I’d picked up some food while Juliette was at work earlier, so I made myself dinner and took advantage of the space she’d allotted me.
After my meal, the temperature became too much to bear again. So, I slipped my tee over my head.
When Juliette finally emerged around eight PM, her eyes went wide. She didn’t even have to speak before I defended myself.
“Look, like I told you, as long as it’s hot as balls in here, I’m gonna be shirtless. You need to get used to it.”
She mumbled something under her breath as she headed for the fridge.
And I waited.
Here it comes.
“What the?”
I flashed a mischievous grin. “I did a little rearranging.”
I’d put all of Juliette’s stuff on the left side to mess with her, moving mine to the right. But all of her precious Erewhon food was still intact. I just wanted to shake things up a little. As she stood there with her mouth agape, I asked, “What exactly happens if your stuff is on the left, Juliette? Does the world end? Don’t worry. I didn’t touch any of your food except to move it.”
“What the hell is that smell?”
Crap. I knew she’d call that out. “It’s smoked Portuguese sausage. There’s this guy in West Hollywood who has a smoker in his yard. I found him on Reddit. He smokes the meat all day and sells it.”
“When did you have time to get smoked meat?”
“I swung over there really quick after I dropped you at your meeting. It was in the trunk, which is probably why you didn’t smell it when you got in the car.”
She shook her head and took out a few berries. She washed them before popping one into her mouth. She winced and nearly spit it out. “These taste like smoke! Berries are porous, you know.”
“Well, your rules said nothing about freshly smoked meats, so I thought it was okay.”
“You need to keep that crap out of the fridge. I feel like I’m eating a blueberry-flavored chimney.” This time she spit a berry into the trash.
I stifled laughter as she once again stormed away to her room. I hadn’t realized how pungent the smoked chorizo would be. She was right—you couldn’t smell much else in the fridge. That was my bad and an unintended consequence.
I vowed to make up for it tomorrow by cleaning out the fridge and restocking it with her frou-frou berries and anything else that might’ve been impacted by the unfortunate smoked-sausage takeover.
Once nine PM rolled around and she hadn’t reemerged, I figured it was safe to get comfortable in my sleeping spot for the night. I took off my pants and lay down in my boxer briefs.
I was halfway into a movie on Netflix when the doorbell rang.
Shit. Who the fuck is here at this hour?
I peeked through the peephole and found an innocent-looking woman standing there. Redhead, mid-thirties, and a penchant for wearing green apparently. I recognized her as Juliette’s neighbor. I bet she was the one who’d called the cops. Without thinking it through too much, I opened the door and said, “Can I help you?”
She looked me up and down, and her eyes slowly widened. I’d sort of forgotten I wasn’t wearing pants.Whoops.
She cleared her throat. “I’m Pam from next door. Officer Horton explained to me what happened last night. I wanted to apologize for causing a scene. I didn’trealize Juliette had a boyfriend staying here. We don’t have too many unfamiliar cars in this neighborhood, and we try to look out for each other.” She looked me up and down again. “Please accept my sincerest apologies for intruding.”
I nodded. “No problem at all.”
A second later, I heard Juliette’s voice behind me. “What the hell is going on?”
I turned to find her eyes scrolling my body before they landed on my crotch.
I guess mysmokedsausage wasn’t the one she was most concerned about anymore.
CHAPTER 4
