Page 13 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

I didn’t move for a solid minute, convinced he was about to let himself back in. But as the time passed, and the building stayed quiet, I freed my feet and checked the peephole. He wasn’t out there.

For the first time since meeting him that morning, I breathed easy. He was gone. For real this time.

I turned toward my tiny apartment. The thrift store couch, old TV, broken blinds, little kitchen. Groceries that needed putting away. This was me. My whole life. In one tiny, mind-numbingly dull package.

So, what did I want? Trouble to stay or go? I couldn’t have it both ways.

I’d done trouble before, and I’d be paying for that for the rest of my life.

I sighed and started to put the groceries away.

CHAPTER 4

“I heard Theo Witherborne got arrested,” Bet said, sipping from her coffee cup.

She sat across the café table from me during our weekly check-in, to make sure I hadn’t gone off the deep end and needed to be fitted with an ankle monitor.

Bet had blonde hair shaved on one side, jaw length on the other, and tattoos peeked out from under her shirt at the collar and wrists. I’d never asked about her past, but I figured to do what she did, she must have lived experience of making huge mistakes and coming back from them.

I was still coming back from mine.

“I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “He just hitched a ride back from the pool gig, and wanted to crash on my couch. I let him, and then he was gone again. Nothing to it, really.”

She peered at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “You must be the only person alive who can turn a meeting with Theo Witherborne into something as boring as unpacking groceries.”

I chuckled at that. It had been three days since I’d kicked him out of my apartment. He’d been arrested that night, and was out by the following morning, lawyered up and using the experience for clickbait. #TooGlamToGiveADamn was still trending. His fan army had threatened to break him out of jail.

Between then and now, I’d spent too much time scrolling social media, glued to his drama, and had to force myself to block the apps a day ago.

My phone, face down on the table, buzzed. I ignored it.

“So, how are you doing, Owen?” Bet asked in her professional-sounding voice. The voice that meant she’d write down my answer.

“Well, the job’s going great, if I can keep it. Like you said, the Witherbornes are a lot. I’m hoping they just go back to ignoring me. I have a few more clients. It’s shaping up.”

A woman entered the café and looked my way. She caught my eye, as though she’d been searching for me specifically. I turned my face away, avoiding eye contact with the stranger, but she stared and started to come over, her smile growing.

Her smile grew with every step closer.

Did I know her?

“Be careful around them,” Bet said. “If it gets too hot, or if anything happens you’re not comfortable with, you should leave. There’ll be other pool clients.”

“Yeah.” I picked up my coffee cup to hide half my face from the woman who was almost at my table.

“Are you hashtag MurderMysteryMeetCute?” she asked, as though whatever she’d just said was a perfectly normal way to speak.

I blinked. “Am I murder-what?”

“MurderMysteryMeetCute? MaintenaceButMakeItHot? GoldenRetrieverEnergy?”

I gaped. I could hear words in her sentences, but it was like listening to a password generator talk. “Ma’am, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

Bet blinked at her too, then caught my eye. I shrugged.

“You’re Owen, right?” the woman asked.

“Uh, yeah, but⁠—”