“We don’t know it’s him,” Maeve said, grabbing me.
“What if it is?”
“Turn off the lights. Pretend we’re not here.”
A man’s heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.
I grabbed my cast-iron skillet greased with butter for the apple pie I was baking and hefted it.
“Oh my god!”
“Shhh!”
I snuck up to the door, adrenaline pumping. I refused to cower before Kaden. I didn’t have money to hire a lawyer to file a restraining order against him. Not to mention that if I was going to get a high-paying job and move into a two bedroom—which was probably a stretch, but Maeve and I could at least find a studio that wasn’t in the process of converting itself to toxic sludge—I definitely wasn’t going to have the living experience ruined by Kaden popping up randomly to ruin my day.
Nope. It wasThe Art of Warout here. We had to deal with Kaden decisively.
The footsteps came closer.
I motioned Maeve to open the door. She shook her head.
Do it!I mouthed, raising the cast-iron skillet in two hands. I had found it at a thrift shop. It was thirteen inches. (Ha! Who needed a man when you had a cast-iron skillet!) Though the rest of me was soft and doughy from stress eating, my forearms were pretty powerful from stress dough kneading and baking.
The footsteps stopped in front of the door.
Maeve closed her eyes, grabbed the door handle, and swung it open.
I screamed, “Towanda!” at the top of my lungs and sprinted out of the apartment door, swinging the cast-iron skillet.
And almost bashed Beck in the head.
He cursed and ducked. The force of the motion carried the skillet and embedded it into the wall opposite the apartment.
Beck skittered away from me, flecks of plaster and wood chips narrowly missing his suit.
They showered all over me, of course, because such was my life.
Beck opened his mouth then shut it.
Maeve screamed from the other side of the door. “I’m calling the police!” She ran out, brandishing an eggbeater. “Oh. Oh! Hi, Mr. Svensson.”
She stuck the eggbeater behind her back and shuffled backward into the apartment.
Beck turned to me. “Is that how you answer the door?”
“It’s my door that I pay for, and I’ll answer it how I want,” I said, putting my fists on my hips.
Beck looked at me, shaking his head. His eyes flicked down then immediately back up. “You’re not… wearing.” He couldn’t get the words out. He looked up at the ceiling.
“A bra,” I said, crossing my arms, refusing to let him make me feel self-conscious. “You can say the word bra. You’re not going to spontaneously combust in a shower of pink lace.”
“Why aren’t you wearing one?” he choked out.
“Girls have boobs, dammit, and I have been told that they are very nice ones on occasion,” I said tartly. “And sometimes things need to breathe.”
“But you’re standing out in the hallway,” he said, horrified.
“You can’t tell me that you don’t walk around letting your balls air out on occasion,” I said, pointing to his crotch.
