CHAPTER ONE – SHELBY
You Must Wear Pants
“You! Shove this filthy, cheesy piece of crap up your ass!”
Jay turned his head, staring at me with wide green eyes, his hands firmly around the controller of his Playstation. “What?”
I threw the dirty sock at his head. “I’ve had enough! Three months, Jay! Three months! You told me you’d have another place by now, but I still just had to pick your dirty damn sock up out of the bath before I could shower!”
My best friend’s eyes darted up and down my body. “Is that why you look like a clan full of cats just dragged you out of a forest?”
“It’s a clowder.”
“What?”
“A group of cats is a clowder.” I paused, then shook my head. “Not the point. I’m sick and tired of picking up after you. You’re twenty-six! Why can’t you work a washing machine?”
He paused his game then tilted his head to the side, flashing me his signature charming grin that did absolutely nothing but piss me off. “Because you know how to, Shelbs.”
I grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and threw it at his head. “I am not your mother! I am your best friend and apparently, your keeper, you overgrown manchild!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He grabbed the jacket before I hit him in the face with it. “No need to make more mess. It’s bad enough as it is.”
Annoyance flared within me. I stormed over to the living room and stood with my feet apart and braced my hands on my hips. Slowly and deliberately, I cast my gaze over the living room.
Over the empty bottle of Mountain Dew on the floor by his feet, the crushed Red Bull can on the side table with the lamp, the pizza box on the coffee table surrounded by empty food packets…
“And who does the mess belong to, Jay?” I asked in a deathly calm voice that my mother would have been proud of.
He froze, the grin falling from his face. “You sounded like your mom.”
I continued to glare at him. “I am not picking up after you anymore. I’m tired of finding your clothes in the washer when I need to wash mine. I’m sick of picking up after your rubbish because your lazy ass can’t find the trash can, and—hey! Are those my Oreos?”
“No!”
The tell-tale blue packet peeked out from between two packets of Doritos. I reached forward and snatched it before Jay had a chance.
It was my Oreos.
And the packet was empty.
“You ate my Oreos!” My voice was shriller than it should have been, but this day was going from bad to worse. I was behind on my deadline, there were dirty socks in my shower, and my shit roommate and future ex-best-friend had eaten my only pleasure in this life.
Jay had the good grace to grimace. “Sorry?”
“Sorry? Sorry? One thing in that kitchen is off limits to you, and that’s my Oreos!” I waved the packet to punctuate my point. “They are the one pleasure I have in life!”
He winced. “They’re just cookies, Shelb. I’ll stop at the store and get you some more when I come home from work later.”
I crunched the packet up in my fist and folded my arms. “And you’re going to tidy your mess up before you go.”
He checked his phone. “I don’t really have time.”
“You have time to play video games.”
“Yeah, but I get to kill people in video games.” He paused. “I can’t kill anyone tidying up.”
“You can kill the mess.”
“Not the same.”
“Okay, then I can kill you for coming into my apartment and wrecking it.” I tossed the Oreo wrapper in the trash and went to the fridge for a bottle of water.
There weren’t any.
Leaning back, I peered across the apartment at Jay. “Where’s all the water?”
He hit a button on the controller and put it down in a scarce space on the coffee table. “The guys came over after you went out with Brie last night.”
“Jay…” I groaned, slamming the fridge door shut.
He knew how I felt about that. In fact, I’d told him once a week, every Monday, ever since he’d moved in.
Jay worked for his dad. Wesley “Wes” Cooper owned a successful chain of gyms in Texas and had put his son in charge of one of them. Jay’s friends consisted of sports-obsessed, beer-loving, wing-eating, gym-rat couch coaches.
And, lucky me, they converged on my apartment every weekend. Or they had ever since he’d moved in temporarily.
Since Sunday happened to be my designated day off to work on my own novel instead of ghostwriting or freelance news articles, it wasn’t all that convenient.
Men watching sports were loud. Toddlers in a playground kind of loud. Not to mention that every single one of Jay’s friends thought they were more qualified to manage the Dallas Cowboys than the actual coach.