met in Paris. Not a good sign, if I were a superstitious sort of person.
Thankfully, I’m not, because Paris has turned out to be my favorite place. The people, the flutter of excitement every time I walk out the door, my job. Even the streets’ very specific pastry, perfume, and exhaust smell speaks to something in my soul. Which makes my downstairs neighbor the only sour note in a truly memorable stay.
Solène warned me about this guy when she rented me the apartment, so I know it’s not just me—although it sure feels like it sometimes.
The man on Floor 5 is difficult, but harmless. It’s literally written out in Solène’s arrival instructions.Ignore him and he’ll ignore you. He hates everyone. Keep the noise down and he’ll leave you be.
And I’ve done that. I have! I don’t play music out loud, ever. I walk as lightly as I can. Always barefoot. And I try to whisper through most of my calls. But he’s hated me since the moment we met. How many times has he stopped me in the stairs or the front hall or come up to complain? Five? Six?
Honestly, it feels personal.
As he nears, I can feel his disapproval through the thick wooden front door and, for reasons I cannot explain, it revs me up, the way it has every time he’s stomped up here.
Okay, so maybe I can explain it. Because yes he’s an obnoxious, egotistical ass with questionable taste in music—which I sometimes hear and have never once complained about!—but he’s shockingly, disgustingly attractive.
Which is so totally unfair.
Why, oh why are the hot ones always assholes?
And this one takes the cake. In both areas. Unbearably attractive and unfathomably crappy.
So, of course he’s got a problem with me.
“I gotta go,” I hiss at the screen.
